Article: They Say Jesus Is Love Where Is The Curse

Jesus Is Love, But Then What

0:03 SPEAKER_01: They say Jesus is love.

0:05 SPEAKER_01: True.

0:06 SPEAKER_01: His love is perfect.

0:08 SPEAKER_01: True.

0:09 SPEAKER_01: His love is holy.

0:10 SPEAKER_01: True.

0:11 SPEAKER_01: His love is holy high.

0:14 SPEAKER_01: His love bled.

0:15 SPEAKER_01: His love sacrificed.

0:18 SPEAKER_01: His love laid life down.

0:20 SPEAKER_01: His love was the father's.

0:28 SPEAKER_01: If this be true, then where is our curse?

0:32 SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians 1622.

0:35 SPEAKER_01: If anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him.

0:40 SPEAKER_01: Come, O Lord.

0:42 SPEAKER_01: Consider fun.

0:44 SPEAKER_01: www.considered.info Examine today's wisdom, folly, and madness.

The Question: Where Is Our Curse

1:02 SPEAKER_00: They say Jesus is love, but where is the curse?

1:07 SPEAKER_00: We kept the half of the gospel that comforts us and buried the half that warns us.

1:12 SPEAKER_00: One verse puts them back in the same sentence.

1:15 SPEAKER_00: They say Jesus is love, and they are right.

1:19 SPEAKER_00: This is what makes the lie so hard to catch.

1:22 SPEAKER_00: It hides inside a true statement.

1:25 SPEAKER_00: His love is perfect.

1:26 SPEAKER_00: His love is holy.

1:28 SPEAKER_00: His love bled in a garden and on a tree.

1:31 SPEAKER_00: His love sacrificed everything and held nothing back.

1:35 SPEAKER_00: His love laid his own life down and took it up again.

1:39 SPEAKER_00: Every word of it is true, and not one syllable should be softened.

1:44 SPEAKER_00: But here is the part the slogan never finishes.

1:47 SPEAKER_00: His love came down from the Father, and it carried the Father's jealousy with it.

1:52 SPEAKER_00: The love and the jealousy were never two different things.

1:55 SPEAKER_00: They came in the same person, from the same heart, on the same mission.

2:01 SPEAKER_00: So, if all of that is true, and it is, then answer one question where is our curse?

Paul’s Love Chapter Has A Warning

2:09 SPEAKER_00: Open your Bible to the end of 1 Corinthians.

2:12 SPEAKER_00: Paul has finished the most famous love chapter ever written, chapter 13, the one read at weddings, the one stitched on pillows, love is patient, love is kind.

2:22 SPEAKER_00: Love never fails.

2:24 SPEAKER_00: We have memorized it.

2:26 SPEAKER_00: Then keep reading to the last page of the letter, and watch the same apostle, moved by the same Spirit, write this.

2:34 SPEAKER_00: If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema Maranatha Corinthians chapter sixteen, verse twenty two.

2:44 SPEAKER_00: Same Bible, same author, same breath that gave us love is patient, now says let him be accursed.

2:51 SPEAKER_00: Anathema means cursed, devoted to destruction, cut off, handed over.

2:57 SPEAKER_00: Maranatha is Aramaic.

Anathema And Maranatha Defined

3:00 SPEAKER_00: O Lord, come, Paul sets them side by side on purpose.

3:04 SPEAKER_00: The curse on those who will not love the Lord, and the cry for the Lord himself to return.

3:10 SPEAKER_00: Judgment and longing in a single line.

3:13 SPEAKER_00: We took the love and left the verse on the floor.

3:16 SPEAKER_00: We quote chapter thirteen and pretend chapter sixteen never happened, and then we stand around genuinely confused that nobody fears God anymore.

3:24 SPEAKER_00: The modern ear hears jealous and flinches.

God’s Jealousy As Proof Of Love

3:28 SPEAKER_00: We have been taught that jealousy is a flaw, a small and insecure thing.

3:33 SPEAKER_00: So when God names himself this way, we assume it must mean something gentler.

3:38 SPEAKER_00: It does not.

3:39 SPEAKER_00: For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.

3:42 SPEAKER_00: Exodus chapter twenty verse five.

