Let's look again: is the "new birth" hard work?
We know we need to be changed from the inside out. Years of being what we are have made us set in our ways, we feel. Our problems are a part of us, through and through, whether it's lust, appetite, jealousy, or whatever has a hold on us. How can we become really different than what we are?
We can change the color of our hair, but how can we change the color of our eyes? If we were born to be short, how can we become tall? For a self-centered person to become selfless seems just as impossible. And most poignantly, for a lustful, sexually impure person (a rapist? an abuser?) to become pure in heart seems totally impossible— so say our courts of law. (That's why we try to lock them up forever.)
And here comes Jesus telling us that "except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" John 3:3). To many people, that sounds like a death knell. "I am what I am, and there's no way I can become different! If only blue-eyed people can enter heaven, I'm sunk, for I have brown eyes!"
Sit down and read all the way through John 3. You'll be surprised how Jesus' explanation of the new birth is very Good News:
1. Because of what He accomplished by His sacrifice, the Holy Spirit has become everyone's new "parents." When He impregnated the Virgin Mary to bring Jesus to birth, He impregnated the human race with a divine seed of a new life to be formed within. He is constantly planting seeds of truth in human hearts, for Christ is "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (John 1:9, KJV). Encouraging people in the new birth is "just like a mother in childbirth. I feel the same kind of pain for you until Christ's nature is formed within you," says Paul (Galatians 4:19, GNB).
2. The new birth is not you "born-ing" yourself anew (excuse me, we need that new verb!). Jesus said, "The wind blows wherever it wishes. ... It is like that with everyone who is born of the [Holy] Spirit."
3. Now, don't practice abortion on the new life that the Holy Spirit is constantly begetting within you. Stop resisting Him. When you perceive what happened on the cross, you know that there is power there to transform the heart and the life. Paul put it this way:
"I am not ashamed of the gospel [Good News] of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. ... The just shall live by faith'" (Romans 1:16,17). The same apostle told the Corinthians, "I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. ... My preaching [was] not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Corinthians 2:2-4). It's not impossible for us to understand just as clearly as the Corinthians understood!
What Turned the World Upside Down Was a Powerful Truth Buried in One Rather Obscure Word.
The terrified enemies of the gospel confessed the impact of the apostles: "These who have turned the world upside down have come here too" (Acts 1 7:6).
The word that performed this mighty feat was one that was little used in the Greco-Roman world—the Greek term agape. It meant "love." But worlds different than our common idea of "love."
It came to carry a positive spiritual wallop that altered people's minds. It separated humanity into two camps, one for, and the other against the idea. Those who were for it were galvanized into dynamic followers of Jesus, ready to lose property, go to prison, or even die a tortured death.
On the other hand, those who reacted against it quickly became cruel, bloodthirsty persecutors of those who accepted the new idea of love. No one could hear the Good News about agape and stay neutral.
The mysterious explosive in this verbal "bomb" was a radically different idea of love that the world's philosophers or ethics teachers had never taught. It was a new invention that took friend and foe alike by surprise.
It wasn't that the ancients had no idea of love; they talked about it plenty. In fact, the Greeks had three or four words for it (our modern languages have only one). But the kind of love that is in the word agape mercilessly exposed all other ideas of love as either non-love or even anti-love.
Mankind suddenly realized that what they had been calling love was actually veneered selfishness. The human psyche was stripped naked by the new revelation. If you welcomed it, you got clothed with agape yourself. You were changed from the inside out.
If it made you angry, your robes of supposed piety being ripped off turned you into a raving enemy of the new faith. Hence the persecutions. And no one could turn the clock back, for agape was an idea for which the fullness of the time had come.
When John took his pen to write his famous equation "God is love" (1 John 4:8), he had to choose between the several Greek words. The everyday one—eros—packed a powerful punch on its own. Something mysterious and powerful, eros was the source of all life. It swept like water from a broken dam over all obstacles of human will and wisdom, a tide of emotion common to all humanity. It was the source of the miracle of producing babies—deep mystery. If a mother loved her child, her love was eras—noble and pure. Likewise also the dependent love of children for their parents and the common love of friends for each other. And that mutual love of man and woman was something profound to be reckoned with.
