Inconvenient, Uncomfortable, Costly: the Price of Love

Last summer we met a couple that fell in love with their first foster child over 20 years ago. After four years, they were told that he was going back to his biological parents. Their hearts were so broken they said, “Never again. We can never do this again.” Real love always includes the possibility of heartbreak. C.S. Lewis wrote that the only alternative to the possibility of heartbreak is to make your heart unbreakable. “Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable” (The Four Loves).

Grief is the cost of love when the relationship comes to an end. There is also a cost while the relationship is alive. Real love is always inconvenient, uncomfortable, and costly. Those foster parents, thankfully, did decide they could do it again a few years later. They had at least five foster children running around their house and yard. You can be sure that their decision to love children in need was inconvenient to their own agenda. Free time? Travel? Watching TV? Going out with friends? Forget it.

Wait, isn’t love about warm feelings between friends, or falling in love with your soulmate? Those are powerful things, but they are not real love. People often enter a marriage with public vows of faithfulness to death, but what they really meant was “I’ll stay as long as it’s convenient, comfortable, and doesn’t cost me too much.” People often think of love as the thing that will fulfill them. When the feelings aren’t there, they walk out. Romance and then bitter break-ups. That is not real love. What is real love?

1 John defines love for us: “We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us” (1 John 3:16). We all recognize and respect the heroic sacrifices that people make, like a soldier dying for a soldier, or a husband for a wife. But the sacrifice that Jesus makes is not an equal for an equal. This is a king dying for a peasant. The difference is greater, actually. This is God dying for humans. And not for good humans. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). John says that since Jesus has shown us what true love is, “we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1 John 3:16). Real love is giving up your life for others. Therefore real love is by definition uncomfortable, inconvenient, and costly. Real love is not about what fulfills me. But in the end, it is the most truly fulfilling thing in the world. In fact it is the only truly fulfilling thing in the world.

In 2018 French police officer Arnaud Beltrame offered to take the place of a hostage held by a terrorist in a grocery store. When Beltrame was killed, everyone recognized his heroism. His superiors said he went “beyond duty,” but he did not go beyond the love of his true superior. Beltrame was a Christian.

Another famous example of a person who made the ultimate sacrifice of love is the Belgian priest Father Damien. I first learned of him as Damien the Leper, a name he earned by volunteering to serve those who lived at the leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molekai. He knew when he moved there that he would contract the disease himself. He was willing to pay the price of love.

John says we should give our lives for one another, and there are people who literally do this. But the example John gives involves nothing more than getting out your wallet. “If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?” (1 John 3:17). Love is shown across the spectrum – from giving a few dollars to giving your life. Either way, it’s always inconvenient, uncomfortable, and costly. Love can cost you $100, a sleepless night, years of worry, or love can cost you your life.

If that’s what love is, why do it? Why not just choose comfort and convenience? Secular people sometimes say it just creates a better life overall. That is true, but selfish people are not motivated to change their attitude by considering what will be better for other people. A better reason for practicing real love is recognizing that this kind of love is in God’s character. “God is love,” 1 John tells us. When we love, we are imitating God. And becoming like Christ, the Son of God, is our destiny. John just said that we are children of God now, but in the future “what we will be has not yet been made known.” He continues, “But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” This confidence about our future destiny motivates change and growth in us in the present: “All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” (1 John 3:2-3). The earlier quote from C.S. Lewis goes on to say that the only alternative to love and its consequences is damnation – it is to become cold, hard, angry, alone. We are on our way to Christ-likeness or the opposite.

The selfish person treats others as valuable for their own personal fulfillment. But in doing so they miss the true fulfillment, the fulfillment of giving oneself for others in love. Who was more fulfilled, Arnaud Beltrame or the terrorist? Cain the murderer or Abel the man who was truly good? When we give up our lives for others in love, we can and should expect a reward. Jesus said, “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29). The book of Hebrews says that Jesus did not enjoy his suffering in itself, but endured it for the sake of what came after. “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). So we should love because it is in God’s character, it is our destiny, and there will be a reward (the true reward is heaven, which is a world of love, with Christ at the center).

