Sick Love
by A. Gene Veal

A message from the album "Are You A Victim?"

In 1 Corinthians 13, the great chapter on love, we have a problem when it comes to this word ‘love’.  Our English word love has nothing remotely to do with this word love that appears in the new testament. The word in the New Testament, as you may know it, is agape: the Greek word for love.

There is no real English translation; our English word love actually corresponds to the Greek word ‘eros’, which is a word that the Holy Spirit has forbidden to be used in the New Testament. You won’t find ‘eros’ there. It’s very significant that the Holy Spirit took out of obscurity a word that the Greeks hardly knew how to use, or knew what it meant, except in their language ‘agape’ vaguely meant ‘love’. 

Agape is brought into the mainstream of the New Testament and is defined for us.  You won’t find it defined outside of the New Testament; the Holy Spirit gives us its definition: it is very simple.  In 1 John it says, God is Agape. God is love.

Agape is not human love. It’s the kind of love that is the very nature of God. It’s the God-quality love and 1 Corinthians 13 is about that: the unique love of the human faith. It’s what Jesus commanded us when He said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Agape one another: that is love one another with the agape kind of love. If you missed it on that round, He said, “as I have loved you.” 

So, the Greek word means that kind of love and He says to do it as we’ve seen it exemplified in Him, and demonstrated by Him. Jesus is the first human being to live agape. He says in that one verse He is producing a race of people who are now going to be characterized by agape: the God-kind of love. 

You’ve got yourself hooked up with a group of supernatural people; because no man naturally can agape. It is the God-kind of love. 

Now, that is amazing. You can be a martyr and it profits you nothing. Zero. In fact, you being a martyr amounts to the sound of a harsh, hollow gong. But, you died for your faith! It counts for nothing, unless your sacrifice originates in agape, it counts for nothing. 

The Martyr
What is a martyr? Well, it is someone who is willing to die, because of what he believes about God and the meaning of life,  This is important now.  A martyr, in this context, is a person who will deliver his body to be burned: someone who because of what he believes concerning his God, and because of what he understands to be the meaning of life, is willing to go so far as to deliver his body to be burned. 

Actually, you can take it a bit further, the context actually has to do with relationships with people, so agape in this context has nothing to do with me loving God. 1 Corinthians 13 has nothing to do to with me loving God in the immediate sense. It has all to do with me having agape for people. This whole passage is about me and people. 

So, if I give my body to be burned, it could be in the context of being a missionary or an evangelist who goes into the dark places of the earth in order to be a means of their salvation. I actually end up laying my life down for what I believe in.

That’s a martyr in this sense.  It’s saying it’s possible to lay down your life to rescue people, to lay down your life in order to be a savior, to lay down your life because of what you believe, and have the whole thing amount to a heap of ashes, because all you get out of it is cremation. 

It counts for nothing if you don’t have agape.  And while you are going through this thing; while you are wasting your life letting someone burn you, you are actually a harsh, jarring, empty sound to everyone around. No one even gets blessed by it.  That’s what this chapter is saying.  Do you get the picture? 

How important it is?  You can give your body to be burned, but if you don’t have agape, what you accomplish, is zero. 

Not what but whence
We learn something very important then: it is not what a person does, that counts. It is the source from whence it comes.  Because if I see somebody martyred for what they believe, I’m likely to say, now there is a spiritual person. God says, maybe not.  Maybe you just have a cremated person.  Maybe they aren’t spiritual at all.  Because, if it’s not what you do, and what you do may look like a great expression of faith and love, but unless it springs from the supernatural kind of love, it is worthless. Zero. You understand. 

Now, I have to ask you another question.  What on earth would motivate a man to lay down his life, to become a martyr for nothing?  Think about it. I could understand if you did indeed have agape, the God kind of love, that kind of love in its exhibition being Christ dying for us, that kind of love producing martyrdom.  I can understand that, even how it may bring you to the point of dying for your faith.  But, I ask you, what is the motivation in all of creation that’s going to make a man lay down his life for nothing? Waste himself for others and get nothing out of it, and produce nothing?

