Radical Love

The radical love of God!

-The Greek language alone has 8 different words for love

John 3:16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave* his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

-PRAY!!!!

The Cross Shows the Cost of God’s Love

-(Explain) Jesus’ death on the cross

-Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane sweating blood

-Betrayed By his inner circle

-Jesus denied by one of his best friends

-Mocked and beaten throughout the night in a sham trial, an innocent man condemned to die.

-Pilot hands Jesus over to be crucified

-He is scourged

-Jesus is handed over to a regiment of 400-600 solders to be spit on and mocked, crown of thorns and a reed stick.

-Marched to Golgotha and crucified

-Radical love has a cost

Romans 5:8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

-God didn’t wait for us to become worthy.

-His love took the initiative.

-The lamb slain from the foundation of the earth

-The cross is not a symbol of suffering—it is the ultimate proof of divine love.

-God’s love isn’t based on our performance but on His character

We are called to love Radically!

Matthew 22: 37-39 Jesus replied, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’* 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’* 

-Go ahead and put your page marker in your Bible because we are going to be here for a while.

-If Jesus said this is the greatest commandment i think we should linger here for a while.

-The words of Jesus reaching back to the old testament, Leviticus and Deuteronomy

-and Jesus makes a powerful claim in the next verse. “that all the law and Prophet’s are summed up in this new commandment

(Take a minute)

-Love upward; a God directed love

-Love outward; a love directed at others

-Love inward; a self love

-Not three separate kinds of love in competition with each other, but one God-shaped love expressed in three directions.

-This love is super natural in its nature

Love upward, loving God

-This is the first love, the highest love, and the love that puts every other love in order.

-To love God with all your heart, soul, and mind means God is not meant to have a corner of your (my) life. He is meant to have the center.

(elaborate)

-Heart, Soul, Mind, these are not fictional.

-Heart — your affections, desires, devotion

-Soul — In ancient Hebrew thought, you do not just have a soul; you are a living soul, or it is my very identity (near death)

-Mind — your thoughts, understanding, priorities

Whole person turning toward God

-So loving God is not merely emotion, and it is not merely duty. It is the whole person turning toward God in worship, trust, obedience, and delight.

-Loving God means valuing Him supremely and responding to Him wholly.

-We will be learning to do this our whole lives

Love outward, loving your neighbor

-Once love is rightly oriented at God, it can begin to flow toward other people. And love will do this naturally.

-This is why so many Christians have no love for others, their God love is not working correctly.

-(Visual with arm stretched into the air, then pointed at crowd)

-Our love becomes visible when it is aimed at others

-Loving my neighbor means I seek another person’s good. It is not mere sentiment. It is active, practical, and it’s COSTLY.

-In Luke Ch 10, Jesus makes this very plain in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that our “neighbor” is not just the person like me, near me, or easy for me to love.

-Neighbor means the person whose need I encounter.

-So “neighbor” isn’t just:

-people like me

-people close to me

-Or people who deserve it

-Neighbor; is The person God puts in front of me whose need I can meet.

-There is one more dimension, One more point.

Love inward, love your self!

- Jesus is talking about self-care here as a given fact, people just naturally feed, protect, and look out for themselves.

-How you treat and value yourself sets the standard for how you treat the people around you.

-Rest, eat well, and protect your mind and body from harm just as you would for a good friend.

-Self-loathing is a very real and widespread mental health challenge today, often linked to modern stressors like, social media comparison, sedentary lifestyle, and poor eating habits mark rising rates of anxiety and depression.

-Once again we find when our God love is out of sink the whole system goes haywire.

-Not self-centeredness, but self-care under God.

-But how do we bring all of this love alive in our lives? It really is difficult to wrap our brains around all of this

-At the beginning of this message we left Christ crucified, but he didn't stay that way

Romans 6:3-4 'Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. '

-We don’t have permission to live new lives, we have the power to live new lives!

-The power to step into radical love

-The stone rolled away

-Jesus raised in power

-Ascended to the father forever interceding

-Day of Pentecost POWER!!!