Love is stronger than death

Quite often charity work is said to be linked to love but is that claim true or else charity work is motivated by something else other than love?

Alms giving is not supposed to be a duty, a way of courting blessings or a religious rite because such a situation is alien to the manner God rewards his people. God is not after your alms but he is after the attitude of your heart whenever you do alms. Alms giving must instead be a direct act of love because without love all our efforts and gifts to the poor are meaningless. In Corinthians 13:3 Paul pointed out that loveless giving or giving for the sake of fulfilling a religious obligation is an empty and vain performance. It is mere drama. Alms giving and love are compatriots and are very difficult to separate and the same can be said concerning all other forms of giving.

                Love is one thing which is very difficult to weigh up and it is the only thing which Solomon said in Songs 8:6 is as strong as death. All other things under the sun are reversible except death. Sickness and disease can be reversed as soon as the appropriate care; treatment or medication is administered to the patient. Wealth and riches as well as poverty are reversible. Even national laws are reversed hence the numerous amendments and repeals. Under the sun one of the very few things that is irreversible is death. Once a person dies any hope of life immediately fades. Even a person’s riches and power cannot bring a dead person back to life. Hospitals have no special wards or units for reviving dead people because once a person dies he is departed. Undertakers are aware that death is irremediable hence many methods of disposing off the dead.

                Solomon compares love to death because love, I mean genuine love, like death is irrevocable. When God loved men he could not invalidate his love for men. His love for men led him into taking on the form of men and eventually the death of a criminal on the cross of Calvary just because of his love for men. We are told that he loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten son so that anyone who believes in him would not die but have everlasting life, a clear indication that love is not only as strong as death but is stronger than death. Love is so strong that it even gives away one’s life. Christ loved us so much that he gave us that thing very dear to any human being, his very own life and position. Jesus took our reproach and sin in exchange for his righteousness and divine nature because he loved us. In his own words in John 15:13 the Lord said, ‘greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’

                Whenever you read about love and giving, love always comes before giving. In other words, it is love that gives and not giving which shows love. When you have love, that which is in you will give away. So instead of giving in order to show love, love itself will reveal itself in giving. Peter and John came across a beggar when they were penniless but because they had love, that love within them revealed itself through giving. It is said that when the two came face to face with the beggar, the beggar asked them to give him alms. Peter, who then was broke financially, said to the beggar, ‘silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee.’ So, Peter had something to give.

                Although he did not possess dollars and cents he had something, which he gave the lame beggar. He had the love of Christ within him and that love was boiling within him and was pushing itself out so that it could display itself in giving. Although there was no money to give, that love was however ready to give because love has no limitation. The force of the love of Christ was so strong in Peter that he promised the beggar something. Because of this strong love Peter said, ‘ … but such as I have give I thee: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.’ Acts 3:1-10. You know the rest, the man stood up and walked and religious leaders jailed Peter and John for the crime of doing a good work.

                Was it Peter who gave the poor crippled man health? No, it was Jesus Christ of Nazareth who did it through Peter and John. Peter himself confessed this fact. In Acts 5:11-16 doctor Luke reports that when Peter perceived what was going on in the minds of the crowd he said to the people, ‘ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? Or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we made this man to walk. The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his son Jesus … and his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong; whom ye see and know.’ So, you see that it was not Peter but Christ working through Peter. Isaiah tells us that because of his love for us Jesus bore our sins and carried all our diseases in his own body. Because of this strong love, he gave health to the lame man and he did it through Peter because of the latter’s love for his Lord and fellow man. If Peter and John did not have this love they would simply have wished the unfortunate man well or would have merely passed without being moved by his plight.

