Calvary Road Baptist Church
“STANISLAVSKY LOVE OR REAL LOVE?”
Romans 12.9
Do you know what the world’s favorite word is? It’s the word “love.” Unsaved people like to talk about and think about and write about love more than they like to ponder anything else. Reminisce with me for a few moments, and I think you’ll see that what I suggest has real merit. The last four men our country has elected as president of the United States have each of them being, as am I, a child of the 60s. And anyone who is a child of the 60s is aware of the motto of the 60s. The motto was “Make _____, Not War.” What’s the word I’m looking for? Of course. Love. And if the motto for the 60s was “Make Love, Not War,” then the theme of the 60s was “Free Love.”
As you look around the country and consider the laws governing marriage and the laws governing gender identity, is it not obvious that with the Baby Boomer Generation in charge of the culture we have not escaped the clutches of 1960s morality? Allow me to stroll down memory lane.
In the 70s, I think it was, while the whole country was recovering from the extremely divisive Vietnam War, the newspapers tell us that the box office movie hit that was all the rage was “___ Story.” It was a movie made from an extremely sentimental and romantic novel by a university professor named Eric Segal. And the movie was about a rich Cornell student and a young woman he was so much “in love” with that after their episode of fornication they got married. Then, she died.
Then, in the 80s our country’s preoccupation with love took another turn. Major advances were made in marketplace ethics by such men as Ivan Boesky, Michael Millikan, T. Boone Pickens, and Charles Keating, who elevated greed and the love of money to heights not reached since the days of J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Joseph P. Kennedy.
But crass materialism and the love of money was not all the 80s was known for. Remember the Hollywood crowd? The 1980s was also the decade that they went around kissing each other. Remember how all the Hollywood men would kiss each other when they greeted each other and when they would part company? I wonder why they don’t do that anymore?
Could it be associated with my last example of love in the 80s, when the homosexual community began to succeed in their desperate attempts to portray and characterize same-sex activity, which is not only vile and filthy behavior but which is also typically quite violent, as love? And the United States fell for it. So that now, although many Americans are still very uneasy about same-sex relationships, no one any longer dares to stand up and shout the truth about such wickedness; that it does not love. That it’s a base form of selfish and perverse gratification.
I think we’ve reminisced enough about the world’s preoccupation with the subject of love. And even if they don’t show as much “love” as they used to before the outbreaks of AIDS and other types of predominantly venereal diseases, they still consider love an important subject. Love is so important to them that anyone who disagrees with them about anything is guilty of hate.
Love is also an important subject of man’s consideration and meditation. Love is the single most important abstract concept there is. It was love, remember, that motivated God to send His only begotten Son to die for sins on Calvary’s cross. And it was love that motivated our Lord to offer Himself as a ransom as a means of satisfying His Father’s righteous demands that someone be punished for our sinfulness.
When we talk about love being an important subject of consideration and reflection, let’s make sure that we understand love to be what God says it is, not what it is considered to be in the warped and twisted minds of men who know not God. Let us understand that fornication, whatever the feelings two selfish people might have for each other, can never be an expression of love. And let us understand that whatever else love for material things may be thought to be, it is both foolish and wicked to make as the object of your affections something that is temporary and will someday burn with a fervent heat.
It is because love is so important that we are given explicit instructions for showing love to each other and for showing love to the unsaved people around us. Here we are, having just learned about the love of God in Christ Jesus in Romans chapters 1-11, having learned about love that is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and having been given instructions on how to respond to God’s love in Romans 12.1-2, that we are now being taught how to love each other properly.
Think about how Paul deals with spiritual gifts and love. What he previously did in First Corinthians he does again here in Romans. First, he lays out general guidelines for the proper exercise of spiritual gifts. In First Corinthians, this occurred in chapter 12. Here in Romans, we find directions in Romans 12.3-8. So, we now have the proper tools to use to minister to each other.
As he did in First Corinthians 13 and does here in Romans 12.9-21, Paul follows his instructions for using spiritual gifts with instructions about love. We’re going to have to understand that the lost world knows so little about real love, so little about genuine love, that for them to have any hope of ever understanding what real love is we are going to have to be the ones to show them.
