Loving Hearts – Cold Hearts – And Lawlessness
Stylized Hearts – you know, the kind that are used on Valentine’s Day cards and stickers, are almost universally used as a symbol of “love.” Certainly when it comes to love – agape, humble, forgiving love – the heart is involved! Peter would write in his first epistle, “Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart…” (I Peter 1:22)
When Jesus spoke of forgiveness – in the section of Matthew 18 regarding how the church should forgive, Jesus said this “My Heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.” (Matthew 18:35)
The word “compassion” often conveys the idea of a warmth towards another. The word “passion” turns that temperature up quite a bit.
When the body is warm because of high heat either from exercise or from a fever, blood vessels naturally thin to release heat. When Jesus described our stewardship life and the way that we give, He described God loving people who give the way that he gives: “Each one must do just as he has proposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (II Corinthians 9:7)
These are all-God connecting love with the heart. But Jesus also described love growing cold. “Because of lawlessness increasing, the love of most will grow cold.” (Matthew 24:12)
During most forms of open-heart surgery, the heart is chilled. This happens through a special machine which cools down the blood, and it is also sometimes chilled by cold water on the heart. The heart has to stop beating for many types of heart surgery to take place. Obviously this is because the heart pumps a lot of blood! When the heart is chilled, it eventually stops pumping while machines take over. Imagine that, a cold heart, not pumping blood, not giving away its warmth.
Because the Law of God is essentially about loving God and loving our neighbor, when people stop doing that, it will become much harder to love others – who don’t even act civilly; which is what love motivated by the Law is. Legalistic love is better than no love, and when even that rigid love is absent the soft, warm, living love will fade away. I am grieved to say that I have noticed this in our world.
The first verse I shared from Peter about “fervently loving one another from the heart…” Is followed by this vibrant verse: “For you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.” (I Peter 1:23) The Word is “imperishable” and it is the Word that gives us life. May that living and abiding Word of the Good News of God’s love for us, keep our heart pumping with God’s compassionate love in Christ.
Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ may Your passionate love for us warm our hearts so that we might love. May we be patient and kind, may we not be proud or rude, may we not seek our own. May we keep no record of wrongs. May we not delight in evil, but rejoice in the truth. May we always protect, always trust, always hope, and always persevere. By Your love working through us, may we never fail. In Your loving name we pray. Amen.