The Love Connection

My actual name is not Jesus, but His Spirit lives within me – and in everyone who has devoted themselves to Him.

Out of an act of Love, He gave us His Spirit so that we can love like He loves.

Jesus’ most beloved apostle, who is also named John, said it like this: “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19 [ESV])

And today is one of those days to remember how deeply He loves us and how far His love reached to save us.

Jesus was willing to make a connection.

 

Fully Human

That same John who wrote about love also taught us that Jesus, who is also known as “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14 [ESV])

That means that Jesus became human.

Yes, God became a man and became subject to this raggedy human experience – the ups, the downs, the joys, the pains, the haters.

Who would sign up for this when you don’t have to be bothered?

But let me tell you that He was so committed to connecting with us, really Re-connecting with us, that He took on every aspect of the human experience.

One of the First-Century church leaders said this in a letter to a local congregation: “For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God. . . [Hebrews 2:17 (NIV)]

• What’s the most important word in this verse?
  • Merciful:
    • Jesus is merciful with us because He’s become one of us.
    • Now Jesus was already merciful because He’s God.
      • And mercy is one of God’s attributes.
    • However, He wanted to demonstrate to us how committed He was
      • so that He knows that we know that He knows what it’s like to be human.

 

The Emotional Pain of Jesus

And when look at how one of His biographers characterized the extent of the suffering He endured—both physically and emotionally—as He was tortured by Roman capital punishment, we see how deeply and intimately He was connected to the human experience.

The apostle Matthew documents a signature moment in His suffering: “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [Matthew 27:46 (ESV)]

• Bible scholars have debated the significance of this statement, as at face value, it seems like Jesus is confused.
  • Isn’t He God?
  • Has He actually been abandoned by the Father?
  • Is Jesus regretting His decision?
  • Has He lost His divinity?
• Well two things:
  • One: It was prophesied hundreds of years before this that the Messiah who is Jesus, would say these very words. So, in saying this, He’s affirming that He’s the Messiah.
  • Two: The question contains one of the music human words anyone could say: The word, “why”
• “Why” is deeply human.
  • It’s deeply human because it’s not being asked as part of a scientific study.
  • Jesus is not looking for information.
  • It’s an expression of emotion.
  • Jesus in this moment is a human being who’s trying to come to terms with his own pain.
  • When human beings ask “Why” in that context, they aren’t looking for answers,

 

• • • They’re looking for comfort.
    • They’re looking for empathy.
    • They’re looking for a connection—to another person.
• Jesus feels abandoned.
  • And some would say, “And that’s because the Father really did have to leave Him. Because Jesus was bearing the sins of the world and God cannot bear to look at sin, so for those few moments, the Father had to look away from Jesus.”
    • I understand why people say that, but that’s not it: It’s not God who can’t handle the presence of sinful people. It’s sinful people (untouched by His mercy and grace) who are undone in the presence of a holy God.
• The Father did not abandon Jesus.
  • Then what was Jesus crying about?
    • Because it felt that way.
    • He felt abandoned.
      • And His question is the emotional expression of the pain that comes from abandonment, but also the isolation of being in pain—alone.

Jesus Identifies with us at an Emotional Level

Which is what all people experience at some point in their human journeys.

If Jesus was going to human, He had to experience that.

Which is why we get this statement in the first century letter to the Hebrews:

• For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15 [ESV])
  • The word “sympathize” means sympathy compassion, pity – which speak to an emotional connection Jesus has with us.
    • Which Jesus would already have for us, as mercy is one of the attributes of God
    • But as a human, He can identify with us because He knows our pain from experience.

 

• • • When He sees you hurting, Jesus can go, I remember feeling that pain.

So out of that identification, He invites us to connect, for in the very next statement, the writer of Hebrews continues:

• Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16 [ESV])
  • Jesus invites us to draw near to Him when we are in pain—for healing, but also because he identifies with us emotionally
    • Jesus was subject to disconnection.
    • And when He was crying out the Father on the cross, He was basically saying, “I’m struggling, and I need to connect.”

