What Love Is This? (from 2006)

Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him, and said to him, “One thing you lack:  go and sell all you possess and give to the poor . . .”   Mark 10:21a  NASB 1995

Felt a Love for Him – Don’t make this mistake!  Don’t convert the intensity of the real Greek expression here into a feeling.  The Greek text says, “Jesus loved him.”  It uses the word ēgapēsen from the word agapáō.  You’ll see the familiar word for sacrificial love here (agápē).  Yeshua didn’t just feel something for this man.  He was moved to act sacrificially on his behalf.  [The NIV got it right.] 

But once we understand that the word is about sacrificial love, then the whole story is turned on its head.  How can it be sacrificial love to tell the man to sell all he has and give it to the poor?  That doesn’t sound like love to us.  That sounds like punishment.  How would you feel if you met Yeshua and he told you to give up everything you spent your entire life accumulating?  How would you react to the idea of taking all that you possess and giving it to the poor who did nothing to deserve it?  Would you still think that Yeshua loved you?

In a world where possessions provide security, status, and identity, we are hard pressed to think that love means giving it all away.  But Yeshua sees beyond our delusions.  He sees that what we really need cannot be purchased at any price.  He sees that what we must release is the bondage of accumulating our own worth.  He loves us so deeply that he cuts through our fabricated lives and exposes who we really serve.  It is love that crucifies our false ideals.  Yeshua loves us to death!

Few understand that agápē love is intimately connected to death.  agápē love does not placate what is ultimately disastrous, deluded, and destructive.  The love Yeshua shows is a love about what really matters; a love that is willing to expose all the lies and put them to death.  What Yeshua shows us is that “loving” someone without reaching into the depths of their deception is nothing more than pretense.  If I really care about you, I cannot let you take a road that will destroy you.  I must intervene on your behalf.  I must act to crucify your illusions.

Oh, how we fear to tread this path!  How we shudder to think that we will hurt your feelings or feel your rejection!  But that is not love.  Love does not let its adored ones walk to their unwitting funerals.  If I really love you, I enter into your world and lift you out, even if I must spend myself empty to do it.

“Preach the gospel at all times,” said St. Francis, “and when necessary, use words.”  If my life doesn’t embrace your life, if I don’t touch you with the deepest part of me, my act to save you is nothing more than empty proclamation.  I have not loved.  But when I am ready to die in order to lift you from deception, then I can say with Yeshua, “I love you.”

Topical Index: love, agápē, deception, death, Mark 10:21