                The thirteenth chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians tells us that love is longsuffering and kind: is not jealousy or boastful; it is not arrogant and is not puffed up. It is further said that love is not selfish. True love is not selfish because verse 5 reads, ‘charity … seeketh not her own.’ If you give for selfish ends, then know that you do not have love. Love does not seek its own gain but the success of others. John 3:16 does not say that God loved the world and gave his son so that he would have worshippers or loyal followers. God gave his son so that the beneficiaries of that love would have life and have it abundantly. He gave for the purpose and profit of men and not for his own gains. If the entire human race were to perish God would not have lost anything at all but he loved us anyway. Man, sinned against God but it is God who first loved man and sought reconciliation with man. Did it ever occur to you that we never loved God and probably we do not love God? Our love for God is in response to his love for us so it is his love for us that drives us to love him. Our love is responsive whilst his is not responsive. He loved us when we were still in sin and when we were still camped in the compounds of his arch enemy, the devil. Before we had regretted our sinful nature and before we had repented of our sins, Christ died for us. My friend, that is love, first class love. Today you tell me that you love God, did you ever love him before he loved you or would you do it had he not sought to reconcile you to him. Our love for him is in response to his love so we greatly need his love to operate within us.

When we have God’s love in us we will terminate selfishness within us. The problem with human love is that it gives in order to receive but the love of God gives for the benefit of the recipient. Some of us give alms because the book of Proverbs says that he who gives to the poor lends to the Lord and the Lord will pay him back with good returns. If that promise had not been written, we would not give because giving would not have returns and that is not love at all. Many teachers who teach giving place emphasis on the promise rather than the act of giving itself because it is evident that most human beings lack genuine godly love. True love is not selfish and does not seek its own gain but the wellbeing and success of others hence promises cannot activate it but the promises merely guarantees that the God of life is pleased or is elated by the activities of that love. If your giving is motivated by promises instead of love you need to be delivered from selfishness. It certainly is the right time you implored God to impart into you a fraction of his pure selfless godly love.

Selfishness is daily being preached in this generation without shame on many pulpits at the expense of true godly and self-sacrificing love that was manifest in Christ. If love had been accorded its rightful place, the world would have long known and confessed that we are indeed the Disciples of Christ. The Lord’s doctrine on giving is often greatly distorted to promote egotism and insatiability by making love depend on the purported rewards of giving for the sake of handsome returns. We are taught to give for the sole reason of gain, a principle that is at variance with the standard of love. It is very true that God will reward us for giving but our love must never be a means of amassing rewards but our acts must be for the purpose of revealing the love of our Lord. When we give for the sake of receiving rewards, our giving will become that of duty rather than of love. God knew very well that the majority of mankind would reject Christ and that only a minority would believe in Christ but he still gave us his Son even before we had repented of our sins. He very well knew that of the generation that came out of Egypt only Moses, Caleb and Joshua would remain loyal to him yet he delivered the entire nation including those who doubted him. That is how love functions

I grieve very much when I see Luke chapter six being turned into a tool of self-centeredness. Instead of teaching people to give out of love, multitudes are taught to give for the sake of egotistical gains. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:3 said, ‘though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor … and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.’ Today there are many who give sacrificially not out of love but for the sake of gains that will accrue to them because of that giving. I am not very happy to announce that such type of giving is done in vain. What does it profit, my brethren, if a man gives all that he has and in return acquires the fruition of all promises pertaining to giving but does not have love. Is such giving pleasing to the Lord? Is not the giving of love what God requires from you who call upon the name of his only begotten son? This is what the Lord seeks in your giving, love, and the fear of God, mercy and faith.

The great doctrine of give and it shall be given unto you was not taught within the context of offerings or tithes but within the context of assisting others and the perspective of sharing love with fellow man. Here the Lord was teaching his servants to give not only to their friends but also to strangers and those who hated them. This great doctrine is found in the book of Luke chapter 6 verses 30 to 38 and is within the background of showing mercy and love, giving to people not expecting a return. In some way, the Lord was teaching the saints not to seek rewards but the perfection, which is found only in the Father. It is not God but men who has shifted the doctrine of give and it shall be given unto you from showing love and helping our fellow humans to that of giving offerings for the purpose of selfish gains. Men give in order to receive more and nothing more. Jesus the great shepherd of our souls taught this doctrine using the following words, which I beg you to analyse very closely. ‘I say to you … love your enemies, do good to those who hate you … and as you would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. If you do good to those who do good to you what thank have you? For sinners also lend to sinners, to receive much gain. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend hoping for nothing again: and your reward shall be great, and you shall be children of the Highest: for he is kind to the unthankful and evil. Be merciful therefore as your Father also is merciful … Give and it shall be given to you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that you measure with it shall be measured to you again.’

