The power of love.
The plot of many a novel. The theme of many a song.
But what is the real power of love?
Better, what power does it take to love – to love as God intended it.
It Takes Power to Love the Right Way
Love does not just happen. At least, love that lasts does not just happen.
Love, real love, requires power.
It takes real power to love another the right way.
The Bible tells husbands to love their wives.
But, not only to love their wives, but to love them this way: “…just as Christ also loved the church.” (Eph 5:25).
How did Christ love the church? “…and gave Himself for her.”
“He, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” (Phil 2:6-8)
We see the power of love in Christ: when He submitted Himself to the humiliation of the cross, for the sake of the church. It takes great power to submit to what love requires.
Likewise, the love of a wife for her husband is bound up in submission (Eph 5:22). And it takes power for her to love this way.
And not only in marriage, but all love between Christians is modelled on Christ’s powerful love for the church.
Before Paul’s words for husbands and wives in Ephesians ch 5, are his words for all of us:
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.” Eph 4:32-5:1)
And John’s words:
“By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” (1 Joh 3:16)
The world sees no power in love like this. To them this is foolishness, weakness. But “to us who are being saved” the cross of Christ is “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Cor 1:21-25)
Love doesn’t just happen.
It takes power to love, and to go on loving the right way.
It Takes Power Not to Love the Wrong Way
“Love is love”, the world tells us.
The subtext is: “…and, if I love, I must act on that love, in order to be true to myself.”
I.e. It feels so right it can’t be wrong. There is no wrong way, as long as there is love.
But there is.
Some years ago there was an advertising campaign here in Australia (against paedophilia, I seem to remember) with the tag line: “You can’t help what you feel. But you don’t have to act on it.”
Apparently, even if love feels so right, it can be wrong. And, you don’t have to act upon it to be true to the real you.
It takes power, not only to love the right way, but also not to love the wrong way. Loving the wrong way is weakness, not power.
Scripture is full of examples of those who thought they loved. But, in their weakness, they loved the wrong way.
For example, while it certainly takes power to love one’s enemies (Matt 6:44), yet to aid and abet another out of love when they are doing the wrong thing is to love them the wrong way.
For this reason even good King Jehoshaphat earned the condemnation of the prophet: “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? Therefore the wrath of the Lord is upon you.” (2 Chron 19:2)
Those in the church in Corinth prided themselves (were “puffed up”) that they were so loving and broadminded towards one in their midst who loved and was cohabiting with his step-mother. But the Bible says they should “rather have mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you.” (1 Cor 5:1-2)
No doubt, King Solomon excused himself by saying “love is love” when he “loved many foreign women—from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, ‘You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods.’” (1 Kings 11:1-2)
When a married man loves another woman with the kind of love that should be reserved only for his wife, the world excuses him by saying, “You can’t help who you fall in love with.”
But you can help how you feel (not only how you act upon it). Though it is worse, far worse, to act upon sinful feelings, there is power to guard against even sinful feelings in the first place. For this reason, the Bible tells us males to treat “an older man as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters” with the added caveat “with all purity.” (1 Tim 5:1-2)
King David exercised great power when he wanted to “show kindness” to any remaining members of the former rival regime (2 Sam ch 9), and then to “show kindness” to the bereaved heir of a rival kingdom (2 Sam 10).
But when, in the following chapter, “at the time when kings go out to battle, David remained at Jerusalem” and pursued his love of another man’s wife – that was not power; it was contemptible weakness.
And when, later “Amnon the son of David [incestuously] loved” his “lovely” half-sister and overpowered her (2 Sam 13:1) – that was not power, but sinful weakness.
So too, when we see today “women exchanging the natural use for what is against nature”; and “men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burning in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful” (Rom 1:26-27) it is not the power of love we are witnessing, but sinful weakness.
As is the case, also, with those who “not only do the same things but also approve of those who practice them.” (1:32)
“Love is love”? “I must be true to myself”?
No, it takes power not to love the wrong way, just as it takes power to love another the right way.
You can help how you feel; and you can certainly help how you act (or don’t act) upon it.
I don’t mean it is wrong to find a person, other than your spouse, attractive. But you can help what happens next: to allow attraction to become feelings of sexual desire is wrong – whether you act upon such feelings or not. Matt 5:27-28
It Takes Power to Know the Love of Christ
Where is the power to love the right way, and not to love the wrong way?
