SUFFERING HELPS DISCOVER AGAPE LOVE – Lesson 2
By: Frank Tunstall, D. Min.
“Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when He heard Lazarus was sick, He stayed where He was two more days” (John 11:5-6).
The sovereign authority of God often comes into focus in the tension between two kinds of love, phileo and agape. The Apostle John used the word agape to describes God’s unconditional love. God’s love does what is best for a person or cause as only God knows what is best. The Lord does it whether it is merited or deserved. For one example, God sends His rain on the evil and the good: the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). This love is the love that described Jesus’ love for Lazarus and his sisters. The Lord also illustrated by the thief on the cross.
God’s love is always in our best interests, in the perfect way only He knows our best interests. Friendship love always comes with attached obligations, including the expectation of returned favors and kindnesses. A friend (phileo) is much more likely to act out of duty, doing what his buddy wants him to do. A person motivated by God’s love, agape, will be guided by the Holy Spirit to do what will benefit another as God sees the need.
Jesus was indeed Mary and Martha’s friend (phileo) but He was much more than their friend. He was also their Messiah and the greatest benefit He could give them was His unconditional march of love to Calvary. He would sacrifice Himself there as the atoning substitute for the sins of all people worldwide, including His three friends in Bethany.
The sisters interpreted Jesus’ love for Lazarus with the word, phileo (friendship love—(John 11:3). They had not yet come to appreciate the height and depth of the heavenly Father’s love for them [agape].
THINK ABOUT IT: The word agape expresses Jesus’ love for you, too, dear reader (Psalm 13:5–6 Msg). A loving father and mother will give their child what is best for him, even though it is often not what he wants. So-it-is with the heavenly Father. The term, agape, means God will do what is right or best in the situation, based on His perfect knowledge of what is the ultimate good. And when Jesus acts in the best interests of His kingdom, for example, He is always acting in our best interests too, even though we might not comprehend it at the time.
Parents routinely do the same thing. They give to a child according to a balance of what is good for the child and in the best interests of the family.
This understanding explains John’s use of the expression, “yet when he heard…” (John 11:6), or “in view of what He heard.” Knowing Lazarus was seriously ill, Jesus decided not to go immediately to him. In the sisters’ expectations, the greatest blessing Jesus could give Lazarus was to come immediately and heal his terminal illness. Besides, they were friends (phileo), and this is what friends do. If possible, a devoted friend will give the help requested. In Martha’s and Mary’s expectations, Jesus owed it to them. They had welcomed Him, fed Him, given Him a place to sleep, and Mary had sat as a learner at His feet.
Jesus, on the other hand, understood the greatest act of love (agape) He could show Lazarus and his sisters was not to heal him but to raise Lazarus from the dead. As this unfolds, the story reveals the painful process by which the sisters’ moved from phileo to agape and aligned their expectations with the sovereign purposes of God.
Yes, suffering requires us to examine ourselves while at the same time it compels us to think about God and His ways. Jesus’ love for Martha, Mary, and Lazarus stands out in this story. It also shows how Jesus acted in their best interests, knowing agape love was the best thing that could happen to Lazarus or the sisters.
Jesus also knew their expectations of Him, based on friendship love (phileo), would make them misunderstand His motives. In fact, it is not at all unusual for friendship love to misinterpret the choices of agape love.
THINK ABOUT IT: For all of God’s children, adjusting expectations so that we discover and accept the richness of agape love often seems to be a painful process.
Dear reader, have you ever walked in Martha’s and Mary’s shoes?
Do we grumble, complain, or blame God, or do we seek His glory?
Jesus had already affirmed to His disciples what His sovereign objective was in Lazarus’ terminal illness: “It is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it” (John 11:4). But these two sisters did not know this yet. As for the disciples, they had heard Jesus say it, but neither had they assimilated it.
One can only imagine the trauma Mary and Martha suffered as they watched their brother’s life ebb away, all the while hoping by the moment Jesus would show up and heal him. One is left to wonder how many times these very distraught women who felt friendship love for Jesus (phileo) stared out their window, yearning to see Jesus walking up the street. Jesus was their only hope, but He did not come to their brother’s aid. They had no choice but to surrender Lazarus to the Grim Reaper.
As that process unfolded, they surely began to ponder what went wrong in their relationship with Jesus.
These sisters had looked death in the eye before, having most probably surrendered their mother and their father. Now, the only man left in their lives was gone.
With loving hands and devastated hearts, they wrapped their brother’s face and body in burial cloths and poured the burial ointments over him. Then, with the help of friends, they gently placed his cold body in the stone cave that earlier they probably had claimed for their father and mother. After each of the women gave their brother’s chilled body a hug and a kiss, that always marks the final goodbye, a stone was placed over the mouth of the burial chamber. As they began walking away albeit with a few glances back, these two heartbroken sisters slowly departed the cave to face a bleak future together. They had once been a happy family of at least five, secure and safe. Now they had only each other and were loaded with all the emotions of insecurity.
“If Jesus had only come to help us! Why didn’t He rescue our brother?”
Mary and Martha loved Jesus with the love that is between close friends. They did not yet know they had the most powerful Person in the universe on their side, and that Jesus is always bigger and stronger than any crisis. In fact, Jesus is the sovereign God who is good all the time (Psalm 34:8; 73:5; 100:5; 1 Chronicles 16:34; Mark 10:18; John 10:11). But in their overwhelming grief these very lonely sisters could not even entertain the thought Jesus’ two-day delay might be an act of agape love. Nor did they perceive how Jesus’ delay would ultimately align their best interests and their brother’s with the purposes of God. The interval did, however, begin the process of showing the sisters their own hearts, even as it required them to think seriously, at a whole new level, about the plans of God.
THINK ABOUT IT: Tears have a way of washing out the soul. But until this cleansing is complete, tears can also blind us to the new possibilities ahead.
The story of Lazarus and his sisters puts on the front burner three of the most profound statements people in crisis make about Jesus. Martha and Mary expressed them, and people through the centuries have thought them too:
- “We earnestly prayed, but Jesus did not answer our prayers.”
- “He could have prevented this if He had wanted too.”
- Hence, “can Jesus be trusted to do good in the crises of life? Is He genuinely good, all the time?”
This theme will continue next week with Lesson 3.