This business of love is a big subject. You can understand love, but I tell you, you’ve got to understand something that’s bigger than what we call ‘love’.  Where does agape love come from?  We could spend a whole cassette talking about where real love comes from.

1 John probably is the best exposition of love, God’s kind of love. It says, God is love. Notice He doesn’t have love. God is love.  Did you notice that? There’s a big difference between me having water and being water.  There’s a big difference between you having love, and you being love. God is love.  So, 1 John goes on to say that love is of God.

The Source
The Greek word there ‘eck' means to spring forth, gush forth; so love comes out from God.  There can be no love outside of God.  God is its source.  So, if I’m going to understand what love is, I‘ve got to understand that man can only know love, whether it be love to himself, (that is to know that he is loved, that I am loved), or whether it be the love of somebody else, I can only know love by being in union with God.  He is the only source of love.  

God is the source, the spring, the eternal origin of agape. I cannot love, I can never know I am loved, outside my union with the origin of love Himself, who is love. 

So, man was created one with God. God did not need man. God is complete in Himself. He created man by His choice. Man, however, in being created, needed God. Man is not complete without God. Man, to be a full human being, to be the normal human being that he is created to be, must be joined, linked to God. God is the necessary complement to man for man to function. So, man was made to live in the continual consciousness that he was unconditionally loved.  

This isn’t an optional extra. In order to be a complete human being I must walk in the knowledge that I am unconditionally loved: that I was made with the capacity to contain the God who is love. Man was made to be a lover. He was made to be one who expresses the agape that he receives.

The Fall
Now, you understand what we call the fall: when man made a declaration of independence and told God to get lost.  Man was going to be the sole source of himself: a self for self.  And so he severed the relationship; he is no longer joined to God. That’s the fall. 

Man then is empty. He is now empty in the most frightening way. This explains what is wrong with the whole world. Man has got a hole inside of him that only God can fill.  He has a hole that only infinite, limitless, unconditional love can fill: a sucking, gnawing hole. It is a vacuum, that sucks everything toward it, trying to fill it.  Man has separated himself from the only source of unconditional love and he spends a lifetime looking for love in all the wrong places.

If he’s severed from God, what is he left with? He’s left with the stuff he’s made from: flesh. Man became a flesh person; a person who tries to find the meaning of life in his own human flesh.  And he sought to fill this hole inside of him from other flesh: creatures, things, possessions. 

Outside of Jesus Christ man is not quite all there; he’s not normal, he’s
subnormal.  There’s something missing; there’s a great empty ache. Man is searching, but he’s searching within his own flesh and in the flesh of others trying to fill that emptiness.  So, we all become bent. The picture is of us all bent over, bent away from God, all bent toward each other. We’re trying to suck out of each other some kind of love that can fill that empty hole: that emptiness that’s inside of us. 

Our Longing to be Loved
We long to be loved. I want you to be honest. There is a longing inside of you and me to be loved unconditionally saying, "I want to be loved totally; and I’ll do anything to get it."  If only once every six weeks you’ll look at me and say, “I love you,” I’ll do anything. I’ll scrape, I’ll bow, I’ll serve you; I’ll do anything as long as I can suck out of you your smile, your appreciation.  As long as you’ll make me feel significant, you can beat me, you can spit at me, as long as every once in a while you'll tell me you love me. 

Is that true? Is that the sick love you’re looking for? Will you take anything anyone will give you as long as once in a while you'll hear those words, “I love you”? You see, you feel appreciated, you feel loved for just a moment, so you do what someone likes, and I’ll do what I think someone likes, so that they’ll say, “I love you. Thank you.” 

This is a sick kind of love. I’ll serve you until I burn myself out; I’ll drain myself; I’ll work hard for the church; I’ll do everything I can, if you'll just put my name in the church bulletin, let people know who I am so I can know that I am loved.  That’s a sick love.  With this kind of love, I need you to need me.  I have a sucking need inside of me for you to need me, because if you need me then I can be god to you; I can supply all your needs.  I can care for you; I can serve you; I can meet your needs. Then you will say, “thank you”, and I will have the sense of significance; and I’ll have value because I made you happy; I saw you smile.  Oh, yes, I need you; I need you to need me. 