It begins with knowing Christ, with knowing the love of Christ.
Before ever we can know the power to love as we ought, we need power to know the love of Christ.
In Ephesians ch 5 Paul tells husbands and wives to exercise the power of love for one another (5:22-33). Before that he tells those in the church to exercise power in not loving the wrong way (eg. in “fornication and all uncleanness”, 5:3ff), but in loving each other the right way (4:17-5:2).
But before that, and undergirding our ability to powerfully love each other the right way, is this remarkable prayer of Paul’s for them, that they might have power to know the love of Christ – and to know it more and more (“the width and length and depth and height”).
Notice, in particular, the three words Paul uses to emphasise the power behind knowing the love of Christ, as he prays to the Father:
“…that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened [Gk. krataioo] with might [Gk. dynamis] through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be fully able [Gk. exischuo] to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:16-19)
Don Carson aptly comments:
Paul does not mean to suggest that his readers have never before known God’s love for them in Christ Jesus. Far from it: he knows they are Christians, and therefore acknowledges that they have been “rooted and established in love” (v. 17)… The remarkable fact about this petition, however, is that Paul clearly assumes that his readers, Christians though they are, do not adequately appreciate the love of Christ. He now wants them to have the power to grasp just how great the love of Christ is. This is not a prayer that we might love Christ more (though that is a good thing to pray for); rather, it is a prayer that we might better grasp his love for us… Apart from the power of God Christians will have too little appreciation for the love of Christ. They need the power of God to appreciate the limitless dimensions of that love. And so Paul prays for power.[1]
But why? Why does Paul think this so important?
Again, Don Carson:
To put the matter simply, Paul wants us to have the power to grasp the love of God in Christ Jesus, to the end that we might be mature. To be “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” is simply a Pauline way of saying “to be all that God wants you to be,” or “to be spiritually mature”… Paul assumes that we cannot be as spiritually mature as we ought to be unless we receive power from God to enable us to grasp the limitless dimensions of the love of Christ. We may think we are peculiarly mature Christians because of our theology, our education, our years of experience, our traditions; but Paul knows better. He knows we cannot be as mature as we ought to be until we “know this love that surpasses knowledge.” That is why he prays as he does: he wants us to grow in our grasp of Christ’s love so that we will become mature, “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”[2]
Our God Is a God of Power
But is it even possible to know the love of Christ to this extent?
Yes, it is – because the God Paul prays to, the God we pray to, is a God of great power. Paul’s confidence in praying for his fellow believers, is that the Father would answer “according to the riches of His glory” (above).
And now he concludes his prayer expressing even greater confidence in God. Again, notice the three words Paul uses to underline the power of the Father in being able to answer this prayer:
“Now to Him who is able [Gk. dynamai] to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power [Gk. dynamis] that works [Gk. energeo] in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.” (Eph 3:20-21)
This is the God of infinite power that we worship. This is the power we ask for. Not the power of “those who seek after miracles” , or “those who seek after worldly wisdom” (1 Cor 1:22). As Don Carson noted:
Many people pursue power. Simon the sorcerer wanted the power of the Spirit so that he could manipulate people and maintain his position in the community. Most of us know Christians whose talk about the power of God in their lives seems dangerously close to a perpetual game of one-upmanship. Their chase after power in some triumphalistic sense is a long way removed from the stance of the apostle.[3]
But the power we seek is the power “to grasp the limitless dimensions of the love of Christ… to the end that we might be mature.” It is/should be the goal of every Christian to “grow into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.” (Eph 1:13) Only as we attain to maturity are our “senses trained to distinguish between good and evil” (Heb 5:13), i.e. to learn the difference between loving the right way, and not loving the wrong way.
Pray, therefore, to this God “who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” that you may “get to know thoroughly Christ’s deep affection, self-sacrificing tenderness, passionate sympathy, and marvelous outgoingness.” (William Hendriksen)
[1] Carson, D. A. (1992). A call to spiritual reformation: priorities from Paul and his prayers (pp. 190–193). Baker Book House.
[2] ibid (p. 196)
[3] ibid (p. 185)