                To me here Christ is not saying give ‘so that’ it will also be given back to you but he is merely affirming a fact that if you give you will one day discover that what you gave is always given back to you. You do not give so that you will receive back in the same manner unbelievers are motivated to give in anticipation of profits someday but you must give hoping for no return because you already have a greater reward in that you are a child of Almighty God. He is saying that even if you give expecting no return, returns will still come because people will still give you on the basis of your measure in giving others. The Shonas have a proverb that says that a gift goes where another gift came from or one good turn deserves another. Now if your measure is not of love but of self-gratification never expect a measure of love back. One day someone is going to give you so that he may also obtain gains through giving which in short means that you will be his tool for his personal gain.

Secondly giving that comes out of love cannot make a distinction between a friend and an enemy. Godly love just gives even to those who are hostile to it. When Herod sought to kill baby Jesus God still made his oxygen available to Herod so that he would still breath. When the Jews and the Romans killed the Son of God, God still allowed them to live in the hope that they would repent and be partakers of the salvation of Christ. After they had ridiculed Christ and crucified him like a criminal together with hard-core criminals, Christ still forgave them thereby extending his love to people who had declared themselves his enemies. Even Stephen also extended his love and forgave those who were painfully terminating his life by stoning and because of that which he gave a great missionary and teacher in the name of Paul came into the church. Stephen gave Saul his love and in return God gave the church the apostle Paul who was ready to shed his own blood for the cause of the gospel for which Stephen died. Love knows no barriers. True love conquers hatred and it does not believe in abhorrence. Imagine, Saul who fought against the love of God because of his abhorrence of the church was later the very same Paul who was prepared to die for Christ because of his love for Christ and the church. It surely is true that the greatest gem is love.

Where does love start? Love does not come from a vacuum but it comes from the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. We will never know true love until we have known God who is himself love. If we desire the love of God to operate within and through us we must start by accepting his love and giving ourselves to him unreservedly. One day a learned lawyer from the fold of the Pharisees asked the Master which law was the greatest. The Prince of Peace said, ‘thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ Jesus did not give only one law but two that are so great that the entire Bible revolves around them. If you take away one of them from the Bible the Bible will simply collapse and so will our faith and hope. I mean that we will cease to have the law, the prophets, the gospels, the Acts, the epistles and the apocalypse. The Christian faith and doctrine will disintegrate without these two commandments. Even Judaism will cave in without the two commands. The two commandments deal with one very important thing called Love. Our salvation stands because of that one thing because God loved us because he is love. Do you love God? Read again carefully and analytically Matthew 22:36-40.

                In other words, Jesus was saying that if you want to fulfil the demands of The Law and The Prophets you must accomplish the requirements of this twofold law. So, our starting point is to love God with our entire being, which is the whole human being. Everything that constitutes me, that is my spirit, soul and body, must love the Lord. If we do not love God we will not be able to obey him. The first important thing is that we must give ourselves wholly to the Lord. Daniel was ready to become the lions’ dinner and never sought to defend his life because of his love for his God. Even the fear of the Lord cannot be found where the love of God is absent. Stephen died a slow and painful death because of his love for the Lord. He had surrendered his life and whole being to the Lord and never lived for himself but for he whom he loved. That is how precious and strong love is. It is so strong that Solomon in Songs 8:7 said, ‘many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned.’ When we begin to love the Lord, no flood will be able to put out that love. Read Revelation chapter six where you will learn of millions who died because of their love for the Lord.

Loving the Lord with our entire beings entails surrendering our whole selves to him. Did he not do the same for us? He became man for our sakes and died for us because of his love for us. If we truly love him we must cease to live for ourselves but for him who died for us. If you never counted the cost of following Christ, you better do it now. You will have to love the Lord and by that, I mean that since love delights in giving, you will have to give your entire being and freedom to the Lord. You will have to cease living for yourself and start to live for the Lord. The Lord’s enemies will become your enemies and they may seek to destroy your life but because of your love for the Lord you will not be able to defend your interests but the interests of the Lord. In Matthew 16:24-26 the Lord said, ‘if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’ In simple words, he is saying that if you want to follow him you must put your life at risk for his sake. A cross is not a symbol of luxury but of suffering and of certain death. If you are to carry your cross were will you take it to? You will take it to the place of slaughter where your own life will be taken away from you on your own cross. Friend, that is the cost of following Christ.