Sick Love
That’s not love; that’s sick love at best. A woman will stay with a man while she is beaten black and blue, just because once in a while he says, “I love you.” And she calls it love. She’ll stay in an alcoholic relationship, where she gets nothing but abuse, endangering her very life; but that’s not love, it’s selfishness.

There’s the person who serves in the church, and they serve and they serve until they burn themselves out, and they call it love. It’s not love. To get love they’ll go searching here, and searching there, for anything that will fill that great empty hole. 

It translates into weird complexities of our fallenness. I’ve got to make you happy; I’m responsible. I’m responsible to make you happy. And when I see you smile, oh, I’ve succeeded. And when you don’t smile, I spiral into despair, and I say, “Oh, what did I do wrong?  Are you mad at me?”  

You feel you are responsible to save them from their problems.  It’s not only that we need them; our identity is involved in this.  We feel responsible to be their savior: their rescuer.  If I find you with a need, I’m drawn toward you, like a bee to a honey hive.  I’ve got to rescue you; I’ve got to be everything; then I’ll be worth loving.  Do you see how sick this love is? 

Eros
I hope you’re getting the application of this tragic interpretation of love. It’s not love at all.  Actually, if you want to translate it, it’s ‘eros’; it’s another Greek word for love that the Holy Spirit wouldn’t allow in the New Testament.  It has nothing to do with God’s love. 

What shall I call it? It’s a poisonous love: it poisons you to have it, and it poisons everybody that you give it to. There’s fear in that love; we’re always afraid we’re going to fail. Do we love them enough? Did I do enough? Am I really the source of their happiness? If not, then I’ve failed.

And because my identity as a person is wrapped up in whether I fail or not, then I call myself a failure because I didn’t please you; I didn’t get the response that I needed. I’m unlovable. I’m not good; I’m worthless. I’m no good. 

This is when people drown themselves in alcohol and drugs and all kinds of things. They feel like they’re worth nothing.  There’s a hole inside of them; there’s nothing inside of them.  Whenever Jesus calls man lost, that’s a correct term.  Man has lost himself; he doesn’t know who he is or where he is.  He’s lost. 

My identity is in making you happy in this sick love. So, what do I do with it? I look at myself as selfless; I have no needs; as long as I can meet your needs; I’m satisfied.  That looks so spiritual, you see. I’m driven by this because my identity is in “loving with sick love” this other person. 

The Missionary
Let me explain. I’m going to refer to people I’ve met; these are not people I’m making up. Take for an example a missionary in a certain country. He hates the people; he hates the flies; he despises everything about the country.  This is a missionary!  How did he get there?

Back in a missionary meeting they told him that he was needed there in this country.  That God expected him to go.  And that God would bless him if he went.  And he thought that if he could perform for God and go to the mission field then God would love him more and the hole would be filled. There would be these people who need him so badly, and he could bless them when he got there.  And he would have some worth and he would be full of life.  

But, when he got there all he found was stinking flesh, stinking cow dung, stinking flies…. The people didn’t even want him; they told him to go home.  And now he hates the country and everything about his life. He went there for himself; he didn’t go there for God, or for men, or for people. He went there for himself.  Do you understand how that can be? It’s sad. 

The Wife
Let me tell you about a mother that I know. The father is an alcoholic. She has to go to work to get enough money so they can live.  He abuses her when he’s drunk; he beats her.  He’s drunk in the morning.  He can’t go to work, so she calls his work and lies for him saying he’s sick.  He’s not sick, he’s just drunk. 

She won’t have her friends to the house because she doesn’t want them to know what he’s really like. She tells everybody, “He means well; he’s trying hard; it’s not really his fault; it’s the whiskey that does it.” She believes that one day everything will be fine; one day he’ll really love her and appreciate what she’s been doing for him, cleaning up his vomit for him all the time. 

