Fans! Over the Top with Radical Love
We are passionate about…Christ’s radical love.
Radical surgery goes after the problem with every tool possible. It is radical because the problem or threat is so great that it is time to get over being timid. There are no half measures that will do. This is not an incremental approach. It’s all or nothing.
Christ’s radical love is an “all in” kind of love. There is nothing halfway or timid about it. Here’s what Paul writes in Romans:
“…at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8 NIV)
Christ’s death reveals his radical love. It is a love that isn’t focused on the easy to love, but it reaches the “powerless…ungodly…sinners.” It isn’t a love that finds a particular group to love it is love that reaches out to all. Paul wrote “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) “All” are the target for this love. This isn’t love that shows up in a hug or kind words but in a broken body and shed blood. That is radical!
What does radical love do? It meets each of us in our sin, guilt and shame…beckoning us to come to the cross with Christ who has taken everyone’s sin, guilt and shame there ahead of us. At the cross we are united with him and in his resurrection we are freed from sin and death…no longer to be slaves to it. It is a radical surgery.
Again we read Paul:
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:4-11 NIV)
This is radical love given for you. It is love that removes the problem and the threat so radically that we come out of it anew…a new life and a new identity. “…count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
We are passionate about Christ’s radical love because it has changed us.
Pastor Scott Hackler
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April 1st, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Wow! We have finished the ‘Radical Love’ message series and it’s about time I stopped to think about it. There are so many good points in Pastor Scott’s overview, but a couple of my favorites are:
“What does radical love do? It meets each of us in our sin, guilt and shame…” and “This is radical love given for you….we come out of it anew…”
For me, thinking about these points and how they apply in my life sum up all the Sunday topics. Radical love is GRACE because I am loved even in my sin, guilt and shame though I don’t deserve it by a long shot. (Grace is one of my favorite topics). Radical love means BEING CHOSEN and I know this is true because I really didn’t choose to be a child of God. In fact, there was a time in my life when I chose to cut myself loose from God. But God loved me even when I didn’t love Him and pretended I could hide from Him, or at least ignore Him. When I was at my lowest, and definitely not a very lovable human being, He picked me up and led me back to Him, and fellowship with His people, and another chance to become who He made me to be (I’ll be working on that forever, of course.) I know He was waiting for me all the time! Radical love means YOU ARE SAFE and although I still have fear a lot of the time, I can look over my life and say with absolute certainty that God keeps me safe. He took care of me, saved me, protected me, and provided for me when I could not do it for myself and could not see any way in the world I would be OK. And radical love is THE GLORY OF GOD because how can I fail to worship, praise and be totally in awe of a God who can love me so much, in such a radical, over-the-top way?
As I prepare to attend Maundy Thursday service, I am thinking about tomorrow—when God as Jesus displays His radical love for us all with the ultimate sacrifice, His crucifixion and death. How much love is that? It is more than I can imagine, but somehow not more than I can experience receiving. Thanks be to God!