Is God "Eros"? Asked the Ancient Pagans.
Yes, answered their philosophers, including the great Plato, because eros is stronger than human will. It makes families and friends. And it dwells in everyone by nature. Therefore it must be the spark of divinity.
For the ancients, love was pretty much what "love" is for us today: the "sweet mystery of life," the elixir that makes an otherwise intolerable existence possible to endure. Plato hoped to transform the world by a kind of love that he considered "heavenly eros." Words derived from eros today have an exclusively sexual meaning, but Plato wanted the world to climb out of that swamp by a spiritually uplifting idea, noble and inspiring. It was based on climbing up higher, getting out of the mire of mere physical sensuality, being attracted to a greater good for the soul. Very spiritual.
But John could not bring himself to write that God is eros. He upset the thinkers of his day by saying, "God is agape." And between those two ideas there stretches a gulf wider than the east is from the west. There is no Good News and no power in eros, but both are in agape.
Two Ideas of Love in Contrast.
How did agape differ so much from the common idea of love? How could the apostles' idea be such a threat to Plato's noble concept?
The answer is in several clear-cut contrasts:
1. Ordinary human love is dependent on the beauty or goodness of its object. We choose for friends those who are nice to us, who please us. We fall in love with our sexual opposite who is beautiful, happy, intelligent, and attractive, and turn away from one who is ugly, mean, ignorant, or offensive. In contrast, agape is not awakened by or dependent on beauty or goodness in its object. It stands alone, sovereign, independent. Therefore it is free to love bad people, even enemies! None of the ancients had ever dreamed of a love like this.
Thy had a story to illustrate their most sublime idea of it. Admetus, a noble, handsome young man with all the personal qualities of excellence fell sick with a disease that the oracle of the gods said would be fatal unless someone would die in his place. His friends went from one to another, "Would you be willing to die for Admetus?" "Sorry," they said, "we like him but we couldn't die for him." His parents were asked, and they said, "Oh, we love our son, but, sorry, we couldn't die for him." Finally his friends asked the beautiful girl who loved him, Alcestis. "Yes," she said, "because he is such a good man and because the world needs him so, I am willing to die for him!"
Crowed the philosophers: "This is love—someone willing to die for a good man!" But the apostles objected, that wasn't it at al I. "One will hardly die for a righteous man—though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love [agape] for us in that while we were yet sinners [enemies, verse 10] Christ died for us" (Romans 5:7, 8, RSV).
A message like that either captured your soul or made you raging angry.
2. Natural human love rests on a sense of need. It feels empty of itself, needs an object to enrich its own life. A husband loves his wife because he needs her, and a wife loves her husband for the same reason. Two friends love each other because they need each other. Each feels empty and alone without his counterpart.
Infinitely wealthy of itself, agape feels no need. The apostles said that the reason God loves us is not because He needs us, but because—well, He is agape. "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9). We are staggered by the idea of a love that "does not seek its own" (1 Corinthians 13:5). Even churches seem drawn to representing God's love as a seeking-its-own thing, a love inspired by a divine acquisitive instinct. God saw a hidden value in us, it is assumed; and He was simply making a good bargain when He "bought" us. This negates God's true love.
We come to resemble what we worship, so multitudes profess to worship such a "God" because they too are seeking a good bargain. Their religion is the soul of acquisitiveness— what they want to acquire is heaven and its rewards—and a self-centered motive is what keeps them going. When agape breaks through into this egocentric milieu, the reaction is pretty much what happened when it broke upon the world in apostolic times. Selfish hearts are transformed, and some "good" people get angry.
3. Natural human love rests on a sense of value. Many Africans still follow the bride-price system, which faithfully mirrors the more subtle basis of all our other cultures as well. The amount of the bride price is proportionate to the expense of education the girl's parents have invested in her. It used to be that a few cows sufficed for one who could barely scrawl her name; astronomical dowries were demanded for girls who have done Oxford or Cambridge.
We also are the same in principle. We pigeonhole one another. Few treat the garbage man as courteously as they would the mayor or governor. If, like water seeking its own level, "you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?" asks Jesus (Matthew 5:46, 47). "Men will praise you when you do well for yourself" (Psalm 49:18). We're all deeply selfish.