The love of God gives and it is because of that love that Christ gave his own life for us and it also follows that if we love God we will have to give him our lives too. Forget about offerings, tithes, alms and gifts because they are not enough if we truly love the Lord. For us who truly love the Lord, we will have to give him that which is dearest to us, our very lives. The most valuable thing to you is your own life and if you really adore God you will have to give it to your God. If you are yet to give God your life, you better hurry up and surrender it to him. I am glad to confess that I no longer live for myself but for him who died for me and if I were to die today for his sake I will have nothing to lose because it is his life that I now live. You cannot steal my life because I gave it to the Lord way back in August 1979. It is very simple; when you give, you will cease to possess what you will have given. It will belong to the one you gave. When Paul was still a Pharisee he learnt it the hard way. Out of Pharisaic zeal he went about persecuting a group of people he never knew had given their lives to Christ. Paul did not know that the people he was persecuting had long ceased to live because they had long given their lives to the Lord they very much loved and the life they lived was for Christ. So when Paul came face to face with the Lord, the Lord said to him, ‘Paul why do you persecute Me.’ He never said why do you persecute my church because that church had surrendered and given itself to him long back and was consequently now living for him who died for it. This reality is central to our Christian faith.

                If you think that loving the Lord demands a lot and therefore decide to keep your life let me give you a small priceless advice. If you lose your life you will find it but if you find your life, I am afraid you will lose it. That is God’s principle and I do not understand how you lose something by keeping it and you gain something by losing it but I have no problem believing it. Daniel lost his life; they gave him to the lions but the lions refused to dine on someone who was living for some Great One. When Daniel’s accusers who still held on to their cherished lives were cast to the lions’ den, the lions had a feast and the unfortunate guys discovered when they were settling down in the lions’ bellies that they had lost their lives in the process of preserving the same lives. On his way home Daniel discovered that he had found his life in the process of losing it. Jesus lost his life for our sake but today he is alive and sitting at the right hand of the Father.

The second important law is that we must love our neighbours as ourselves. One man asked who his neighbour was and the Lord indicated through the parable of the Good Samaritan that every human being is our neighbour. So, this law directs us to love all our fellowmen. In other words, we must love all mankind including those who hate us. In his doctrine, the Lord in Matthew 5:43-48 taught, ‘love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven … For if you love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.’ Godly love knows no enemy. Jesus prayed for his enemies whilst hanging on the cross because love can never be quenched by hatred. Solomon said floods couldn’t quench the flames of love.

When we love our fellowmen, we will find it easier to bear one another’s burdens because the love, which is from God, finds pleasure in giving. When God in Deuteronomy 15:7 and Leviticus 25:35 says, ‘if there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from the poor brother. And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; thou shalt relieve him: yea though he be a stranger, or a sourjouner, that he may live with thee,’ we will say Lord it is a pleasure to give therefore thank you for the opportunity and we will give. Alms giving will cease to be a duty when we love our fellowmen as much as we love ourselves. We will also enjoy obeying the ordinances of the Lord concerning helping the poor because of our love for the Lord and his people.

Our measure of love to others must be the measure by which we desire to be loved. The value we place on ourselves must be the very value we place on others. If we desire to have enough food for our health and wellbeing, then because of the love of God and our love for our fellowmen we must seek to so feed our hungry fellows. Doctor Luke says that in the early church no one was in need because of love. Those who possessed surplus sold what they had so that those who lacked would meet their needs from the proceeds of those sales. It is said one man, Barnabas by name, actually sold his farm. Imagine selling your ranch so that some poor Dick somewhere, whose ancestor never ever owned even a broom, would own also a garden from the results of your action. Do you own three cars? Now imagine selling two so that you may buy bicycles for some other people. Worse still, imagine yourself selling all the three and start riding bicycles with several others for whom you bought bicycles also. Dear reader, love has the capacity to take you to such extremes.

