Extravagant Love: Fixing our Eyes on Jesus

I was thinking intently about the theme verses for a Chrysalis team I served on, trying to understand what they were telling me. (Chrysalis is a ministry to young people between the ages of 15 and 24, with chapters in many states and around the world.) The verses chosen by the leaders of the team were Hebrews 12:1-3, and in the NIV they read

1Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

I don’t know about you, but when sentences are long and have a lot of commas and parenthetical expressions, it takes a while for their meaning to get to my brain. Probably because of that, it took me some time to break it into pieces so that I could grasp what it was saying. As I thought about what “the joy set before him” meant, it felt like the Holy Spirit spoke to me in my heart and said, “You were the joy set before Him”. Something deep within leapt with joy, while at the same time bringing tears to my eyes. Can it really be? When Jesus faced opposition and in His flesh felt like giving up, did He think of me, and that gave him hope?

Now before you stop reading because you are thinking to yourself, “Well that Tim Thomas is really full of himself to think that Jesus thought of him”, I want to assure you that I don’t believe that I was the only person He thought of, or that by myself I was the joy set before Him. No, I believe that you, too, were the joy set before Him. That is, all who have or ever will come into intimate relationship with Him out of faith and because of His sacrifice on the cross, we all were the joy set before Him. This is true collectively, yes, but individually, too. We lose a lot of blessing when we think that Jesus only cares for the Church as a collective entity, and forget that He cares deeply for the individual components — each one of us — in that collective entity. That’s the whole point of Ephesians 3:19, which I have written about extensively in the past (see http://www.wowgod.org/Ephesians3_16to19.htm).

How does that idea make you feel, that you were the joy set before Jesus? That when Jesus was having a down day, he thought of you, and that cheered Him up? That when He was on the road to the cross, He wasn’t thinking about your sin, but about how much He loved you, and how good it would be once you were set free to love Him in return? That one day you would be His pure spotless bride (or at least part of that bride)? Do any of these thoughts change how you think of Jesus? How you think of faith? How you think about spending your time and energy?

Whether or not you believe that I heard the Holy Spirit say that “you were the joy set before Jesus”, we should look more deeply into the passage to see what it is unequivocally saying to us. First, it is telling us that distraction is one of the main things that the devil wants to use against us to keep us from living faith-filled, victorious lives. Instead of using the word distraction, the author of Hebrews in verse 1 talks about things that will hinder us or entangle us. Yes, sin is named, but the author also names “everything” else, which includes many “good” things that are simply distractions that keep us from our first love. Things that hinder or entangle — sounds like distractions to me!

In verse 2, we see that the way for us to avoid these distractions is to look at Jesus… So, whether you believe that Jesus looking at us was part of His strategy to persevere and remain true, it is true that we are called to look at Jesus so that we might persevere and remain true. This looking at Jesus might entail two things. First, this verse and the following directly imply that we should follow His example, doing the things He did to remain faithful, as well as begin motivated by the fact that by doing those things, He was successful. Secondly, implicit in the concept of fixing our eyes on Jesus, is the idea of stirring up in our hearts love for Him by thinking about Him and reading about Him and talking with Him. We are to think not just about Jesus on the earth, but Jesus now in heaven, too.
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Jesus outlines the principle in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:21 — which some have dubbed the “treasure principle” — telling us that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (NIV). Treasure is something we value. We value it by thinking about it and doing things to acquire it, and once acquired, to protect it. The “treasure principle” says that if you treasure something in this manner, your heart will turn to it. If it is a true principle, then we can apply this in a number of ways, including improving our marriages and other relationships.

I have used this principle before, not knowing that it would enhance my love for God. When I was living in Japan years ago, I used to take walks as many evenings as I could, just talking and singing to God. I wasn’t trying to gain anything by doing this, I was simply trying to give my love to God in the best way that I could think of. But by giving — by treating God as a treasure worth sacrificing time for in this manner — I noticed that my heart was stirred all the more for Jesus. I was more passionately in love with Him than ever!

For scientists and engineers, we call this a positive feedback loop, where one action reinforces the other, which in turn increases the original action. Let’s create as many positive feedback loops for Jesus that we can! It does make you wonder how much Mary of Bethany must have been in love with Jesus AFTER her great sacrifice of love for Jesus. Some sacrifices wear us out after we’ve done them, but others set us on a path to even greater heights. I like to think that this is what happened with Mary!

May we all examine ourselves for how we have been distracted, hindered, and entangled by things that keep us from treasuring and loving the One who loves us more than all others! And let us turn our eyes to Him, treasuring Him and giving Him the focus that such a love deserves. One of the saddest things in the world is unrequited love. Let not Jesus’ love for you be unrequited. Let your love for Him and His for you instead become a love story that will be told for generations!

Acknowledgments: Thanks to my friends in Maryland Chrysalis, who heard an earlier version of this talk, and the leaders of Maryland 56, who chose Hebrews 12:1-3 as the theme for our weekend, and therefore saw even before I did the power in these words for living a life of extravagant love.

 

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