In contrast, agape is refreshingly different. Rather than being dependent on the value of its object, it creates value in its object.
Suppose I have a rough stone in my hand. I picked it up in a field. If I try to sell it, no one would give me even a nickel for it. This is not because the stone is inherently bad, but because it is so common it is worthless.
Now suppose as I hold this rough stone in my arms, that I could love it as a mother loves a baby. And suppose that my love could work like alchemy and transform it into a piece of solid gold. My fortune would be made.
This is an illustration of what agape does. Of ourselves we are worth nothing other than the dubious chemical value of our bodies' ingredients. But God's love transforms us into a value equivalent to that of His own Son: "I will make a mortal more rare than fine gold, a man more than the golden wedge of Ophir" (Isaiah 13:12).
Doubtless you have heard of a human derelict who has been transformed into a person of infinite worth. John Newton (1 725-1807) was such a one. A godless seafarer who dealt in the African slave trade, he became a drunken wretch who fell victim to the people he tried to enslave. At length agape touched his heart. He gave up his vile business and was transformed into an honored messenger of glad tidings. Millions remember him for his hymn that discloses the "fine gold" that he became:
Amazing grace! how sweet the sound
hat saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believed.
4. Natural human love thinks it must search for God. All heathen religions are based on the idea of God being as elusive as a cure for cancer. People imagined that God is playing hide-and-seek and has withdrawn Himself from human beings. Only special ones are wise or clever enough to discover where He is hiding. Millions go on long journeys to Mecca, Rome, Jerusalem, or other shrines, searching for Him. The ancient Greeks outdid all of us in building magnificent marble temples in which they felt they must seek for God.
Again, agape proves to be the opposite. It is not human beings seeking after God, but God seeking after man: "The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19: 10). The shepherd left his ninety-nine sheep that were safe and risked his life to find the one that was lost. The woman lit a candle and searched her house until she found the one lost coin. The Spirit of God searched for the heart of the prodigal son and brought him home. There is no story in all the Bible of a lost sheep that must go find his shepherd!
Paul was obsessed with this great idea: "The righteousness of faith speaks in this way, 'Do not say in your heart, "Who will ascend into heaven?"' (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, '"Who will descend into the abyss?"' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? 'The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart' (that is, the word of faith which we preach)" (Romans 10:6-8).
That "word of faith" is as closely related to agape as a typeface is to its matrix. Faith is the response of a contrite human heart to this tremendous revelation of agape; and Paul's point is that this "word is near you." It proves that God has already sought you out where you have been hiding. The Good Shepherd is always on safari looking for us.
But doesn't the Bible say that it is up to us to "seek the Lord while he may be found" (Isaiah 55:6)? Yes; but the text goes on to emphasize God's nearness, not His far-ness. The Hebrew word for seek (dharash) means "inquire for," seek in the sense of choose. Isaiah continues, "Call upon Him while He is near," indicating that the Lord is already very close to us (see also Acts 1 7:27). The problem is we have not realized how close He is! Again, this idea blew people's minds.
5. Our human love is always seeking to climb up higher. Every first grader wants to enter the second grade; a child who is six says, "I will soon be seven" No job seeker wants demotion instead of promotion. The state politician longs to get into the national game, and probably every national senator at some time dreams that he/she might make it to the White House.
Who has ever heard of a national president voluntarily resigning in order to become a village servant? Plato's idea of love could never imagine such a thing. Neither can we!
What amazed the ancient world was the sight of Someone higher than a president stepping down lower and lower, until He submitted to the torture-racked death of a criminal. In what is probably an outline of Paul's favorite message, we can trace in Philippians 2:5-8 (RSV) seven distinct downward steps that Christ took in telling us what agape is:
1. "Though he was in the form of God, [He] did not count equality with Coda thing to be grasped" (verse 6). When we get high up in politics, business, or even a church, it's our nature to worry about falling. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," goes the old saying. But the Son of God abdicated His crown voluntarily, motivated by agape.
2. He "emptied himself" (verse 7), or "made himself of no reputation" (NKJV). We humans will fight to the death for our honor or reputation. But daring deeds of valor aren't always the same as emptying oneself as Christ did, for one can give his "body to be burned" and yet lack agape (1 Corinthians 13:3). When Paul says Christ "emptied himself," he was talking about a voluntary surrender for eternity of everything held dear, something quite impossible apart from agape.
