“If You Ain’t Lovin’, You Ain’t Givin’”

I Corinthians 13

On the night our Lord was betrayed he gave his disciples a new commandment: “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

On that same night Jesus washed his disciples’ feet and spoke of a new covenant that would be sealed with his blood. Even as he asked them to love each other in the same way that he loved them he humbled himself and took on the role of a slave. The next day his blood would literally be shed for the sins of the world.

The love he commanded them to have for one another, that love he had for them (and us), was exercised in humility, servanthood, and sacrifice. Such love was and is not a noun. It is a verb. Love isn’t a feeling. Love is an action. We don’t just feel love; we do love. And if we follow our Master’s example in doing it, such love will require humility, servanthood, and sacrifice.

The Apostle Paul made it clear in I Corinthians 12 that every Christian is gifted by the Spirit, every gift is of equal worth, and each gift is to be used fulfill in one way or another the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ. Our gifts aren’t ours to use as we please. We do not use them to achieve power or status in the church. They are not weapons we employ during church conflicts.

Paul ends chapter 12 with these words, “And I will show you a still more excellent way.” The way of love: Christlike love, sacrificial love, love exercised from a position of servanthood and humility. Love that is described in this paraphrase from verses 4-7 in The Message: “Love never gives up… cares more for others than for self… doesn’t want what it doesn’t have… doesn’t strut [or] have a swelled head… doesn’t force itself on others [and] isn’t always ‘me first’… doesn’t fly off the handle… doesn’t keep score of the sins of others… doesn’t revel when others grovel… takes pleasure in the flowering of truth… Puts up with anything… Trusts God always… Always looks for the best… Never looks back [but] keeps going to the end.”

Paul also made it clear in the preceding and succeeding verses that without this kind of love the greatest, grandest, and most exalted gift, whatever its form, is worthless, and even at its best, will one day pass away. This includes giving away all of one’s possessions and suffering martyrdom. Without love such actions amount to little more than extreme forms of grandstanding that have nothing to do with serving others or worshipping God. The focus is strictly on the giver’s need for attention and praise.

Today’s sermon is the first in a brief series dealing with stewardship, the emphasis being on financial stewardship. Today’s message is that true Christian stewardship cannot be exercised without love. Hence the sermon title that rephrases the title of a recent country-western song. That song tells us that, if we ain’t lovin’, we ain’t livin’. Today’s message from the pulpit is, if we ain’t lovin’, we ain’t givin’.

Let me try to make that clearer with the following statements: If I give $50,000 a year to the church, but don’t do so out of a spirit of loving servanthood my gift is nothing more than a good tax deduction. If I spend my life doing church work, but don’t do so because I love the Lord I have contributed nothing of eternal value. If I sing anthems or praise songs with a wonderful tenor voice, but don’t sing for the joy of serving Jesus I sing only for myself. If I go on mission trip after mission trip, but do not have Christ’s love burning in my heart for those I go to serve I’ve essentially wasted a bunch of vacation days. If I do ministry simply for a paycheck, but have no love for the Lord I serve or the people to whom I minister I am a fraud. If I approach the Lord’s Table, but do not come as a humble servant of God, who seeks to be at peace with his brothers and sisters in the Lord, the bread and wine amount to nothing more than a few extra calories.

From a strictly budgetary, bottom line, have-to-pay- the-bills perspective the reasons why you give to Grace Church don’t really matter. As I said in a recent Bible study the Lord can use even the devil’s money to do his work. From a perspective of pastoral sensitivity I dare not try to guess at your motives for giving, nor do I have the right or desire to sit in judgment of how little or how much you give. What you give, when you give it, and how you give it is between you and the Lord your God. Whether you give a set amount every week or as a response to some specific thank offering is of no consequence. What matters is the gift not the cultural implications of it.

But above all what matters are our motives and attitudes toward giving. If we ain’t lovin’, then we ain’t givin’. The truth is that none of us ever do anything out of totally pure motives. We never give any gift with absolutely no strings attached. But if we love Jesus as much as we humanly can, worship God with as much pure adoration as is humanly possible, desire as much as we can to serve the church and its mission, and faithfully though imperfectly follow the example of Jesus in seeking and saving the lost, we will more and more do what we do and give what we give from a perspective of Christlike love, humility, and servanthood. We will increasingly exercise our spiritual gifts in less self-serving ways.

Exercising Christlike love is rarely easy. It can be painful. It will sometimes require sacrifice. It can turn our priorities upside down, inside out, and sideways. And there are times when exercising Christlike love goes way beyond a short prayer and pat on the head. Previously I’ve shared with you an experience I had during my seminary intern year. One day when I was feeling especially picked on because of a sermon I had written, badly I might add, I asked a pastoral counselor who was leading our group to bail me out. He didn’t. I accused him of not being very pastoral. I’ll never forget what he said, “David, sometimes the most pastoral thing we can do is give somebody is a swift kick in the fanny.”

Being your pastor would be a lot easier if I could simply sugarcoat over the harder realities of being a Christian, if I wasn’t bound by my ordination vows to speak the truth. Such truths must always be spoken in love. Speaking them requires tact, common sense, and pastoral sensitivity.

The flipside of that is that I am not exercising the true love of Jesus if I don’t speak such Biblically rooted truths plainly. It is my God-given responsibility to preach and teach about difficult subjects: sacrificial living and giving, living lives marked by servanthood and humility, our need to confess and repent of our sins. It is my task to remind you – and myself – that we are to discern the will of God and then do it – whatever the cost. I have to keep reminding that we are to forgive seventy times seven. You need to be challenged in the areas evangelism, mission, and service.

And then there’s that biggie: financial stewardship. Not fundraising. Not charitable deductions. Not underwriting a budget. But a deep down from the heart, soul, and gut loving response to God’s grace, mercy, love, and blessings. I’ve been in ministry long enough to know that such preaching is going to step on toes and cause complaints. So be it. As your pastor it is my job to love you, sometimes with a tough love that you probably interpret as a kick in the fanny.

Over the next few Sundays I’m going to challenge you to seriously consider how much you truly love the Lord and want to serve him, to do some prayerful self-examination about how seriously you take the mission and witness of Christ’s Church. Do you love the Lord your God enough to worship him with offerings of the very best of who you are and what you have? Is being a member of Grace Presbyterian Church a matter of answering a call to Christlike servanthood?

What is more important to you, loving God with all of your being and your neighbor as yourself or maintaining traditions and guaranteeing a certain level of comfort? Are you willing to let go of your need to keep doing whatever it is that you’ve done in another time or at a different location? What matters most to you: Christ or preserving your culture be it American, Filipino, Nigerian, Cameroonian, liberal, conservative, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Presbyterian or whatever?

How much do you really love Jesus? How much do you really love your neighbor? How willing are you to give of yourself in the name of the Lord? Are you ready to be joyfully generous to God? Do you do what you do and give what you give out of a deep love of God or as a matter of duty, habit, or respectability? Are you ready to seriously consider tithing not because the pastor says so, but because you see it as a way of giving God glory, honor, and love?

Tough questions. Bothersome questions. Questions you wish the pastor would stop asking. But please remember, I only ask them because I love you. Amen.