Every couple of months he is sober enough to say, “I’m sorry, dear; I really do love you; and I promise I won’t do it again; and I do love you.” And she’ll live on a high for weeks after he says this because that’s all she wants. Crazy? 

The Church Member
What about the person in church? That person takes on work, takes on more work; and whenever there’s another project they take on more, because they are told, “we knew we could count on you.“ So they load it on. 

They never say, “no”; they take all the work you give them and they work and they work.  But, inside they’re saying, “if I don’t do it, who will? There’s nobody else to do it.  I should do it.  I do it because there’s nobody else to do it and I do it because I ought and I should, and whenever I lay at home in bed at night, I say, nobody appreciates me; I slave and slave all day and nobody even mentions it or says thank you.  Why won’t they volunteer like I do?  Why won’t they get in there and help?  Why won’t they get in there and do it with me?  Why?”  Or, they could say, “I give my body to be burned” and have not agape. I’m zero.  I'm being cremated, that’s all. 

The Pastor
What about the pastor who lives for his people and his ministry, day and night? His children haven’t seen him in a week. His wife hardly knows his name. If you call his house in the middle of the night, he’ll come out to visit with you. Vacations? Forget it. Too much work to do in the church. What a sold-out man, God bless him; he’s dedicated! 

No, I’m not so sure. He may be selfish, actually. What he may be looking for is people to say they need him. Those magic words, “I need you, “ confirm his lovableness.  Let’s hope his secretary isn’t the first one to say he’s wonderful.  How many creatures so hungry for love, to have a person close to them finally tell them what they want to hear, end up going into something deeply devastating to many lives? 

The Mother
How about the mother who works so hard? She does the meals, she scrubs and cleans, and she does the taxi service for the neighborhood kids.  No one cares about her; she says she’s falling apart; she’s so worn out.  And when her husband comes home she’s angry because she’s not getting the responses from the people she’s helping, they aren’t loving her the way they should be for all she’s doing.  What’s the matter with her?  She’s just giving her body to be burned.  She just wants to contribute her ashes for nothing. 

The Grandparents
Or what about the grandparents who can’t let their children go? They’re fussing over their children’s marriages, putting their noses into their children’s business, monitoring how their grandchildren are being raised. They are upset because their children have marriage problems; they give advice about what should be done. The grandmother can’t sleep at night because the children have problems; she’s blaming her husband because he doesn’t pay enough attention to the children. This harsh gong of sick love is damaging to so many lives. 

The Son
So, your son is in his twenties now; he lays at home on drugs and never goes to work.  He expects you to bring him food and he expects you to do the cleaning; he’s a jobless parasite, and you try everything: nag, nag, nag.  Every once in a while he’ll do what you tell him to do, and you praise him like a three year old.  The Bible calls it manipulation. It’s eros, it’s not love. You don’t love that boy; you’re being selfish. You’re just trying to save him and rescue him, so you can feel good about yourself. One day he’ll be all right and he’ll appreciate you then. One day. 

You?
You’re offering your life; you serve, you care, but no one cares about you, no one appreciates you. You’re burning, going up in smoke on the inside based upon their non-appreciation and non-response. You’re trying to save them; you’re trying to love them; why can’t they see it? They don’t appreciate it; they don’t care; and sometimes you don’t have enough resources to help them and you feel like a total failure. 

Yes, you’re burning; you’re burning good.  You’re dying on the inside trying to care for others. On the inside you believe you’re a martyr because you really believe that’s godly stuff: selfless, “lay down your life for others”, isn’t that what the Bible teaches?  This is your cross to bear.  Oh, well, you'll get your reward one day.  Yes, a heap of ashes will be your reward in the crematorium.  You see, that kind of toxic sick love, false love, produces the opposite of the love in 1 Corinthians 13.  I’ve half said it; if you are operating there, this is the result of it in your life.

Agape vs. Eros
Agape is patience.  This eros love produces impatience; it can be very unkind if it doesn’t get its own way.  And believe me, this kind of sick love can turn to jealousy over night.  Agape is not jealous, but if this love perceives that the wife is not giving all the love to me that I deserve and respect, and if I see her look at someone else with even an inkling of a spark in her eyes, then agghhh, I am jealous.  

