Love is THE answer! (Could've had a V8!)

In a visit to Barnes & Noble last week, I picked up a heavy dictionary-style book filled with hundreds of quotes and book and essay passages from British Christian writer C.S. Lewis. Here is one that, when I saw it, I remembered is printed on a card and held up by a magnet on my neighbor’s refrigerator door:

“There are three kinds of people in the world.

“The first class is of those who live simply for their own sake and pleasure, regarding Man and Nature as so much raw material to be cut up into whatever shape may serve them.

“In the second class are those who acknowledge some other claim upon them—the will of God, the categorical imperative, or the good of society—and honestly try to pursue their own interests no further than this claim will allow. They try to surrender to the higher claim as much as it demands, like men paying a tax, but hope, like other taxpayers, that what is left over will be enough for them to live on. Their life is divided, like a soldier’s or a schoolboy’s life, into time ‘on parade’ and ‘off parade,’ ‘in school’ and ‘out of school.’

“But the third class is of those who can say like St Paul that for them ‘to live is Christ.’ These people have got rid of the tiresome business of adjusting the rival claims of Self and God by the simple expedient of rejecting the claims of Self altogether. The old egoistic will has been turned round, reconditioned, and made into a new thing. The will of Christ no longer limits theirs; it is theirs. All their time, in belonging to Him, belongs also to them, for they are His.

“And because there are three classes, any merely twofold division of the world into good and bad is disastrous. It overlooks the fact that the members of the second class (to which most of us belong) are always and necessarily unhappy. The tax which moral conscience levies on our desires does not in fact leave us enough to live on. As long as we are in this class we must either feel guilt because we have not paid the tax or penury because we have.

"The Christian doctrine that there is no ‘salvation’ by works done to the moral law is a fact of daily experience. Back or on we must go. But there is no going on simply by our own efforts. If the new Self, the new Will, does not come at His own good pleasure to be born in us, we cannot produce Him synthetically.

“The price of Christ is something, in a way, much easier than moral effort—it is to want Him. It is true that the wanting itself would be beyond our power but for one fact. The world is so built that, to help us desert our own satisfactions, they desert us. War and trouble and finally old age take from us one by one all those things that the natural Self hoped for at its setting out. Begging is our only wisdom, and want in the end makes it easier for us to be beggars. Even on those terms the Mercy will receive us.”

*****

A vital piece of advice from my pastor that I posted on January 23 is, “If you take Romans 12, Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3, you can find in those three chapters at least one if not a half-dozen answers for every question you’re asking yourself. Every problem you face, you’ll find the beginning--if not the complete--set of instructions for you to follow.

“Those chapters will give you specific things to do and you’ll discover in them the answers for every situation. You know how I know that? For 50 years I’ve been reading those passages for that reason. I’m giving you a quick shortcut!

"I’m telling you about all this because I’ve already located these passages and found them to be a great source of instruction. You’re getting my ability to help you out a little bit.”

*****

Here is the same advice from a 2012 blog post, entitled “Being a living epistle”:

“Many years ago I discovered that when I was in need of guidance and instruction about what to do in areas of life, I could sit down and read Romans 12, Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3 and find specific instructions that were specific to the point and to the issue I was dealing with,” says Jordan.

“Romans 12 is always enough. I can’t think of an issue that I’ve faced in my memory that I didn’t find the clear instructions about attitudes and actions that I should take in this specific arena that I didn’t find in Romans 12.

“Romans 12 is Paul’s gathering together of the issue of, ‘Here’s the description of what the impact of God’s grace is designed to look like in the lives of Believers,’ and if you wanted to have a profile of what it is that the ministry of grace is seeking to produce in the lives of people . . . not just in doctrinal statements but what is it supposed to look like, it’s in Romans 12.

“Romans 12:12 (‘Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer’) is really, in a lot of ways, one of those encapsulized statements, right in the middle of a passage, that sort of gathers together a description of the Christian life.

“The details of your service for Christ don’t really begin until you come to Chapter 12. It’s the idea of, ‘Okay, let’s get busy being who we are in the details of life.’

“Verse 12 is in the context of how we relate to other Believers. Verse 9 says, ‘Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.’ In other words, the focus in our relationship with others is going to be on love. Let love be the real thing. Don’t ‘diss’ somebody when it comes to love. Be genuine.

*****

“I John 4 is very clear: ‘If God so loved us we ought to love one another.’ Your love for others HAS to be based upon an understanding of God’s love for you. The reason the world can never love their fellow man . . . you see the world thinks if they can get rid of the differences between people you can get rid of conflicts. Consequently, you have an egalitarian society where everything’s equal. We call it ‘multi-culturalism’ and all that kind of stuff.

“The only way you get rid of conflict is to get rid of sin. The only way you deal with the sin issue is the Cross. The world thinks the Cross is foolishness, so they reject the only answer that’s really there.

“That’s why I’ve said to you for years that you can’t abandon the world that you live in. If you want to have some impact and influence in the culture you live in, go out and preach the gospel, the truth of God’s grace, get them saved and then they’ll know and understand how to love people. Otherwise they never will.

“Abhorring evil and cleaving to that which is good is essential to love. Love doesn’t mean you just think everybody and everything’s the same. Love takes divine viewpoint and says, ‘This is good and that’s evil.’ God told Israel, ‘Woe to them that call good evil and evil good.’

“You come to verse 12 and you’ve got this dominant theme now in love just kind of echoing in your mind when you get there. That’s why it’s essential, by the way, that you go back to verse 2 and ‘be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’

“Verse 12, under that banner of love, Paul says, ‘Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer.’ So while I’m serving my brother and brethren, while I’m not being slothful in business, my attitude in it is I’m going to be rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation and I’m going to be instant in prayer.

“I’m going to be continually, constantly in prayer, all for the sake of loving others, loving our enemies as we ought. This is how Christ is designed to become visible and more real, and frankly more convincing to those who are about us. His life becomes a tangible reality.

*****

“II Corinthians talks about that living epistle. The epistle of Christ written in your heart and that life of Christ living out through you.

“You see, grace isn’t just a theology, and what he’s saying here is, ‘This is the way you think through . . . that renewed mind thinks through how to deal with the issues of life.’

“Romans 5 says, ‘And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
[4] And patience, experience; and experience, hope:
[5] And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.’

“Our joy, hope, patience--they’re not found in freedom from trouble; they’re found in the midst of the difficulties.

“Tribulation works patience. So the tribulation has done its work. It’s taught you that there’s no other place to go but the truth of God’s Word. Patience is something that sustains you; keeps you there.

“Paul doesn’t just tolerate tribulation; he says, 'God, takes this tribulation and makes it serve you.' First, you’re rejoicing in hope. It’s important to understand what the hope is. The verse is telling you your hope is based in hope. Hope is the rock in which joy is rooted. It’s the soil out of which the rejoicing comes. The ground of our hope and the goal of our hope are all in Christ.”