And if you think that religious folks are going to be able to help the problem just because they are religious, think again. The cults are so fouled up on what love is that the Mormons, for instance, actually think that Jesus Christ is the product of a sexual liaison between Mary and Jehovah. And the Roman Catholics have such an appreciation of love that they instituted the Spanish Inquisition so they could show their Christian love by torturing and burning at the stake all who didn’t kowtow to them in fear.
No. Love is too important a subject to leave up to the world to talk about. And it’s too important a topic to leave to the religious but lost crowd. And it’s too important a topic to just talk about. We’re going to have to start showing love. Amen? We who are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, we who have experienced the love of God in Christ Jesus, must show love.
At this time we will begin a detailed examination of the way real love is expressed according to Romans 12.9-21. My text is found in Romans 12.9. I invite you to stand once you find that passage for the reading of God’s Word. My message will focus on the first sentence in Romans 12.9:
“Let love be without dissimulation.”
In this statement Paul suggests a contrast between the kind of love the world demonstrates, the kind of love the world portrays, the kind of love the world imagines, the kind of love the world is capable of, and the kind of love that only the child of God, by the grace of God, can truly demonstrate:
LET US, FIRST, CONSIDER WHAT I REFER TO AS STANISLAVSKY LOVE
I am neither a great fan of nor one who is willing to throw my money away to support the anti-Christian propaganda of, the Hollywood film industry. As is evidenced by what they produce when they are attempting to be legitimate, with such pretended classic films as Gandhi, JFK, and Malcolm X, they are simply incapable of telling the truth about someone. But Hollywood does have people who are wonderfully capable of pretending to be who and what they are not. Some people call it acting. Eddie Murphy, in a magazine article I read years ago, termed it lying. He said that actors are simply people paid to lie.
The point that I seek to make is that many, many actors subscribe to what is referred to as the Stanislavsky approach to acting. I submit to you that the world demonstrates a Stanislavsky kind of love. Stanislavsky was a Russian-born actor who emigrated to the United States and gave up acting to teach acting. For just a few moments I want to discuss Stanislavsky acting and show you how closely it resembles the world’s concept of love. Stanislavsky love, as I term it, is characterized by four things:
First, there is the method. The Stanislavsky school of acting is referred to as “method acting.” And the reason it is so termed is that acting, as put forth by this now deceased teacher who is so revered by actors everywhere, is accomplished by what they referred to as THE method. That is, there is supposed to be a recognized and acknowledged way that acting, real acting, is supposed to be done. But doesn’t that sound like the world’s concept of love? According to them, love is supposedly demonstrated in THIS way. Never mind that THIS way is always changing with the world. Never mind that in the 60s love was the indiscriminate fornicating that characterized the free love crowd. Never mind that in the 70s love was syrupy sentimentalism and romantic slop that inevitably resulted in fornication and bore no resemblance to real life, thus causing everyone who bought into that nonsense to feel that they had been cheated in love. And never mind that any type of sex outside the institution of marriage is promiscuity that bears no resemblance to real love. They tell us that such things are love. And we are told by them, at least implicitly, that if you aren’t willing to do these things with me, you don’t love me, and that if you disapprove of these expressions of love practiced by others you are a hate monger or phobic in some way. So, you see why I refer to the world’s love as Stanislavsky love. It’s something that they call love which can only operate within their narrowly defined limits. But their narrowly defined limits are always changing. Used to be that a man who loved a man would kiss him in public. At least in the 80s that was what love was. But not anymore. Thank God.
Second, there is the mask. Acting has always involved the wearing of masks. Greeks actors, who pioneered drama, always wore literal masks while performing. And the actor, the person who was pretending to be something or someone other than who he was, was described with the Greek word for “mask wearer.” Interestingly enough, the word “dissimulation,” which is in our text for today, translates that same Greek word. By the way, the English word which is directly derived from this Greek word, and which is synonymous with the word “dissimulation” is ὑpokritá½µs, “hypocrite.” A hypocrite is a mask wearer.
Is he not? Is she not? Sure. Consider people nowadays who really “love” each other. Do they really “love” each other, or do they find the mask that the other person wears attractive? I submit to you that if folks loved each other, instead of loving the masks they see, jealous boyfriends wouldn’t kill girlfriends. And husbands and wives wouldn’t get divorced so frequently. The pitiable thing about it is that folks frequently don’t know they are wearing the masks they wear. Folks think that if you pretend to be something you are not for a long enough period, you will actually become what you pretend to be. Take your wife out to dinner some Friday night and watch the mating habits of these primitive humanoids. Do folks actually believe that by dressing the way they do they actually become what they look like? Yes, they do. But they are wrong. They are only wearing masks. And love expressed through your mask to another person’s mask isn’t love at all. It’s a charade. It’s hypocrisy.
