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Distorted Motivation
The love of Christ controls me (2 Corinthians 5:14).
One
day when my granddaughter, Hannah, was eleven years old she came
running to Melanie, obviously upset. Here’s the conversation:
Hannah: Grandmommy, Jeremy just choked me!
Melanie: He choked you?
Hannah: Yes, look at the red mark on my neck!
Melanie: Go tell Jeremy to come here.
Melanie: Jeremy, did you choke Hannah?
Jeremy: Shakes his head yes with a guilty expression on his face.
Melanie: Jeremy, you can't choke your sister.
Jeremy: I can't go to jail until I'm thirteen.
Melanie:
Jeremy, nobody has said anything about going to jail. You don't choke
your sister because you love her! Do you love Hannah?
Jeremy: Nods his head yes again.
Melanie: Do you think there's anything you want to tell her?
Jeremy: I'm sorry.
Melanie: That's a good idea.
Jeremy goes into the other room and apologizes.
Yes,
those are my daughter's children! Jeremy really is a kind boy and that
behavior was untypical of his normal attitude. I'll admit though that
his train seriously jumped the track with that incident.
It's
noteworthy that the first response that popped into his seven-year-old
mind was about the law and jail. The little legalist takes after his
Dad's side of the family. I’m joking, of course, but the issue here is
that it is the bent of the flesh to think in legalistic terms. Would it
be wrong to do this or that? Would I be punished for doing it?
It’s
not just Jeremy who missed the point. We all miss it at times. Our
actions aren’t about right versus wrong or about punishment. The
catalyst for our lives is to be love. When our lifestyle is grounded in
our union with Triune Love, we live from that benchmark, not a set of
rules that come with a corresponding set of rewards and punishment. We
act lovingly because Love is our DNA. In Him we live (and love) and move
and exist.
Love relocates the motivation for our behavior out of
the realm of duty and into the realm of desire. We honor Christ in our
actions because we want to, not because we have to. So many people have
been abused by a religion that has taught them that they must behave in
certain ways so that they’ve never been free to live a godly lifestyle.
Instead, they have always been obligated to live a certain way.
Your
Father’s love for you will remain the same regardless of what you do or
don’t do. As long as we think that our behavior has anything to do with
how He feels about us, we will never be able to rest in His love. We
will always find ourselves focusing on what we’re doing, wondering if it
is good enough to stay in His good favor.
The wonderful truth
about His grace is that God doesn’t love you because of how good you
are. He loves you because of how good He is. Your behavior may fluctuate
but God’s love for you does not. His love for you will never be any
greater or any less than it is at this very moment. Your Father loves
you as He loves His own Son. In fact, you stand in a Circle of Love
among the Members of the Trinity and the great Three-In-One embrace you
as the Father, Son and Spirit embrace each other in an eternal love that
will forever be steadfast and unchangeable.
The Apostle Paul
said that it was the love of Christ that controlled his actions. It is
important to note that he didn’t say it was his love for Christ but
instead it was Christ’s love for him that regulated how he behaved. The
emphasis in the modern church is about how we should love Him, but the
emphasis of the New Testament is on His love for us. To reverse the two
is to find ourselves in a place where we’re filled with constant
spiritual fatigue from our efforts to love Him more.
Our
lifestyles are to be motivated by His love for us, but how are we to
grow in our love for Him? The answer is to grow in the knowledge of His
love for us. As you grow in your capacity to receive His love, you will
discover that love flowing out in your lifestyle in an unprecedented
way.
Too many times when we misbehave, we confess and ask God
to help us to love Him more, but as we grow in the knowledge of His love
for us loving Him in a greater way will be the natural outgrowth. "We
love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). When we know how much we
are truly loved regardless of whether our behavior is right or wrong,
our motivation changes so that we become motivated internally, not
externally.
So, when your own behavior jumps track at times,
don't look upward to an imaginary Judge of the Universe who stands ready
to send you to jail. Look into the face of Pure Love and you'll find
yourself wanting to behave well on the basis of His loving attitude and
actions toward you.
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