Agape is not jealous. But, you see that’s not agape.  It’s for me, for me, for me!  Sick love brags; oh, does it ever brag, agape doesn’t brag, but this love brags, it’s arrogant; it tells the world if you won’t appreciate me, sit back, I’ll tell you what I’ll do; I’m not as other people are: I love, I love. 

You know that kind of love is capable of rudeness if it doesn’t get its own way.  But agape is not rude. This toxic love seeks its own; agape seeks other’s good. This love is irritable, and angry and bitter.  Many times I have heard people say they’re so full of anger, they’re so full of bitterness toward their husband or their wife or their church; they’re showing the symptoms of the opposite of 1 Corinthians 13. 

They remember all wrongs that are done against them; agape doesn’t. They don’t want to face the truth; they lie; they say “he’s really a good man; he just needs help.”  This sick love in them lies. But, agape believes truth; it hopes in things that are true.  But, you see they’re trying to rescue those people; you can’t tell them the truth about those they’re trying to rescue. 

Toxic love will always fail; agape never fails. Toxic love will always fall into hopeless despair and shame; it lives in the sense of being a failure. It has got to fail; it’s born of the flesh; it’s rebellion against God who is agape. By the very nature of the case of this toxic love, we can never find the satisfaction that we’re looking for in ourselves or in anybody else. 

My Experience
You know, I’ve gone through this. Most of my life as a child was with my mother; my father had nothing to do with me; he didn’t want me, he would have preferred that she’d had an abortion. He beat her; he was a drunkard.  He had all kinds of problems. I never was held, never rocked, never kissed, never shown affection; I craved love, I wanted love, any way that I could get love.  

I never will forget as I came to the church as a  teenager, I found a place where they claimed to love you; they claimed to accept you; they invited me to be part of them; to be with them.  And they had the truth, they had the Bible, they knew God, this would be a place where I could have a family. 

I’d never had a family before; I’d never belonged to a family.  So, whenever I married, I married a woman whose family I fell in love with. Just as much as I fell in love with her; I fell in love with the idea of being a part of a family. 

I remember when I preached my first sermon when I was sixteen years old in 1957, I preached from God’s Word for forty-five minutes; it was not a sermon worth hearing, just trust me on that; but, I could see that I could be a blessing and that I could serve and I could love and I would be loved in return, and oh, was I ever in for a surprise and a letdown on that kind of love. 

That was toxic, that was sick, that was not agape. My mother was proud of me; I was her preacher boy.  My brother was proud of me saying, "He’s in the faith now."  My life had a focus; they put a picture of me in the paper, the Fort Worth Star Telegram, with my cap and gown saying he’s off to the ministry to study in college to become preacher.  I was somebody; I had some kind of identity; I was going to be loved; and all of that was going to be fulfilling to me. 

So, I can say, I originally went into the ministry looking for love; I went because I needed people to need me and want me so I could help them and they’d love me. It wasn’t wrong going into the ministry; God put me there, but he got me there using all of my wrong motives.  But, do you understand what I’m saying?  I needed someone to call me at three in the morning and say, “I need you.”  I needed that.  I needed to go and minister to them and feel dog tired in the morning but say, "But ah, God, someone needed me."  

Do you relate to that?  This is born of the flesh: these people, congregations, ministries…  I’ve counseled many a pastor who set out to have to have a megachurch.  Why?  Because he wants to be able to say, “they need me. When I stand in the pulpit, look how many people lean forward to hear what I have to say.” On the inside we’re a heap of ashes, though. On the inside we’re nothing: it’s toxic, it’s sick. 

You may do a lot, and it may look great, but where is it coming from? And I cannot, by the nature of the case, get the love from you listening to this cassette, or from my wife, or from my children, or from any person in the congregation of the church; I cannot get from any of these the love that will fill the hole: the emptiness that only God can fill. 