Third, the memorization. The third parallel between Stanislavsky acting and the world’s concept of love is that the words that are spoken, the communicating that occurs, is not real. It’s not genuine. It’s simply the playback of memorized lines. Do you doubt what I say? Consider this: What is the likelihood, if people aren’t really reciting the memorized lines that were written by someone else, of quite literally everyone expressing their love for one another by saying, “Oh, baby, baby, baby.” Whether it’s the fornication crowd, or the adultery crowd, or the same sex involvement crowd, or even the premarital dating and petting crowd, the world is totally dependent upon a prearranged set of memorized signals to communicate to each other that they are in love. And what happens when you get tired of the signals and become disillusioned at the memorized lines? You dump the person you “love” and start over, by breaking off the boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, by breaking the engagement, by moving out of a live-in relationship, or by getting a divorce. No one is real. No one is honest. No one actually thinks and communicates from the heart. And if you don’t fit the world’s mold of appearance or brains or talent, you are labeled, by yourself if not by others, as unlovable. That means, even if you have memorized all the right words and all the correct right signals, and wear leather on all the right occasions, you’re still out of luck. You are relegated to loneliness.
With the world’s concept of love being so harsh, so ugly once you get past the veneer, and so unfulfilling, why is the world so committed to this perversion they call love? Ah. This brings us to the motive for what they call love. Speculation is not needed when trying to figure out why lost people do what they do. And this shows another parallel between the world’s love and method acting. The actor is trying to affect and influence his audience with his pretended behavior. And the same is true when worldly love is expressed. Jeremiah 17.9 tells us that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” That is, it is in the very heart of man; it is the essence of his nature, to be deceitful and wicked. Read here, false and lying and manipulative. The motive behind the world’s concept of love is selfishness. It’s manipulation to get from the other person what you want. Manipulators will use emotions and affection and all sorts of other kinds of behavior. But the motive behind it all is to affect so that other person’s behavior that you get from him what you want from him, or you get from her what you want from her, even if it brings long term harm to that other person. Is this not the hypocrisy of all love that is not of God? Pretending that you are not in it for yourself? What utter deceit! Let me tell you, Mother Theresa did not tend to the lepers of India because she had an unselfish love for them. She was after sainthood in the hereafter. Jerry Lewis never loved those kids. Not with real love. He was after the praise of men. You may think me harsh and strident. But Romans 5.5 shows us that human beings can only love when they are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. And since that occurs only after you have been justified by faith in Christ, no one who is unsaved, no matter how religious he or she may be, can possibly love another human being with a love that comes from God. Instead, what people do is perform. Oh, they are sincere. They convince themselves that it’s real. But it’s not the genuine love that comes only from God. They have a method to their love, but a method that is not sanctioned by God and a method that changes over time. That’s why I call it Stanislavsky love. And that’s why Paul tells us to let our love be without it.
SCRIPTURAL LOVE, ON THE OTHER HAND, HAS ENTIRELY DIFFERENT CHARACTERISTICS
Because of time constraints, and because you can read First Corinthians chapter 13 as well as I can to learn about some of the more obvious characteristics of genuine, God-given, love, I want to conclude by reminding you of the characteristics of love that is without dissimulation, of what love behaves like that is not hypocritical, of what the love that only believers in Jesus Christ can show is like.
First, love is characterized by obedience. Second John 6 reads, “And this is love, that we walk after His commandments.” So, from this verse, we understand that love obeys. And since the verse refers to love for God, obedience to God is what is in view. But what does God command the believer to do? In what way will the believer’s love for God be shown by obedience? I would suggest that one of the most important commandments given to us by God is the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just before His ascension into heaven after rising from the dead, He commanded His people to preach the Gospel, baptize the converts, and then teach them to obey Him. But when Paul spoke of the evangelistic ministry of reaching out to bring the lost to Christ, he indicated that “the love of Christ constraineth us,” in Second Corinthians 5.14. So, we understand then that a believer’s love for God results in obedience to God’s command to reach the unsaved. And in reaching the unsaved, you are placing yourself in a position to be used as a tool by Jesus Christ, through which He demonstrates His love to people who are not saved. But that’s just our love for folks who are not Christians. In a far more direct way, we are commanded to love other believers in Christ. We are to love the brotherhood. We are to love the Church. We are to love our spouse. We are to love our children. And if the child of God places any value on his personal relationship with Christ, he recognizes that he simply must obey his Lord by loving these people. Different from the Stanislavsky kind of love wherein lost people pick and choose who they will and who they will not love (all the while claiming to fall in or out of love), believers in Jesus Christ are not given the option. We are commanded to love. And we are likewise enabled to obey the command as unsaved people are not enabled. Amen?
