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The Curse of “Needing to Be Loved”
Romans 7:1-6
Mari Ikeda
When you hear this title of the message today, some of you may feel it is not your matter of concern. I’m aware of myself being in this curse of “needing to be loved,” but I guess not everyone feels such curse. However, although it depends on the person how much he or she is affected by this curse, we can learn from the Bible that we all as human beings of all ages can easily fall into this curse. Today, I’d like to read the whole text of the today’s Bible passage. Romans 7:1-6 says,
1 Do you not know, brothers and sisters —for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives? 2 For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him. 3 So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man. 4 So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5 For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. 6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
A. The law = the curse of “needing to be loved”
What is emphasized here is that we are no longer bound by the law. The law here means various rules and regulations of the Jewish religion including the Ten Commandments of Moses. However, because we have never been bound by such Jewish law from the beginning, it doesn’t really make sense to us when we hear that we are no longer bound by the law. But yet, the reason why the Jewish people in those days thought that they needed to keep observing the law even after they came to believe in Jesus is something related to the problem all human beings share in common. That is the curse of “needing to be loved.” Under this curse, we desperately strive for love from God and people and run around in vain by forgetting that God loves us. In addition, we often not just run around in vain by ourselves, but get other people involved in our futile efforts and end up in hurting them. Let us think first how we make efforts in vain towards God. 1. With God
We can say, at the time when this book of Romans was written, many Jews were making futile efforts to obtain God’s love. It was because many of them wrongly thought that to obey the law and keep the Jewish customs and culture was the condition to be loved by God. Although such wrong thought was, in a way, the result of the wrong teaching done by the Jewish religious leaders of those days, and some people knew it was wrong, most of them remain silent until Jesus came and condemn the leaders’ hypocrisy because they couldn’t confront and talk back to the leaders.
Many Christians repeat the same mistake today. As there are many churches in the world that teach people to keep the Christian way of living well or to live a holy and pure life (whatever that is), there are many Christians who are bound up to live their life in such a way. In addition, even if we are not bound by such teaching, we often forget how big God’s love for us is, by measuring His love by our human standard. As a result, when we are disgusted with ourselves for repeating failures, we may feel that even God is tired of us and has given up on us. Or perhaps, when we doubt God, we keep blaming ourselves for our lack of faith and forget to rely on Him. All of these are caused by our wrong way of making efforts, believing that we need to make our own efforts to be loved, while forgetting that God already loves us. 2. With other people
Unless we are confident in God’s love for us, we end up in making futile efforts to be loved, not only with God, but also with other people. If we seek among people to get the love that we should seek from God, we will always remain empty. Likewise, if we mistake love and reputation from other people for God’s love and evaluation, we will be in a continuous competition with others and always restless. Indeed, such competition will never end. It is exactly the same mistake that the Jewish religious leaders of the time of the New Testament fell into.
Going back to today’s text from the Romans, we can see that Paul is stressing that we are already freed from this curse of “needing to be loved.” To be more accurate, he is tellings us to remember that our old self which was in this curse is already dead with Christ, and that we are now living a new life with Him. That is what Jesus has done for us on the cross. He has set us free from our endless cycle of seeking to be loved by our own efforts, and given us reassurance instead that we are already loved more than enough, so that we can freely love God and people.
To explain what that means specifically, we can firstly say that it means not to rely on our own strength anymore, but to live our life by the power of the Holy Spirit instead. Let’s read again the last verse, verse 6. B. Jesus’ law = the freedom of “wanting to love”
1. The power of the Holy Spirit
6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
Actually, later in the Book of Romans, chapter 8 will talk more about what it means to live by the Holy Spirit, so I decided not to dig into this topic today. But what does it mean that we no longer obey the law but we obey the Holy Spirit instead? It means, as Paul has been repeatedly saying this, that our heart is changed by the Holy Spirit, about which we’d like to read Jeremiah 31:31-34 today. 2. The law that is written on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
(Jeremiah 31:31-34) “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
This word of Jeremiah is the prophecy that is already half fulfilled by Jesus. Jesus, who is God Himself, fulfilled the outrageous plan of God, by which God himself came to this world and sacrificed His life for us. It marked a beginning of the new era in human history. While people could know God only through the prophets until then, everyone gained an access to God through the event of the Cross thereafter. By giving His own life on the cross, God revealed that “(He would) forgive (our) wickedness and (would) remember (our) sins no more,” just as the book of Jeremiah says here. Each of us receives forgiveness of sin and God’s love in our heart, by personally knowing Jesus. By such a way, God has written the law on each of our hearts. It is not the law consisting of various rules and regulations written by letters, but it is the word of God that the Holy Spirit speaks to our heart directly. It is just as the book of Jeremiah says, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
However, the prophecy of Jeremiah is only half fulfilled, because not all people have got to know Jesus yet. God wants all people to be freed from the curse of “needing to be loved,” by us obeying the law written on our heart and living our life by following the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Now, what is the law written on our heart? The answer is, there are only two rules, which is to love God and to love people. Let’s read what Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew.3. The law that is written on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:31Live a life of loving God and loving others (Matthew 22:36-40)
(Matthew 22:36-40) “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
While these two commandments are indeed commandments and orders for us to follow, they are the law that is written on our heart and they are our new way of living that God has given us. It is the way of living that becomes possible when we rely on the power of the Holy Spirit, instead of our own strength, and receive the love of Jesus’ cross and the joy of being loved. In the meantime, we can receive and understand the depth of God’s love more, when we love Him and love other people. While the curse of “needing to be loved” drives us to a futile competition, the freedom “to love” leads us to an unfailing blessing of God. Let us receive Jesus’ love that is so great that He sacrificed His own life for us, and be transformed to the one who seeks to love rather than to be loved.
(Prayer) Dear our Lord Jesus, we now remember again deep in our heart that you died on the cross for us in order to save us from our sin. Help us live daily in the joy of being loved by you and give thanks to you for having been forgiven of our sin. Let us know how empty to seek our personal success in the world or reputations from people, but rather teach us how rich and abundant to live with you and love other people. Dear Lord Jesus, we pray this in your name, Amen.Summary
Jesus died on the cross to teach us that we are loved by God, and yet, we always forget and try to earn God’s love or become insecure in whether or not we are loved by other people. The only way to be free from this need to be loved is to be convinced of God’s love for us, through Jesus’ cross and by the power of the Holy Spirit, and to seek to love rather than to be loved.
For Discussion
- Do you struggle with the curse of “needing to be loved”?
- How are we given the desire to love God and love others?