Spontaneous Love
Love is of God. God is love. That’s where it comes from. What is this God kind of love, this agape? It’s totally other than anything we know of human love. 

First of all, its spontaneous. Do you know what I mean by that? Human love isn’t. Human love is drawn out of us. There’s a because to it; there’s a reason for it. But, God doesn’t love you because of who you are; He loves you because of who He is.  Have you heard that before?  If you can grasp that, you'll be free. 

God doesn’t love you because of who you are or what you’ve done. He loves you because of who He is. God is love.  And that’s why it’s a free choice on God’s part; God didn’t have to love you.  God chose to love you, freely; there was nothing in you that demanded of Him that you be loved. 

Or you could put it this way: God was not driven by need to love you. God wasn’t lonely; God didn’t have an aching hole inside of Him saying, "Let’s make a person so I can have somebody to love me."   He was complete in Father, Son and Holy Spirit; there was no need there. The Holy, Three in One, have no needs; He didn’t have to create; He did not need to create. 

God is not responsible to make you happy; He loves you by choice. That’s why the word grace is in our Bible; grace means it has nothing to do with you; it has to do with God.  And that’s why legalism is such a filthy heresy, because it cuts into the very heart of God.  God doesn’t love us because of what we do; He doesn’t reject you because of what you haven’t done; God loves you because of who He is.  It’s a free choice on God’s part; it’s free. 

God's Love
And what does it mean when I say that God loves you?  He seeks your highest and best; which is not necessarily your happiness.  Because, some people’s idea of happiness will kill them in six months if they get their way.  No, God isn’t seeking your happiness; He’s seeking your highest and your best.  He seeks to bring you to your fullest potential as a human being; he seeks to bring you to completion as a human being. 

He does this with a love that overflows its banks. We cut a channel for love; but God can love people we could never love ourselves. When God’s river of love comes, it breaks over all the banks of the tributaries we’ve dug claiming that’s where God’s love is.  God loves all the people: good, bad and indifferent; He makes the sun to shine upon the righteous and the unrighteous. 

Excessive Love
That’s the prodigal; to us it looks wasteful: the prodigal father who prodigally, excessively loves the son who has done him wrong.  That illustrates God’s love.  God loves people that don’t love Him.  That’s agape.  It’s the overflow; it’s the wasteful, reckless love that God has toward those that don’t even say thank you.  But, even though it is a love that is born of His choice; that is, He doesn’t have to; He chooses to; He is totally, infinitely, involved, shall I say emotionally? 

God as Jesus Christ looks at Jerusalem and says, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” with great convulsive sobs He says, “O Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you, your children, but you would not.”  So, agape is a feeling love.  When Jesus tried to show us this in story form, He described a father who ran and jumped over ditches and jumped over fences and ran through bushes to fall on the neck of a dirty prodigal son who stunk of pigs.  And the father buried his face in the filth and kissed him all over. That’s what God is like.  Agape is feeling. 

In the story of the good Samaritan, He says that the Samaritan looked upon the man in the ditch and he was moved with compassion.  Which means that he had his guts twisted and turned inside in his feelings for this poor Jew; that was half dead in the ditch; a Jew who if he were well, would spit on him and hate him. That’s a feeling love; it’s a love that Jesus demonstrated we’re to have for our neighbor. That’s our God; that’s love.

What is Agape?
What is agape?  Herein, is agape, says First John, “Not that you love God, but that He loved us, and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 

There, if you would see agape, there it is; you must stand before the cross of Jesus Christ if you would see agape.  God loves you, quite independently of what you did or didn’t do.  While you were still a sinner, Christ died for you. He assumed responsibility for your sins.  He has died and He has risen again: this is unconditional love that has nothing to do with my performance.  He comes to me in Christ, and I realize that this is the beginning of the gospel: I am loved.  If you get that, you won’t even be able to sleep tonight because you'll be so thrilled that you’re loved, truly loved with agape love: God’s love. Unconditionally loved. 