3. He took "the form of a servant," literally, a slave (verse 7). Can you imagine a more dismal life than always being forced to work without wages or thanks? Angels are said to be servants, "ministering spirits" sent to wait on us (Hebrews 1:14); if the Son of God had become like one of them, that would have been a great condescension, for He was their Commander. But He stepped still lower:
4. He was "made in the likeness of men" (verse 7)— "lower than the angels" (see Psalm 8:5). Not the sun-crowned, majestic splendor in which Genesis says Adam was created, but the degraded level of fallen man. It was the abysmal debasement common to the Greco-Roman world. No human being has ever fallen so low but that the Son of God has come far enough to reach him where he is. And once let that agape steal its way into our hearts, all lingering traces of any holier-than-thou spirit melt away before it, and we also find it possible to reach the hearts of others. We become the hearts and hands He uses to bless others.
5. "Being found in human form he humbled himself" (verse 8). In other words He was not born with the proverbial "silver spoon" in His mouth. Nor was He born in Caesar's or Herod's palace. His mother gave Him birth in a stinky cattle shed, forced to wrap her little one in rags and lay Him in a donkey's feed box. I have met only one person in Africa who said he was born in a cattle shed with the chickens and the goats! Christ became a toiling peasant. But this was not enough.
6. He "became obedient unto death" (verse 8). This pregnant phrase means something different from the suicide's mad leap in the dark. No suicide is ever "obedient unto death. He is dis-obedient, he wants to escape reality. The kind of death Christ was "obedient" to was not an escape from responsibility. It was not like Socrates drinking his hemlock. It was the living, conscious condemnation of every cell of one's being before the demands of justice. The seventh step He took in condescension makes the degree of His self-abasement clear:
7. "Even death on a cross" (verse 8). In Jesus' day, a death on the cross was the most humiliating and hopeless possible. Not only was it one of the cruelest ever invented, but it was also one of the most shameful. One so condemned was suspended naked on a cross, and frequently the mob of onlookers watched with glee the dying man's agony. Death on such an instrument of execution carried a built-in horror all its own.
To Be Crucified Meant That Heaven Cursed You.
The respected ancient writer Moses had declared that anyone who dies on a tree is "accursed by God" (Deuteronomy 21:23, RSV). And everybody believed it. If a condemned criminal was sentenced to be slain with a sword or even burned alive, he could still pray and trust that God would forgive him and look kindly on him. He could feel some support in his death.
But if the judge said, "You must die on a tree," all hope was gone. Everybody expected that God had turned His back on the wretch forever. This is why Paul says that Christ was "made a curse for us (for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree')" (Galatians 3:13). The kind of death Christ died was like that of the lost who must perish at last in hopeless despair—what Revelation calls "the second death." Of course it was a million times worse for Christ to endure than it will be for them, because His sensitivity to the suffering was infinitely greater than for any of us.
Imagine a crucified man on a cross. Crowds come to jeer at him as today we flock to a ball game. Like an old, wrecked car that children throw rocks at, he is a human write-off, abandoned to be mocked and abused in horror unspeakable. You must not express or even feel pity or sympathy for him, for if you do you show that you disagree with God's judgment of him. You are on God's side if you throw rotten eggs or tomatoes at him and curse him. So people thought.
This was the death that Jesus became "obedient" to. In His despair He cried out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46). Be quiet and reverent as you think about it. You and I are the ones who would have had to go through that if He had not taken our place.
Incidentally, this idea of agape has been dying out among many professed followers of Christ because a pagan notion has subtly infiltrated our thinking—the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul. That doctrine is really antichrist because it robs Him of His true love for the world. If there is no such thing as real death, then Christ did not really die. If He went to Paradise the day He died on the cross (as many mistakenly believe from reading a misplaced comma in Luke 23:43), then there was no true emptying of Himself, no true death on the cross, no dying the equivalent of the second death.
The doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul logically makes Christ's sacrifice a sham, a pretended stage play of enduring the wrath of God for sinners when in fact He was sustained throughout by the confidence of reward.
