You’re Invited: Tonight “Love in Christ” the Fourth Wednesday in Advent, December 21st, 2011

I read an article bemoaning the upcoming divorce of NBA star Kobe Bryant. The article was encouraging people not to overreact, divorce is going around. There must be something in the water. Actually, the writer said, we have “selfish genes,” and at the end of the day who can blame the person who divorces? Marriage at the end of the day is at a disadvantage at the get go: it is a proposition of “me vs. we.” And “me” usually wins. This article reminded me of the recent report by Pew Forum: only 51% of all American adults are married. Marriage is dying.

What a pity, what a shame. It is for many reasons, but the chief of which is the unknown salve, the unknown power for marriage that is called “love.” No, I don’t mean to sing blindly about a utopian dream like the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love!” I am speaking of God’s love. Yes, there is “love,” and then there is “love.” God’s love is not man’s love, but God’s love is available to sinful men who call on the Name of the Lord. This love understands that marriage is indeed hard work, but it is more than just that, it is highest arena for applying God’s love, God’s sacrificial love, God’s commitment love, God’s love that stands in the face of adversity. This love makes marriage a beautiful mosaic of a great life together…learning the highest love: to sacrifice for the one whom God joined you to and then to be blessed more than we can ever imagine.

For me, next to Jesus Christ, Traci Dawn, is the greatest blessing in the universe.

When I was the pastor at St. John, Covina, I served a family in which I saw this love more than at any other time in my life. They were married, she was paralyzed, he lived out his love and cared for her sacrificially every day. This love was based on a volitional act of service…it was God’s love in action. Jesus said before the cross that took His life, “I love you. I do not deny that it will be indescribably excruciating, and that it will cost me my very life, but this I do for you: I will love you in my action, in my life, and it will mean that salvation will come, I will do the will of my Father and He will be glorified, and you — my child originally created in God’s image — will live your God-given purpose: to be saved and then to share my love through faith in Me!” 1st John 4:19 puts it simply, “We love because He first loved us.” 

Marriage is wonderful because in it we practice God’s love and it is good, very, very good for the soul.

This love in the life of the Christian, however, is lived out in so many more arena’s than just marriage, it is God’s love for us in Christ for all people…love them, serve them, glorify the Lord, by crucifying the flesh that wants you to live for self…and then arise in the new creation, live for others…this is what love does…it is faith in action, it is such a faith in Jesus that delivers us from living for ourselves. This love puts life right, because it relies on Christ who loved us with His very life!

Dr. Espinosa

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