When Love Died

© Juda Myers

Romanian pastor, Josef Tson said to his persecutor , “Your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying. ”

www.glogster.com
While we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us.

It's the month when love notes, flowers and all kinds of expressions of love are flaunted. Some are out of deep love, while others are out of commercial obligation. If you have never known the loss or lack of love you are truly blessed. For so many, this time is one of deep sorrow and longing for love.

What is it we are truly looking for? Is it someone to tell us wonderful things, buy us wonderful things, and do wonderful things for us? What is it to you? There is research showing we have love languages and our hopes and thoughts on love vary greatly. But I dare say that we are all looking for the same thing: an unconditional love and I believe it is even more.

If we've been believers in Christ for any length of time we surely know or have read the “love” chapter of the bible. Quick review:

1Cor 13:1-7

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.

Love never fails.

Hmmm. It never fails? But how often has loved vanished from relationships, we ask. I asked the same question. I remember telling Jesus. “Your love couldn't even convince everyone, how can mine?” But I wasn't seeing it through His eyes and heart.

It is not my love that “never fails !”

Patient means long suffering. Jesus' love is long suffering. When we love like Jesus it never fails to purify us and change us to pure love. We are actually promised to suffer with Him because the world will hate us as they have hated Him. So He is not talking about love never failing to get love, but instead, it never fails to produce in us a love like Jesus '. Something always changes in us when we are loving in and through His love .

When the world's love dies it produces nothing. It destroys everything in its path. If you've ever heard the words, “My love for you has died.” or “I don't love you anymore” you know how devastating that is. Some people have even committed suicide because the pain was too much for them.

But there is a love that died to save the world. Yes Jesus is love in that he came to pay the penalty of sin for the world. He gave His own life that we could live, love and be loved for all eternity. I know that I wanted desperately to be loved in a way that someone would die for me. When I learned that Jesus did this for me, I couldn't resist Him. I surrendered all my life and love to Him.

When Love died for me I wasn't even born! When Love died for me my sins were all ahead of me.

When Love died He endured pain beyond my comprehension and although He asked the Father for another way, He endured for me when there was no other way. He didn't back out for His convenience or pleasure. When Love died He saw the joy set before Him of us loving Him in return. That kind of love never fails. It will endure unto death for all eternity!

My mother showed me that unconditional love in giving birth to an 8 men, rape conceived child. How hard it must have been for her to have her own mother not believe her. How hard it must have been to live with the stigma of an unwed pregnancy in 1956-57. How hard it must have been to endure 36 hours of labor to deliver me. How hard it must have been to disassociate the act with the baby she carried. I was born on Valentine's Day.

How hard was it to disassociate the sin in us from the potential Jesus knew was in us? Love died to self for the sake of another.

When love dies (ceases to be) in the world it is never real love. When love dies for another, that's what heaven is made of. That's what flows through royalty, seated on the throne of the Most High.

Martyrs are not ones who kill themselves, so as to kill as many others with them, hoping to get something fleshly in heaven as a reward. A true martyr has the love of others over him/herself. That is how Richard & Sabina Wurmbrand, founders of Voice of the Martyrs ( www.persecution.com ) knew the love of Christ that brings peace beyond understanding. They knew how to love their enemy through Christ, an impossible task in the natural. While their bodies suffered intense pain, their spirit grew stronger with every moment they trusted in Christ's love to sustain them.

Love never failed!

I was reading an editorial in Mission Frontiers Magazine (www.missionfrontiers.org) for Jan-Feb and a very special man was mentioned.

Josef Tson, a Romanian pastor was tortured but never broken. His interrogator/torturer said to him , “You're going to be shot, but first I want you to be tortured so you will curse all that you hold sacred and holy.” The enemy (principalities of darkness, Ephesians 6) wants us to give up on love. He wants us to lose truth and be blinded by the flesh.

But Tson responded as we all should . “What you offer me is spiritual suicide. I would much rather accept a physical death. To tell you the truth, I don't see any reasons to save my own life. Go on shoot me.” Tson said the man was indescribably furious because his plan to “break” him had failed.

Tson said to the persecutor, “Your supreme weapon is killing.

My supreme weapon is dying.”

Tson said to the persecutor, “Your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying.”

He continued, “Here's how it works. You know that my sermons on tape have spread all over the country. If you kill me, those sermons will be sprinkled with my blood. Everyone will know I died for my preaching. And everyone who has a tape will pick it up and say,' I'd better listen again to what this man preached, because he really meant it: he sealed it with his life.' So sir my sermons will speak 10 times louder than before. I will actually rejoice in this supreme victory if you kill me.”

Tson also said he came to realize that “ the greatest sin is the desire to survive .”

When love is willing to die, we know that it is of our Lord and Savior for He was our supreme example. His love never fails.

Jim Elliot was killed by the Waodani people in an attempt to show them the love of Christ . That love eventually won the people.

Jim said , “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Not satisfied by the sweet talk of the world. Taste the love of Jesus.

When true love dies, the world lives!