Second, love, real love, is characterized by opportunity. Think about it for just a moment. If love is what the world says it is you cannot demonstrate it anytime, anywhere, and for any reason. Since Stanislavsky love, which isn’t really loving, seeks to manipulate people into behaving the way you want them to behave (even if it’s wrong), much of the time it must be done in private. Why? Because what is desired simply cannot be done in public. Look at the way two young people behave when they begin the manipulative designs on each other that they try to call love and that some adults foolishly dignify by describing as puppy love. Don’t they begin to segregate themselves from the rest of the young people? And why is this? Because what they have is selfishness, not love. Therefore, being selfish, it cannot survive being out in the open and mixed in with others for fear that the other person will “fall in love” with someone else. Genuine love, Biblical love, Scriptural love, however, is properly understood to be far more than a childish sexual infatuation. Because it is pure and holy and honest and selfless, real love can be demonstrated to anyone, anytime, anywhere. So, the opportunities to express real love are virtually limitless.
Finally, real love is characterized by its objective. Real love, you see, is selfless, not selfish. Real love, as expressed by the child of God in obedience to God and under the direction of God, has only one objective ... to obey God. Oh, sure, there are things that Christians would like to see happen in the lives of the people they show love to. You want to see the fornicator saved. You want to see the child molester saved. And you would like people to love you in return. It’s great when your spouse and kids love you back. But the bottom line, the real objective that the Christian seeks to accomplish when he is expressing God-given love in a God-ordained way ... is to take the love that God has given to me and pass it on to someone else, in obedience to God.
“Let love be without dissimulation.” A paraphrase might be, don’t love in a hypocritical way. Take the mask off. Be real with people. Here I am, a blood-washed and blood-bought child of God. I love you. No matter what you try to do to me in response. Whether you love me in return or not, I love you.
I don’t love you because I necessarily like you. I don’t love you because I am so good and have so much love to give. And I don’t love you because you are lovable or because you have so many redeeming qualities. I love you because God loves me. Because God loved me and saved me, I now love Him. And because I love Him, I will obey Him. And in seeking to obey Him, I will love who He loves. I will love you.
No cover. No pretense. No mask. I will just love you. And since love is not passive and inactive, I will demonstrate my love for you by seeking to meet your deepest and greatest needs. If you do not know Christ, I will love you by trying to win you to Him. If you do love Christ, I will love you by trying to help you serve Him.
Christian? We came into our new life with a mask on. Let’s rip the mask off and just be who we are and love people simply because God told us to. Let’s cut through the pretense and excuse making and do what we are told. Amen?
Unsaved friend? What can you ask for that’s better than this? God loves you. Jesus Christ died for you to prove it. You’ve wanted to be loved your whole life, without real success. Now that God offers His love to you, just the way you are, what are you going to do? Will you respond to God’s love and come to Christ? Or will you walk away from the real love that’s offered to you and settle for brand X, the shabby imitation?
I close with an anecdote related to acting and actors. Laurence Olivier was reputedly the greatest stage and film actor of the 20th century. Dustin Hoffman is perhaps the most obvious example of method acting, employing the Stanislavsky method of getting so much into character that if he was acting the part of a sociopath he had to do his best to become a sociopath.
On the set of a movie the two men were in Laurence Olivier felt to sorry for Dustin Hoffman living in his role even off the set that he approached him one day and said, “Dustin, you really ought to try acting.” Olivier was an actor. Hoffman was a method guy. I have no idea what Hoffman’s response was.
In the spiritual realm, the application would be for a person to stop the pretense of hugs and kisses and sloppy sentimentality and resort to Christ, the fruit of the Spirit, and real love toward your fellow man by being an obedient Christian who serves as a channel of God’s blessings through you to others. That is real love.
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