I know very well that the church has done wonderful charitable deeds which the world cannot deny but my reason for writing this book is not to heap praise but to encourage or rebuke where necessary hence the absence of any trumpet blowing. One movement was once ridiculed and nicknamed The Starvation Army because of the good and sound Biblical Godly deeds that the movement outstandingly performed among the hungry. Many people today are still alive because of such Starvation Armies who gallantly fought and defeated hunger and starvation in the noble name of the Lord. May the Lord bless these gallant soldiers of The New Testament abundantly.

As for those movements who believed alms deeds were not spiritual my word to them is that they must revise their positions. They must read and re-read their Bibles and take heed of the Lord’s commands. Alms deeds very much revolve around God in as much the same way worship does. It is the love of God, which leads us into alms giving. Those who love God seek to please him. Now if we seek to please God we will seek to know what he loves so that we will give it to him. I will now tell you a secret about what God loves very much. God loves man; he loves man so much that he made him after the image and likeness of God. God cannot stomach a starving human being and that is why food has never run out in the world. Of course, there are times we read of famines but if you analyse the world situation you will discover that the world, at that very moment will be having enough to feed everyone including animals, the only problem is that others will be keeping most of the food refusing to share with their fellowmen. Such is the situation because humans know no love. Even during the days of Joseph, when there was a drought throughout the world, God saw to it that Egypt had enough to feed the world but those who died of starvation did so because of lack of love and sympathy from their fellows.

It is a wonder why we have poor people among us. I always think it is because others have heaped the wealth of the earth to their own preserve and are not willing to share with others. If the love of God existed in all of us, we would share the wealth of the world and still have surplus for the birds and all other creatures. Because of lack of love we actually exploit others for us to become rich. The Shona people have a proverb, which says that exploiting other birds a bird fattens itself and another that says a wise bird uses other birds’ feathers to build its nest. Such is the human nature that man abuses man to attain self-enrichment. One man will buy ten houses and if he happens to be a councillor, he will see to it that an accommodation crisis is created so that he will rent out his ten houses at exorbitant rates. A farmer will hide food so that a catastrophe is formed whereby he will sell his merchandise at a hundred times the proper price. An unscrupulous doctor will prescribe the wrong medication to a sick person so that the sick person will visit the doctor more than is necessary paying for each visit. All this happens because we do not love God and men and as a result we make no effort to please God or to improve the wellbeing of our fellow human beings.

For those who love the Lord, let me tell you one of the many ways of pleasing God. God loves to see humans living sound and happy lives. He does not want men to be poor and that is why Jesus became poor for our sakes so that through his poverty we would become rich. Now if you see a poor man lend him a hand and God will be elated. If you come across a hungry man give him food and God will be in seventh heaven. Give shelter to the homeless and God will never forget you, he will prepare for both of you an eternal dwelling in his everlasting kingdom. Jesus said that on his return he shall say to the righteous, ‘… come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the king shall answer unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’ Matthew 25:34-40. Do you now see the secret? If you give the needy God will say you are giving him because God loves people so much that he is concerned with their welfare.

Proverbs 19 verse 17 says, ‘he that has pity upon the poor lends to the Lord; and that which he gave will he pay him again.’ So, alms giving is lending to the Lord and is that not spiritual. I for that reason exhort you brethren to give alms, never cease but give out of love.

If you love God, you will find it easy to give those whom God loves. God does not love saints alone but also sinners hence we must not be discriminatory when giving alms. Religion, race or tribe must never be used to determine whom we give. Alms must be given to all in need notwithstanding their religious, racial or tribal background. God loves all, so we must also give to all freely.

We do not give so that we may reap a hundredfold return but we give because we love God and our fellow human beings. If returns do come that is fine but our main goal in giving must solely be to share the love of God. The greatest thing we can give is not material but is love itself. As a result, all material things we may give must be products of that love. Never ever give as a duty but always give out of love. Love and alms giving are inseparable. Let love reign when you give out what you have. Never hesitate to share what you have with those who do not have. God gave you so you must also be ready to give.