That’s what fills the ache of the sucking, gnawing hole of darkness, and emptiness inside of us.  That’s the love that will fill it and fill it full, and flow out from it into other people’s lives; from your mouth, from your eyes, from your feelings; you’re filled with a love that is poured out in your heart by the Holy Spirit, and you spill it out into the lives of other people; because it’s not your love; it’s the love you’ve been baptized in; it’s the love that has come upon you and in you and flows out of you and expresses itself by the power of the supernatural inside of you. 

How We are to Love One Another
God loves me even though He knows my worst potential and my worst sin. He loves me. He overflowingly loves me; and that’s the way that I can love you; if I’m loving you with agape love. I don’t have to perform; you don’t have to perform.  Think about it; you don’t have to please God anymore. Now you'll probably spend your whole life expressing God, now you’re free from having to do it.  

Satan says you’ve got to try to please God, and he’ll whip you and whip you, and whip you and accuse you, after all he’s known as the accuser of the brethren.  What a relief I don’t have to try to please God in order to be loved. I am loved.

He places His Spirit within us.  Have you ever thought about that?  That you in your inner being, as well as the very cells of your body, are the receptacle of the Holy Spirit of the infinite God.  Talk about significance! Yes, you have significance; the Spirit of God is in you and filling you and thrilling you with His fellowship. This blood of God was shed for you so that you could know that you were loved; so that you could have dwelling in you this love put into us by the Holy Spirit. 

See, we’re co-workers together with this God.  Whenever I wake up in the morning I begin my day helplessly, dependently laying my day before this God who will take me as an instrument, as a vessel, sanctified and fitted for His use. He will be a blessing to others through us, because we walk in the Spirit, and when we walk in the Spirit we will NOT fulfill the lusts and desires of the flesh; and when we walk in the Spirit we will stay in step with the Spirit, because we draw our very life from the Spirit who produces His fruit, which is agape. He changes me; I don’t try to walk my way to Him; I don’t try to get His attention; I walk in Him.  I’m not trying to do a work for Him; I’m doing a work from Him.

From Whence Do You Love?
From whence you do what you do, that makes it right or wrong.  It’s not what you do, it’s from whence you do it.  If you do it from the flesh, you will reap corruption; if you do it from the flesh you will be ashes.  If you do it from the Spirit you will reap life everlasting and peace. Peace! I wake up and I yawn and I know that I’m accepted in Christ as I begin my day.  I know that I was accepted as I slept; I don’t have to do anything; I’m accepted just as Adam was accepted when he woke up from creation and took a bite of the fruit of the trees that were plentifully there for him. It’s not by works of righteousness that we have done; it’s according to His mercy that He saved us. 

Love Given is Love Received
Now, having received agape, I don’t have to look to you to fill the hole. So, once I’ve understood my relationship to God, my relationship to you, changes. I hope you see that?

Do you see that?  I’m satisfied in God; I’m filled full.  It doesn’t mean that we don’t need human beings. God ordained that we need one another. That’s not my point. We don’t need one another to fill that sucking, gnawing need of that vacuum hole that’s inside of us! No! God fills that. 

My relationship with you is not to use you or allow you to use me.  I’m to be there to help you bear your burden and to help you bear your own burden.  Human beings can tell me of the love of God, they can make me feel the love of God and they can be the ones to bring the love of God to me; but, it’s the love of God, nonetheless, that’s makes the change.  

A Right Relationship
A right relationship is when two people who have been filled by the love of God come together and they pour that love of God into each other, not trying to suck the love out of each other to get love, but pouring the love of God upon each other, that flows from them. It’s all changed, you see, its not sick love anymore. 

Note John 17.  Remember the last supper?  Do you remember what that night was like as you read about it?  Think about this: they’re meeting there for the last supper; there’s a basin of water there, and a pitcher, and a towel at the door.  They wore sandals.  Whenever they sat down to eat they didn’t sit down like in the painting called The Last Supper, they reclined, and whenever they reclined that meant that somebody’s feet might be right up in the face of someone else. 

