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THE SINLESS FRIEND OF SINNERS #5

DEFINING "LOVE" ALL OVER AGAIN

One of our favorite stories the last couple of years — and a marvelous source of radio material — has been the book, In the Footsteps of Jesus, written by Hollywood actor Bruce Marchiano. A few years ago he played the part of Jesus in a four-hour film being shot in the heart of Africa. For this unique young actor, it became an experience in not acting; God gave him an incredible gift for sensing just how Jesus felt, the emotions, the burdens, the passion.

After it was over, he found himself involved in many "goodwill" tours on behalf of the film, and he was also motivated by just plain missionary zeal. Back in Africa again, he was slated to speak to a group of inmates at Victor Verster Prison, where Nelson Mandela had once been incarcerated. And Bruce had no idea what to say. He'd never been in prison before; he didn't know prisoners or understand their mindset. But as he sat there on the platform, waiting his turn, and praying hard, Jesus seemed to whisper to him:

"You don't need to know them, Bruce — I know them. I know every name, every struggle, every hurt, every hope, every dream. . . . I know them."

And those two words crystallized in his mind: He knows. He realized that Jesus understood these convicts: their fears, their frustrations, and even their sins.

We don't usually share such a long quotation, but let me simply read to you the core of Bruce Marchiano's testimony that day. And by all means, I urge you to purchase this wonderful book: In the Footsteps of Jesus.

But his talk that day went like this:

You think you had it rough as a kid? This Guy was born in a barn. His first bed was a feed trough. He wasn't even two years old and people were trying to kill Him. He had to hide out with His mom and dad — on the run, and just a baby. And that went on His entire life. Folks were always plotting to kill Him — eventually they did.

Did you grow up being laughed at and kicked around? Imagine Jesus hearing the laughs about His mom being pregnant before she was married, getting teased and spit at by other kids because of it.

Did you grow up without a father or mother? Divorce, death, or maybe one just walked out on you? You know, Joseph is never mentioned after Jesus is 12. Nobody knows for sure what happened to him, but most experts figure he must have died when Jesus was just a kid. Yeah, guys, Jesus knows that heartbreak. Imagine Him standing at His dad's grave. And as the eldest son, He'd have to carry on and support the family. See Him in His dad's workshop that first day, reaching for His father's tools, tears streaming down His face — and just a kid.
Ever had no place to sleep? "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head" — the words of Jesus. He even knows what it's like to have no place to live — sleeping around campfires or on people's floors.

Ever had anyone beat your face in? You guessed it — the Bible says they beat Jesus so badly you couldn't even tell He was a human being.

Friends run out on you? Jesus had a couple choice buddies named Judas and Peter.
And He even knows what it's like to be in a place like this. He knows because they locked Him up once.

Yeah, Jesus knows, guys. He knows every struggle, every heartache. And not just because He's God and God knows everything; but because when He was a man, He went through the same things you and I go through and more. He knows because He lived it. He's been there.
That's a powerful sermon right there, isn't it — and remember, this comes right from the lips of a seasoned member of Hollywood's Screen Actor's Guild. So when I repeat again this week's radio series title, THE SINLESS FRIEND OF SINNERS, these words really resonate with biblical truth. "Jesus KNOWS our every weakness; Take it to the Lord in prayer."

Marchiano had people ask him later: "Bruce, what's THE most significant thing you learned through the whole adventure? What discovery stands above the rest?" Do you know what his answer is? It's eight words long.

"He loves you. He loves you SO MUCH."

That's it. Bruce Marchiano discovered a Savior who knew absolutely everything about us, and then loved each and every person He met with an overpowering, compelling, driving love. Love pierces through on every page of this wonderful story. The tears of Jesus reveal love. His hugs show love; His stories; His miracles; His long conversations with the really bad people of His era. And of course, we have a lonely cross on a faraway hill.

When we talk about the love of Jesus, we have to almost abandon the "love" word we know, stained as it is by a lot of cheap novels and the lyrics from MTV, and imagine an entirely new genus of emotion. I mentioned an observation by Philip Yancey, where he describes the intensity of Jesus' love. It's miles beyond, light-years beyond, anything we know.

"In a nutshell," he writes, "the Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 tells the story of a God reckless with desire to get His family back."

And really, that's Jesus too. Reckless with desire. Almost frantic in His love for people like Peter and James and John and Judas and you and me.

As we consider the superhuman intensity of this love, this reaching out, how do we respond? Do we stay on our same, weary, jaded low level of usual response? "I'll think about it"? "Maybe later"? In his book, The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis addresses our half-hearted response to heaven's offer of love.

"If we consider the unblushing promises of reward," he writes, "and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea."

Can you understand this dilemma? Jesus says to us, "I love you. I want to give you Myself." And we respond: "Well, maybe You do love me. But I've got these friends right here who say they love me, and that's all I need. I've got this bottle that brings me comfort, and these TV shows that make me laugh a little bit when I'm tired, and this little vial of white powder that helps me forget how lonely I really am most of the time." And we cling to the pale forms of flawed human love; we hold onto the counterfeit, because we can't envision the glory of the genuine.

We've wondered all week how a sinless Jesus could embrace and love and fellowship with vile sinners . . . and never be stained by them. You and I are constantly knocked off course by the bad steering wheels of our friends. Why didn't the wickedness of Jesus' friends rub off on Him? Well, friend, maybe we've found the answer right here in this intense love. The raw, unmatched potency of Jesus' love simply overpowered the corrupting influence of our anemic, listless sins. Here's a quote from Yancey:

"When Jesus touched a person with leprosy, Jesus did not become soiled — the leprous became clean. When an immoral woman washed Jesus' feet, she went away forgiven and transformed. When He defied custom to enter a pagan's house, the pagan's servant was healed. . . . As Walter Wink puts it, ‘The contagion of holiness overcomes the contagion of uncleanness.'"

And you know, this can be our witnessing secret too. I mentioned on Monday the story of Pastor Bill Hybels, who goes out sailing with the most worldly guys on Lake Michigan. And Hybels himself gives a warning about their beer and sex-laced humor:

"We must follow Christ's command to love others without falling into the sin of loving or participating in the bad things they do. As James 1:27 puts it, we need to keep ourselves ‘from being polluted by the world.'" Then he adds: "We need to make certain we're the one whose influence is prevailing. Another way of putting this is that we need to be on the offense rather than the defense."

In a nutshell: Our love has to be stronger than their sin. Our holiness — which is really the holiness of Jesus inside of us — needs to overpower and subdue the corrupting influence of that person's sinful past.

You know, Jesus once sat down at a well next to a woman who'd been through a lot of "love." She probably dressed like a lady who'd already had five husbands, and was now just living with her boyfriend. And she had a juicy vocabulary, I'm sure; the kind most Christians would shy away from. She knew how to influence a man, how to bend him down to her desires. But she and this Stranger began talking, and she found out that this different kind of Man loved her too. Not like her five ex-husbands loved her, or like her current lover. He loved her for her; He seemed to see in her a purity, a kind of hidden Eve. Right there by the well, she sensed it. And for the first time, instead of her selfishness changing and bending Him, it seemed like His love was changing her.
She'd never experienced that before, but she kind of liked it.