The Gospel Accompanied by Love

God is love, but we must show people that God loves them by the way we love them. But don’t people instinctively know about God’s love? Don’t they just know that God loves them, and that God’s love has made a way of salvation for them? No! That is almost counter to our natural logic. Human logic tells us that God is angry with us and that we have to figure out how to save ourselves.

Think about it: Does the poor mother in India who throws her baby into the Ganges River to be eaten by crocs as a sacrifice for sin - does she think God is love? Does the African native bowing before his carved gods of wood or stone and living in constant fear of the fetishes - does he think God is love? How about the people in our community who never come to church, who never read the Bible? They’ll never know about God’s love unless we tell them, or, even more so, unless we show them.

God’s redemptive love is declared in the Scriptures. It was demonstrated on the cross of Calvary. It is displayed in the body of Christ – in us.

Thus, when we display love, 1st John 4:12 says, “His love has been perfected in us.” The word, “perfected,” does not mean we make love perfect, or that we love anywhere near perfectly. It means we complete it. It’s really is quite similar to the idea in John 14:12, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. “

What does that mean? Greater than his miracles? Greater than His work of redemption on the cross? NO! But this refers to Jesus’ mission in Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

How can we do greater works in this mission?
It is because Jesus could only be in one place at a time while He was on earth, and He was only on earth for a limit of 3 years. But we collectively can be everywhere till Jesus comes again. Jesus provided the means of salvation by dying on the cross. We provide the method through our witness. We evangelize by proclaiming the Gospel.

But what is the Gospel? It is the message of love. John 3:16 stated, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Christ left us here with the task of seeking and saving the lost, and we do that by proclaiming His redemptive message of love. We call it the Gospel. When we do this, Christ’s love “has been perfected in us.”

But, because the Gospel message is the message of love, unless we love the lost, our witness will be in vain – it will be useless. No one will believe us. Our acts of love have to back up our message of love.

Aristotle said the three qualities of a successful communicator were these:
1. Ethos – the ethical. You will lose credibility if your integrity is questionable

2. Pathos – that’s sympathy, or empathy. Aristotle says that golden oratory without a caring heart is a big ZERO. That’s Biblical you know. 1st Corinthians 13:1 says: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.” Or as Chuck Swindall has said: “People don’t care how much you we know until they know how much we care.”

3. Logia (the Logos – the word). You must have something to say.

Our message is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But the message is dependent on the first two, the ethos and the pathos. In other words, our lifestyle always precedes our message. Or, saying it another way, our message is built upon our life.

Do you understand this? I hear a lot of people say their life is their testimony. But that can only ever be partly true. A testimony has to have something to say –the logia - or it’s incomplete. But no one will listen to your message unless your life backs up your message. And for a redemptive message of love like the Gospel, your life must be a life of loving.