Text: 2 Peter 1:1–9
Topic: When we love unlovely people, they become loveable.

• Illustration: G. K. Chesterton noticed that the best fairytales teach us how to live as grown ups. Chesterton said that Beauty and the Beast teaches that unlovely things must be deeply loved before they become loveable.
• Paul wrote: "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly … . God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
• Unlovely things must be deeply loved before they become loveable.
• John says, "We love because he first loved us."
• In 1 Peter, Peter says, "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins."

• Peter uses the word agape for love.
• Often, agape has been described as unconditional love—love that is not earned.
• Most love that operates in the human realm is conditional.
• Agape is a choice to love, and the emotion comes after that decision.
• Agape actually pursues the object of its love. It is loving even in the face of resistance, even in the face of behavior where another emotion might be more expected.
• Here's an even a simpler way to understand it: Agape is unprovoked love. As with unprovoked violence, when we seek to understand unprovoked love, we look for the explanation not in the object of love, but in the one who is loving.
• The Father's an agape lover. The Father is a lover who loves what he loves not based on the loveliness of the object, but on some quality within himself.
• We need agape love for three types of people: the losers ("the least of these"), the winners ("the most of these"), and the enemies ("the worst of these").
• If you don't allow the love of Jesus Christ to flow into and through you, then the minute you bang up against a winner, a loser, or an enemy, you're in trouble.

• The least of these are the people you're most likely not to notice, or if you notice them, you're tempted to avoid them.
• They drain you. There's no gain in loving these, and there's no loss in not loving them.
• We need to overcome this disdain, disgust, and weariness with the presence of the least of these, the losers of the world.
  • Illustration: In Brooklyn, New York, young baseball players exhibit agape love by sacrificing their win at a baseball game to welcome a boy with special needs and help him hit a home run.

• If we don't have agape love, we aren't going to get very far with the most of these, the winners.
• The most of these is a person who does what you do and just does it better.
• We are most threatened not by those who are different from us, but by those who are most like us, just a little better.
• What the Spirit of God has to do with the most of these is give you freedom from your sense of inferiority and insecurity so that you become their biggest fan.
  • Illustration: Saul, the father of Jonathan, was David's rival. Jonathan, Saul's son, had more to lose than Saul did. He was the one who was actually going to be supplanted by David. Yet Jonathan became David's biggest champion. Jonathan did this because he saw David's cause as God's cause.
• This is what you do with the most of these: you ask the question, "What are you up to here, God?" Because it's not about you; it's about God's kingdom.
• God wants to convert your feelings of animosity or resentment or intimidation into enormous favor toward that person.

• Agape is supremely needed with your enemy, the worst of these.
• You have cause to despise them. They have hurt you. They have betrayed you. They've taken something precious from you. They've exploited you.
• Jesus says: You will be sons and daughters of your Father in heaven when you love those who have in every way forfeited your love for them, because they actually set out to hurt you in some way.
  • Illustration: A Rwandan woman's son was killed in the genocide. The woman nursed thoughts of vengeance until God gave her a dream that called her to forgive her son's killer. She reconciled with the killer, and he now lives in her home as her son.
• You cannot love your enemy unless God does something in you and gives you unprovoked love for that person when they've provoked everything but love.

• The opposite of love is not hate but fear.
• First John 4:18 says: " … Perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love."
• Fear will block the love of God infusing you and coming out of you.
• Fear has to do with: "You don't measure up. You're not worth it. If we really knew you, we wouldn't like you."
• Yet the reality is: How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
• "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
• Do you not know how loved you are? It's not because you deserve it; the agape lover has loved you and loves you. You have no cause for fear.
• As you experience the fearlessness of being loved by a holy God, you will be able to do what is otherwise humanly impossible: love the least of these, love the most of these, and love the worst of these.