But when the darkness overtook Christ on Calvary, the light of His Father's face was, in fact, completely withdrawn. His cry, "Why have You forsaken Me?" was no actor's wail. Isaiah was right: "He poured out his soul unto death" (Isaiah 53:12)— the equivalent of "the second death" (Revelation 2:11).
Thus the pagan belief in man's natural immortality watered down the true meaning of agape. This began soon after the apostles' time, for Jesus warns the first of the seven symbolic churches of Revelation: "You have left your first love [agape]" (Revelation 2:4). When God's enemy saw the power packed in that idea of love, he first led the early church into apostasy on that essential point. It can be documented, step by step, the progressive abandonment of the idea of agape by the church fathers. Augustine worked out a synthesis of agape and self-centered love and called it caritas. It became the foundation of medieval Catholicism. Luther tried to restore agape to its right place, but sad to say, his followers returned to the doctrine of natural immortality, and again agape nearly died out. The world is now ripe for the resurgence of the biblical doctrine of agape.
Now We Sense the Gulf That Separates Human Love From Agape.
Unless enriched with agape, our "love" is really disguised selfishness. Even parental love can be a mere "seeking our own."
Our present epidemic of marital infidelity is evidence enough of the self-centered aspect of sexual love. Often friends' love for each other is based on egocentric motivations. In contrast, agape "does not seek its own" and "never fails" (1 Corinthians 13:5, 8).
Having said all this, one additional contrast between human love and God's love remains: Natural human love desires the reward of immortality; agape dares to relinquish it. This was what overturned all the value systems of antiquity!
God has not written an encyclopedia for us explaining agape. Instead He sent His Son to die on a cross so we can see it. Its true meaning is that it is infinite, complete, and eternal. Christ went to the grave for us, not because He deserved it, but because we did. In those last few hours as He hung there in the darkness, He drained to its dregs the cup of human woe. The bright sunshine in which He had walked while on earth was gone. All thought of reward to come fled His mind. He could not see through to the other side of the dark and awful grave that gaped before Him. God is agape, and Christ is God, and there He is—dying the death we deserve. (The fact that the Father called Him back to life the third day in no way lessens the reality of His commitment on the cross in our behalf!)
Now we come to something disturbing. It's not enough for us to say, "Fine, glad He went through that; but you mean I must learn to love with agape? Impossible!"
The Good News declares that the love we think is impossible, God says is possible. We sinful, self-centered mortals can learn to love with agape, for John said: "Love [agape] is of God; and everyone who loves [with agape] is born of God and knows God. He who does not love [with agape] does not know God, for God is love [agape]" (1 John 4:7, 8). Moses is a prime example of one who learned it.
One day the Lord gave him a test. Israel had broken their covenant by worshiping a golden calf, and He proposed to Moses that He wipe them out with a divine "H-bomb" and start from scratch with a new people— Moses' descendants. Moses got the idea that Israel's sin was too great this time to be forgiven. The temptation to take the place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as a new ethnic father was a very real one. He saw himself as facing a justifiably angry God who had had enough of Israel. It seemed vain for Moses to beg for Israel's forgiveness. So what did he do—accept the proffered honor, and let Israel go down the drain?
Moses was torn to his depths. He never cried so much in his life. Listen, as in broken sobs this mortal like ourselves tries to change God's mind:
"Oh, these people have committed a great sin, and have made for themselves a god of gold! Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—" Here Moses breaks down; he can't finish the sentence. He glimpses the horror of the loss of eternal life stretching before him if he shares Israel's fate. But he makes up his mind; he chooses to be lost with them: "But if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written" (Exodus 32:31, 32).
Moses stood the test. I can imagine the Lord throwing His arms of love around His weeping servant—He had found a man after His own heart.
Paul had that same agape in his heart, for he also wished himself accursed from Christ for the sake of his lost people (see Romans 9:1-3). Everyone who sees the cross as it truly is, and believes, finds the miracle of agape reproduced in his own heart. He discovers for himself how true it is that "the gospel [Good News] of Christ... is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16). His attention is lifted away from himself, in whom there is no salvation, to the real source of power.
Can you think how anything could be better news than agape? Look at it; "behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us" (1 John 3:1, KJV). Could anything be easier than to look?