You’ve got to clean the feet.  Who is going to do it?  Is it John?  He’s the youngest.  Is it Peter?  Who is going to do it?  What is going to happen here?  There’s a war going on.  They’re arguing about who is going to be the greatest in the kingdom.  They’re saying maybe Peter will be, maybe John, you know John is the one who went with Him privately on some trips.  Maybe it’ll be James.  Who is going to be the prime minister?  All of this was going on that night.  No one would get the water and fill the basin and take the towel and wash the feet. 

Jesus didn't have sick love
Now, what is Jesus thinking?  What is going on inside His head?  He looks around at their faces, all very unhappy faces, by the way.  Does He think, it’s my fault; I’ve not been all I should be today.  What have I done wrong? I know they’re upset with me… Is that what Jesus is thinking?  Or, Oh, how I have failed!  Do you realize that that’s the process of thinking that goes on in the minds of many people? It’s my fault. If I had been a better person, a better Christian, they wouldn’t be this way. 

Is that the motivation that made Jesus get up and wash their feet?  Or maybe He looked around with the sigh of a martyr, saying, "Oh, someone’s gotta do it.  I guess I will.  I guess it’s going to have to be me again. It makes me sick. They never help; they never do it like they should."  Isn’t that the way we think? 

Or could He have thought, "Maybe if I don’t do it, they’re going to be disappointed. They count on me."  Good old Jesus, He always comes through. 

Or, maybe it could be this, maybe he’s thinking, "Well, after three years they still don’t listen.  Maybe if I wash their feet I can make them so ashamed that they’ll see how wrong they’ve been. They never listen, and if this doesn’t work I’m just ready to quit."  Were Jesus’ motives like ours?

The Scripture says, “Now before the feast of Passover, Jesus knowing that his hour had come, having loved his own who were in the world, he had loved them to the end. Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, that He had come forth from God and He was going back to God, rose from supper, laid aside His garment…"

The True Motivation
Did you notice that?  Knowing that He had come from God!  Knowing where He had come from?  To know who I am!  That’s to be our motivation; knowing where we come from.  I know I’m in the bosom of my Father’s love; that’s where I am.  And that’s who I am; I know I’m significant. 

He came to do a work God sent Him to do; and He was going to do it; and He would return to be with Him.  Out of the fullest inner knowledge of who He was, and because He loved them for their benefit, He rose and washed their feet. 

Jesus Loved Peter Correctly
Do you understand what agape is?  He never sought their happiness. That would be cruel to seek someone’s happiness.  You don’t love someone when you seek their happiness.  You seek their highest; you seek their best. 

And remember this; the Holy Spirit had just revealed to Jesus that Peter was going to deny Him.  Of all nights for Peter to do this.  Tonight!   But Jesus didn’t worry thinking, "If I don’t stop Peter, Peter will never forgive me. If I don’t show him what God has shown me, and if I don’t stop him from doing this, this will be terrible!" 

Nor did Jesus say to His Father that he didn’t need this added to the rest of what He had to face; He didn’t say, "I don’t need this tonight, Father." You see, the fact is, if you pray like that you don’t want their highest and their best, you want peace. 

What did Jesus do? He left Peter to his choices. He said, “Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to sift you as wheat, but I prayed for you.”  Is that it?  You just prayed for me?  Yes, and if you keep the head you’ve got right now, going the way you’re going to go, you’re going to deny me three times. 

And that’s the way it is.  Never once did Jesus despise Peter or reject him, He never even brought it up after the resurrection.  

That’s love; that’s agape.

Conclusion
See, toxic, sick love tries to rescue you, protect you.  You don’t want certain things to happen.  When I counsel people, I can’t save them, I can’t rescue them, I can’t deliver them.  I can only counsel them in the truth and show them the word of God; show them the love of God and let them make their own choices. 

They can either turn to God as I’m telling you to do right now and know that He is unconditional love, or they can go on seeking to be loved with this toxic sick love. 

Make your choice. Be loved by God and loved from God and you'll be free.  May God bless you with eyes to see HOW MUCH YOU ARE LOVED. 

Click here to read the message: 
No Longer a Victim

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