Does love come easy? Should love come easy? No and no. It doesn’t and it shouldn’t…of course not. Right? We’re smart people; we know this. Love takes work, love is “tough”; love hurts! There’s nothing easy about it! Every good Christian knows that Jesus Christ is the epitome of love, and His whole life shows us just how hard love is going to be. We would never expect love to be effortless. We need to love like Jesus, and we are ready to do it! (Theoretically).

In reality, however, our working definition of love is often quite different. Our approach toward relationships betrays a defective understanding of what real love is. We believe that love can be hard, seem tough, and feel painful, but we operate in a way that says love should be easy, exhilarating, and pleasant. We avoid love when it requires too much work, and give up on it if it’s too difficult. We expect love to find us, rather than making any effort to go and apprehend it. When love hurts, we trade it away for a cheap substitute that you can simply “fall” into. We prefer a kind of love that springs up in a moment and makes us feel a certain measure of fleeting delight.

(I’m starting to wonder if we’ve confused love with serotonin).

Priceless love is seen in history

The Bible unveils a mysterious kind of love that seemed to be common among Christ and His Apostles, yet seems to elude modern man. It’s a kind of love so foreign to most of us that we don’t even know what to call it. We mislabel it as “loyalty, commitment, or discipline”, when it’s really none of those things. It’s more, far more. It’s real love. It’s a love so strong, it overpowers the natural instincts of self-interest, self-preservation, and pride. It’s a love so precious, it’s fought to be kept. It’s a love so great, it often gets the one who has it killed.

This is the kind of love that put Jesus on a cross and buried Stephen beneath stones. Love is the real reason that John the Baptist died as young as he did. Love is how James & Peter ended their lives. These guys loved to death, and the love they had was anything but easy, exhilarating, or pleasant. Their love hurt. Theirs was tough. If these men wouldn’t have loved, they wouldn’t have died. None of them. Certainly not like they did.

You’ll know you have real love when neither torture nor death is able to make you trade it away for a certain measure of fleeting delight. You know its real love when it gives up its own life for the sake of somebody else. These guys had love. Earnest love; costly and priceless.

Serotonin shouldn’t be getting the credit for a eulogy like theirs.

Kill the man, confirm his love

Extraordinary love wasn’t the only thing these martyred men had in common. They also had incredibly ferocious enemies. Their love for Christ was deep enough to incense those who had none. Curiously, however, the unstoppable opposition & violence of their foes became the very means by which the extent & sincerity of their love was confirmed. Practically speaking, a love that’s never challenged is a love that’s hard to see, and a love that’s unwilling to die, is a substandard love. Love comes into focus with ever-increasing clarity only as the hatred & hostility against that individual intensifies. Nothing proves the quality of love like dying because of it. Therefore, no one on earth can test the quality of your love better than your enemy can. The properties of genuine love are best revealed in the fiery furnace of animosity.

Aside of Christ, one of the best illustrations of sacrificial love that we have in Scripture, is that of the Apostle Paul. He was a polarizing man. Some loved him, but many hated him. He was harassed, persecuted, and eventually killed, yet still managed to love in spite of it all. He had love for Jesus that exposed latent hatred in others, but didn’t flinch when that hatred rose up against him. Instead, he loved them in return. He wrote, with utmost sincerity, about his personal desire to trade places with the unsaved Jews and go to hell in their stead (Ro.9:2-5). The same men who made Paul the target of their loathing became the target of Paul’s love. Sadly, this kind of love is hard to find, even among Christians.

Cheap love is priceless in our culture

The American church is full of people who will never have the chance to love like this. The reason being, they have no enemies. The love they have for Jesus isn’t deep enough (or visible enough) to incense anybody, and, as a result, no one really opposes them. They get along with everyone. Nobody actually hates them, and, consequently, no one is truly loved by them. Christians in this way, aren’t much different than the world. They go on loving whoever they like, giving their life in small increments, only to those who love them in return. They don’t polarize like Paul and they don’t enrage people like Stephen. They’re nice. All men speak well of them, and Jesus doesn’t like it.

A love so strong, it overpowers the natural instincts of self-interest, self-preservation, and pride…a love so precious, it’s fought to be kept

What would it take for us to love like the people we read about in Bibles & biographies? What do we need in order to live in a way that makes our love more than merely emotional, but visible, so that the whole world sees it, and “knows that we are Christ’s disciples”? Is love like this even possible for people like you and me, or is it only given to guys like Paul & James?

Be assured, it’s not God’s desire that love be withheld from anyone. He doesn’t have a limited supply from which He rations it out only to His favorites. Love like this is available to anybody, in great measure, but it comes at a cost. Real love is expensive. Very expensive. Love like this requires becoming the target of animosity & attack. It will mean suffering injustice, receiving opposition, & enduring persecution. And for that to happen, we’ll need the help of our enemies. We can’t do this without them. If you have no real enemies, it’s impossible to fulfill Christ’s command to love them. And if you only love Jesus secretly, you’ll never have any real enemies. This is where it all begins. Only when we’re hated by the world for our undying, undeniably visible love toward Christ will we have a chance to love like this.

Therefore: Love Jesus passionately, and love your enemies unflinchingly…

(And don’t blame serotonin for what happens next).