And because Jesus knew He needed to connect with people during the ups and downs of His human journey, He is intimately aware of our need to do the same over the course of our human journeys:

We Connect with Each Other at an Emotional Level

• James, the brother of Jesus, in his letter to a local church, writes this:
  • Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. (James 5:16 [ESV])
    • Here James speaks of the power of sharing our spiritual struggles with each other.
    • And the healing that comes from sharing our pain with other people who out of their intimate knowledge of pain—and of Jesus’ mercy and of Jesus’ grace—they pray for us and we experience healing.
      • Now connecting with other people in intimate settings is not just about sharing our pains, but also about sharing our joys.
        • As the Apostle Paul writes to the Roman church:

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15 [ESV])

We need human connection for our highest moments just as much as we need human connection for our lowest moments.

The Reality of Sin

Now to experience the fullness of that connection, we’ve got to unpack a word we just read from James.

Let me read his words again:

• Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. (James 5:16 [ESV])
  • James talks about confessing our sins.
  • Now don’t be intimidated by the word sin.
  • The sins we commit are just symptoms of being broken.
  • And if you live for even just a little while, you can tell that human beings are just broke.
    • That’s why there’s so much pain in the world.
    • That’s why people get abandoned, abused, neglected, taken advantage of
    • And unfortunately, the enemy of our souls—the devil—he doesn’t play fair.
      • He will start the drama when we’re young—when we’re too young to even know what happened to us or why it’s happening.
      • And then as we suffer from the pain of this, we inflict pain on others.
• Sin is the fruit of brokenness

The Gospel Message

• But there’s an answer to this brokenness which is why we’re celebrating today.

Now that answer is a little complicated on the front end of it.

Because if you believe that Jesus is who He says He is and that the Bible is true, then you know that there’s good news about your spiritual life and that there’s bad news about your spiritual life.

Bad news first.

• And I’ve already started sharing it: We are born criminals, participating in crimes worthy of death; we are guilty of high treason, enemies of the state,
• Well you might ask “how is this possible”?
• Because by state I mean a kingdom ruled by Jesus Himself.
  • Jesus created heaven and earth;

 

• • everything that is made was made By him and for Him.
  • That means that he gets to create the rules;
    • He defines what good is;
    • He is the essence of goodness Himself.
    • He created us to live by that goodness.
• Unfortunately, our original Daddy and Mamma, Adam and Eve, broke God’s law in the worst way
  • —They thought they could be their own gods and told the true God they didn’t need Him.
  • Well that didn’t go over so well.

 

• • • Not only did they lose their citizenship in the happiest place on earth—the kingdom of God, not the magic Kingdom
    • —but they also experienced something they had never encountered before and were never supposed to: death.
• That doesn’t mean they stopped living biologically—although that would eventually happen.

 

• • God’s definition of death is different.

 

• • • What He means by death is separation from Him.
    • Death is when His Holy Spirit leaves us and we attempt to make sense of the world though the creation instead of through the Creator.

 

• • • • Death alters our spiritual DNA so that our nature rebels against God.

 

• • • • What’s worse is that this fallen state is genetically transferable.

 

• • • • • So every person born possesses the sin nature.

 

Sure, we still have a conscience, so that we can recognize the need to do good–and even pursue it.

 

There are plenty of examples of people who do really good things, some of whom don’t even believe in God.

• • • • The problem is that our best efforts to do good still fall short of God’s holy standard.

 

• • • • • One day we will all be judged by God Himself.
        • He’s going to hold us accountable for His standard of righteousness, not ours.

But here’s the good news:

• Jesus, maker of heaven and earth, ruler of the universe and God Himself, became one of us, a human—like we talked about.
• While He was still God, His humanity made it possible for Him to receive punishment on our behalf.
  • He lived a perfectly righteous life, but was capitally punished on a cross, dying like the criminals we were.
  • The power of this act is that because He was innocent, He was eventually resurrected because His goodness demanded that He come back to life.
  • In essence, He paid for our sins and then lived to tell about it.
• And His message is what I’m telling you.
  • Jesus became a new Adam.
    • The first Adam left us an inheritance of death.
    • Jesus, the final Adam, gave us an inheritance of life.
    • Through Jesus, we can be born again. Jesus puts His DNA in us.
    • The Jesus in us gives us the power to fulfill God’s standard of goodness.
    • But this is just the beginning.

 

• • • • Not only does Jesus restore our natures, but He restores our citizenship in His kingdom.
      • To follow Jesus means that you make life in His Kingdom and His standards of goodness your top priority.