With Valentine’s Day this week, we thought we’d share a few TRUE LOVE essays from 2024 Artists/Speakers Sean Forrest & Justin McRoberts, written 10 years ago tied to the 2014 theme: TRUE LOVE TRANSFORMS.
S E A N F O R R E S T
A Simple Bible Story: Lessons in Love
What a little Bible story can teach us is amazing.
You know how it goes. The Magi went out, guided by the stars, in search of a king. When Herod heard about this, he asked the Magi to tell him when they had found the new king so he could also pay him homage. The Magi found Jesus, worshipped Him and gave Him gifts. Then, warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went home in a different direction. They were transformed.
The first thing we can take away from this story is that, if true love transforms, then we must first encounter True Love. True love is a person: Jesus Christ. This Love sought us out by becoming a baby to reveal Himself more intimately to us and to die for our sins on a cross. Our God is a God who seeks us out, but we have to seek Him out in this relationship, as well. God is a gentleman, and He will not force us to believe in Him or love Him.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 7:7, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” The Magi set out in search of a king and found him, just as God promises each of us that those who truly seek will find Him. Unfortunately, many today have stopped seeking Jesus and have instead sought out comfort in worldly things that only deceive us by making us numb to truth. For many people, a couch and a television have become the king under the star.
Next, let’s think about Herod. Along their journey, the Magi met this worldly king who claimed to care about the True King they were seeking. In our lives, we too will meet people who claim to be leaders of importance but are just imposters. They will claim that they are on the same path as we are, but in reality they are full of deceit. We must test all things to make sure they are from God. As Jesus says in Matthew 7:20, “Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”
And finally, look again at that call to transformation. After the Magi encountered Jesus, they went home by a different route. And when anyone really encounters Jesus, they go in a new direction—as a new creation. Jesus transformed the lives of those who opened their hearts to Him. How many went home after meeting the Lord, released from illness and returned to physical health? Yet it is also obvious that the change Jesus was most concerned about was the transformation of heart and soul brought about by repentance and forgiveness of a sinner: “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
What the Gospel Is Not
Today there are still many who believe the Gospel is all about physical healings and miracles. While these things certainly happen, it is false to believe that this is the very foundation of the Gospel. Just because someone is healed in body does not mean they are transformed at the level Jesus desires. Remember the ten lepers that Jesus healed? “One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well” (Luke 17:15-19).
Likewise, there is a danger in thinking the Gospel is just about doing works of charity (i.e., Social Gospel). While works of charity are essential to the Christian faith, it is important to know that it was Jesus’ death on the cross that opened the gates of heaven—not our works of charity.
The Gospel also should not be promoted as a business that delivers prosperity to all who believe in Jesus. By following Jesus, you will not be transformed into a rich man but rather something much greater: an adopted child of God. Remember, in the scriptures there was a rich man who went away sad because he loved his “stuff’ more than God. He was face to face with God, but he said no to the invitation to follow Jesus. Being successful is not by owning a Rolex, but rather by making it to heaven.
And finally, the Gospel is not a political weapon, seen in the pursuit of liberation theology or in trying to make God a Democrat or a Republican. We cannot make Jesus a puppet for politics because that is like us transforming God instead of the other way around.
All too often we forget that Jesus died on a cross for the forgiveness of sins. Our sins! A debt had to be paid because God is just. Instead of looking at our own lives and the areas of our lives that are displeasing to God, it is easier to ignore this Truth about ourselves and transform the Gospel into something that fits our life style and agenda. We are called to let Jesus really transform us into who He has called us to be—so that we can be free in Christ.
It’s All About the Love
It seems like everyone is waiting for the world to be transformed, and we are working on ending poverty, fighting climate change and recycling bottles, but we have it backwards. “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33). We must understand that the works we do should be the fruit of our love for Jesus. Jesus wants us to fall in love with Him first—and then we will bring about a transformation in this world by the Holy Spirit living inside of us.
How do we know if we are loving Jesus? Jesus clearly tells us in John 14:15: "If you love me, keep my commandments.” If we do works of charity but do not repent from our sins, we have made works of charity our God and not Jesus. Remember that when Jesus rescued people caught in sin He would say, “Go and sin no more” because He knew He needed to emphasize that it is our souls that need cleaning. When we truly encounter Him, we will hate sin in our own lives. We will not be ruled by sin and accept it as part of who we are but instead will be transformed into sons and daughters of God who reject sin and repent of it when we fall. We are no longer sons and daughters of darkness, but are children of God. We are “born-again” as Scripture tell us: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.” Now that is Love transforming!
In the end, again, it’s all about being transformed by True Love. This is all summed up by God’s own words in 1 Corinthians 13: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have 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 do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
Such a simple little Bible story. But what a timeless truth. The Magi were transformed by True Love—and went home by a different route. Will it be the same for us?
J U S T I N M C R O B E R T S
I spend a good deal of my social energy trying to surround myself with a tribe of people more reflective of my tastes and preferences. Then, at the communion table, Jesus asks me to do something dramatically different: deny my expectations, my tastes and preferences and then receive into my life and family anyone God gives me to. These elements, this simple matter of bread and wine is symbolic of the Presence of Jesus Christ in and among whatever people He has gathered to Himself. The King of Heaven and Earth, Lover of Humanity, Friend to the Friendless and Voice of the Voiceless, has always gathered a tribe of His choosing rather than a people that make Him look good to those of us with “discerning social taste.” Jesus has not gathered there a people he finds flavorless and cheap. He has gathered a community of people He sees as precious and priceless. And He has done so at the cost of his body and blood.
It is this love, the sacrificial choice God has made to stick with us no matter what that defines who we are. Before you or I are anything else, we are Beloved of God. And that love not only transforms who we are, but ought to transform the way we see one another.
When Paul writes, in Galatians, that “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” I don’t think he’s suggesting that our culture or our gender no longer matter at all... but in light of what is MOST true of us, the things that even potentially divide us are of very little significance. May the love of God in Jesus, the love that makes us His first, not only redefine the way we know ourselves but the way we see one another; that we belong to each-other in a love much better, much stronger and more transformative than our own.
(This is an adapted excerpt from Justin’s book “CMYK: The Process of Life Together” which is available NOW, right here at SoulFest)