3:45 SPEAKER_00: For the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God.

3:49 SPEAKER_00: Exodus chapter thirty four, verse fourteen.

3:53 SPEAKER_00: His name is jealous, not jealous as a mood he sometimes falls into, jealous as who he is, and this is not the opposite of his love.

4:02 SPEAKER_00: It is the proof of it.

4:04 SPEAKER_00: A husband who feels nothing when his wife is taken does not love her.

4:07 SPEAKER_00: He has simply stopped caring.

4:10 SPEAKER_00: Love that cannot be wronged was never loved at all.

4:13 SPEAKER_00: The God who refuses to share you with idols is the God who actually wants you.

4:18 SPEAKER_00: So, when Scripture warrants the one who will not love the Lord, it is not a contradiction of the cross.

4:25 SPEAKER_00: It is the cross taken seriously.

4:28 SPEAKER_00: The same love that died for you will not be treated as optional by you.

Why A Soft Gospel Fails

4:32 SPEAKER_00: Here is the cost of the gospel we have been handed, the soft one, the slogan sized one.

4:39 SPEAKER_00: A Jesus who is only ever affirming, who has no jealousy, who would never let a curse fall, is a Jesus who also cannot rescue you from one.

4:48 SPEAKER_00: Think it through.

4:49 SPEAKER_00: If there is no curse, there was nothing to be saved from.

4:53 SPEAKER_00: If love not the Lord carries no consequence, then the blood in the garden was sentiment, not substitution.

5:00 SPEAKER_00: You cannot keep the sacrifice and throw away the wrath it absorbed.

5:04 SPEAKER_00: The cross only means something because anathema was real.

5:08 SPEAKER_00: He became the curse so that the ones who love him would not have to bear it.

5:13 SPEAKER_00: Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.

5:18 SPEAKER_00: Galatians chapter three thirteen.

5:21 SPEAKER_00: Read that slowly.

5:22 SPEAKER_00: Made a curse.

5:23 SPEAKER_00: The curse did not disappear when Jesus came, it landed.

5:27 SPEAKER_00: It landed on him.

5:29 SPEAKER_00: That is the love.

5:30 SPEAKER_00: And it tells you exactly how serious the curse must have been, because of what it took to lift it.

5:37 SPEAKER_00: A gospel without a curse is not kinder than the real one, it is crueler, because it leaves people standing under a judgment it has talked them out of believing in.

The Cross And The Real Curse

5:46 SPEAKER_00: Paul does not leave the line hanging in the air.

5:49 SPEAKER_00: He aims it.

5:50 SPEAKER_00: If any man love not the Lord, not if any man fails to attend church, not if any man holds the wrong opinions, if any man does not love him, that is the question the slogan can never ask, because the slogan only flatters.

6:05 SPEAKER_00: It tells you Jesus loves you and stops there, as if your response to that love were beside the point.

6:11 SPEAKER_00: But the verse turns it around and puts the weight on you, not does he love you, he does, more than you know.

6:19 SPEAKER_00: But do you love him?

6:20 SPEAKER_00: Because everything hangs on that.

6:22 SPEAKER_00: The curse and the coming both wait on that single word.

6:26 SPEAKER_00: So we say it back the way the early church said it, with the curse and the cry kept together, refusing to separate what God joined.

6:35 SPEAKER_00: Maranatha, O Lord, come.

6:38 SPEAKER_00: If you love him, this is the most hopeful word in the language.

6:42 SPEAKER_00: If you do not, it should be the most sobering thing you have read today.

Do You Love Him? Final Charge

6:47 SPEAKER_00: They say Jesus is love.

6:49 SPEAKER_00: True.

6:50 SPEAKER_00: Now finish the sentence.

6:52 SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of thing we work through on the Consider Podcast.

6:56 SPEAKER_00: Examining today's wisdom, folly, and madness in the light of Scripture.

7:01 SPEAKER_00: If it provoked you, good.

7:04 SPEAKER_00: Subscribe and consider with us.

7:08 SPEAKER_00: The Consider Podcast.

7:10 SPEAKER_00: www.consider.info.

7:13 SPEAKER_00: Examining today's wisdom, folly, and madness.