Another question: why is it so hard to love? If self-giving love is in the nature of God, if it is the ultimate destiny for those who follow Christ, then why do we fail so bad? Loving another person as one’s self is difficult even in marriage, where the fire of romance burns. My wife Rebecca and I dated and broke up twice before we finally got married. We figured we had worked out most of the difficult issues with the break-ups. This was mostly true. But even though we were deeply in love, we discovered that loving one another required effort. One of the first things that revealed our differences was our first grocery shopping trip. I wanted the cheap $1 loaf of bread. Rebecca insisted that the $3 loaf was way better. Spending that much on a loaf of bread made me feel like I was I was dying. Getting the cheap, squishy bread made her feel like she was dying. When we got to the salsa, she wanted the $1 jar and I wanted the $3 container of fresh, refrigerated salsa. Again, we both felt like we were dying. In a way, we were. The center of our lives was no longer ourselves. To make the marriage the center meant that a part of each one of us had to die. Our preferences regarding food, money, time, communication, vacation, sex – all can become sources of conflict requiring giving up ourselves for the sake of the other. Having children requires self-death even more, as young children force us to re-center our lives once again. Since we are generally self-centered, becoming self-giving is like dying.

Our selfishness makes love difficult. It may sound a little surprising, but the selflessness of others can also make love difficult. Drew Dyck shares about his older brother Dan in the book Your Future Self Will Thank You. Drew was often annoyed at his brother Dan, he writes, because Dan was perfect. He prayed every night. He memorized passages of Scripture. At the age of eight, Dan decided to eat no sugar. He didn’t eat a dessert for five years. As teenagers Drew worked a job and spent all his money. Dan worked a job and saved all his. Drew once became so annoyed with Dan’s perfection that he twisted his hand into a claw and scratched four bright lines across his brother’s chest. Surely the perfect brother would snap now. Instead, Dan closed his eyes tight, drew in a sharp breath, and said, “I forgive you.”

I mention this story because just before the example of Jesus’ love, John presents Cain as the example of hate. Why did Cain hate and murder? “Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous” (1 John 3:12). Don’t we feel this too? When someone is truly good and pure, we can hate them because they make our failures so clear and inexcusable. What if Abel saw the knife in Cain’s hand? My guess is that he probably would have willingly given his life for his brother. That is what Jesus did.

Real love is giving up our lives for others, starting small but including paying the ultimate cost. We should love because it is our ultimate destiny to be like Christ, who is the model of love. It is difficult to love because we are naturally selfish. But we can grow in love. How?

First, we can know and experience God’s love for us. He gave his life for us. I was the hostage. He is the one who volunteered to take my place. I was the one who hated. He is the one who loved. I am the one who attacked. He is the one who was killed. Because he was good and I was evil. The Bible typically gives us both overwhelming challenge and overwhelming encouragement. The call to give up our lives is a challenge. The knowledge that Jesus gave up his life out of love for us is encouragement.

Next time we feel like loving someone is inconvenient or uncomfortable, we can ask, “Am I bleeding on a cross? Am I hanging naked while people insult me? Am I carrying the weight of the world’s sins in my soul?” Knowing his love corrects our sense of entitlement. We do not deserve a happy, comfortable, convenient life. In giving up our lives for others we are not fulfilling a rule or earning God’s favor. We are imitating our Lord, who loved us so greatly.

A second way of growing in love for others is by practicing love for others. John writes, “Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions” (1 John 3:18). Love is not words. Love is not feelings. Love is actions. Love is therefore something we can do even when we don’t feel it. A woman once told me that she no longer loved her husband. I counseled her to forgive, to communicate, to show thoughtfulness. “Are you saying I should pretend?” she asked. I was saying that she should act in love despite what she felt. After all, she had promised to love him when they got married. Now was the time to live that out. Acting in love often brings the feelings that are missing anyways.

We ought to give up our lives for one another. Not many of us will be called to literally die for another. All of us are called to love in smaller inconvenient, uncomfortable, costly ways. “If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?” (1 John 3:17). Open your heart and give compassion. Open your wallet and give money. Open your cupboard and give food. Open your closet and give clothes. Open your agenda and give time.

“We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us.”

Why am I writing now, after a two year break? Three reasons. One is that I stopped writing about the time I lost my facebook account. (I was hacked, they changed my age, I was kicked off.) I think that most people who read my posts found them through facebook, so I felt less drive to write for a much smaller audience. I finally got back on facebook a couple months ago. I didn’t really miss fb itself, but I did miss the connections it gave me with a lot of people I couldn’t stay in touch with in other ways. Second is that several people told me that Sunday’s sermon was helpful to them. So I thought I would create a written version in case it could be helpful for others (You can also find the video online with a little hunting). And third, I have been working for a long time on a book about our experience with Peter. I finally have drafts for each of the chapters I intended to write. There is still a lot of work, but I thought it was important to start writing and publishing at least on the blog for now.