The mom or
the dad, with all the wisdom in the world, gives some sort of answer that sometimes
is really just quite silly. They might say, “Well, if you have a dizzy feeling
when you are around someone, or if you feel a kind of sickness in your stomach,
it means that you are falling in love.”
Perhaps
their answer may not be quite as nonsensical as that, but the point is, very
few people have a clear idea of what love is. Despite all of the studies about
love and despite many people making millions of dollars teaching us about
finding true love, the subject of love remains for most a very mysterious
concept.
Why is it
that we have come to have such a misunderstanding of love, and why is that we have
come to equate it mostly with a feeling
that is felt between two individuals?
Most of us
may understand that the first crush that we had on someone was not really true
love, but at the time, it may have seemed like it was. And quite frankly, the
first feelings of attraction that we have for someone may indeed grow and
become a lifelong commitment. But even taking this into consideration, we
usually make a distinction between what it means to be infatuated with someone, rather than truly being in love.
Our Love for God
The same is
true when we begin to talk about loving God. Often, we associate loving God
with certain feelings we must have, or with some kind of emotional experience.
We see this in some worship services in churches, where the leaders try to work
up the emotional level of the congregation in order to have them experience
what they call “worship.” The congregants also are looking mostly for some type
of emotional experience for themselves.
Another
example where “worship” is something totally tied up with an emotional
experience is very evident in areas of the country such as our own, where
hikers and campers and hunters and anglers love to spend time in the out-of-doors.
We often
hear these people say, “When I am out in nature, I can worship God more than I
can in any other place.”
I understand
what they mean, for I am also someone who loves the out-of-doors. But by saying
this, these people demonstrate that they do not have a complete understanding
of what it means to worship God. To them, worshiping God is connected only to a
certain feeling that they have when
they are on a lake or in the woods.
Of course,
this indeed may be true worship of God, but just like having that first crush
on someone, it is only based on a mere physical and emotional connection. These
people are merely in the beginning stages of knowing who God is, and they think
they have reached the heights of knowledge. They are like a thirteen year old
girl who has just had her first crush on a boy and who says, “Now I know what
it means to love someone!”
This girl
does not really know love yet. True, it might
be that she is in the very beginning stages of learning about true love, but what
she is experiencing is not yet love. We often call this “puppy love,” or
infatuation.
In much the
same way, people who say that they can know the love of God simply by being
outside in nature may be in the beginning stages of knowing who God is. But they
do not really know God yet. They are simply infatuated by God. They have been
enthralled by what they see of God’s creation, but not necessarily by God
himself.
Falling into Love
In these
days we are inundated by people who claim to be “experts” on the subject of
love, but no one teaches us more about the concept of love than does the
Apostle John. He teaches us mostly about our love for God, but we can see that
this has wider applications as well. Here is what he wrote in one of his
letters:
Beloved, let us love
one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and
knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
(1 John 4:7-8 ESV)
What John is
telling us in this letter that he wrote long ago is that all true love actually emanates from God,
for love is the very essence of God. “God is
love,” John tells us.
We often
hear that love is something that one falls
into, but John says that it is instead something that we receive. If we are to love, then that love
must come from God, for “Love is from God,” as John says.
When many
people think of being in love, they see themselves as being driven along by
love as a ship is driven along by gale-forced winds. It is as if they feel
themselves influenced by something over which they have no control. Probably
most of us can relate to this driving force of love in one way or another. We say
that we have fallen into love, which prompted us to do something about it. We
cannot rest until we ask that girl out for a date.
Again, I
will not say that this is not love, but I think that it is important to see
that this is only the emotional part of love and only the beginning stages. It
is the part of love that is prompted by our emotions. That is why we call this
“falling into” love. No one intentionally trips and falls when they are
walking. It is something that happens to them. Likewise, in the beginning
stages of love, the infatuation part, this attraction just happens. We did not
necessarily intend to be physically attracted to the other person. It just
happened to us. And it is actually true that we cannot control it.
We Must Choose to Love
However, as
we have seen in the words of John, a true love, a mature love, is not something
that we fall into, rather it is
something that we receive from God.
This is the part of love that goes beyond mere emotion. It still includes
emotion, certainly, because a mature love will involve every part of our
personality. But it also goes beyond that.
In the verse
above, John told us to “love one another.” It is a command. Besides being
something that we receive from God, love is something that we must choose to
do. When we are infatuated by someone, it is primarily our emotions that are
driving us to take action. But with mature love, it is less of emotion and more
of the will. We choose to love.
Indeed, John
sees that there is a need to instruct us to “love one another.” This is a level
of action that does not come naturally to us. Even having received love from
God, it is up to us to put it into use. It does not come automatically. Rather,
it is something that we must initiate and sustain. We must do it purposefully.
Putting Love into Practice
All those
who have remained married for many years know that the commitment to remain in
that relationship must go beyond mere emotion. If emotion would be all that
sustained a marriage, it certainly would not last many weeks.
When many
people marry, they are merely seeking emotional and physical fulfillment and
nothing more. These marriages do not last unless the couple involved learns to
move beyond that initial stage and learn to truly commit themselves to one
another in a loving relationship.
This is not
news to you. Any of you who have been married for an extended time already know
this.
But this is
also true in loving other people—those who are not our husband or our wife. Often,
in the initial states, we do something for someone else because we are driven
by emotion to do so. Perhaps they have suffered a tragedy in their lives and
need help. We are so driven by pity for these people that we respond in some
way.
This is
good. It is good to act in such a way. But what happens if the people are not
thankful or if they misuse what we have given them? We feel as if they simply
took advantage of us and our kindness. We often then turn around and feel just
the opposite toward them.
This change
of opinion comes about because our own
emotional needs were not met in the situation. When we gave, we expected those
who received our gift to overflow gratefulness to us. We expected that we would
in turn receive a warm and fuzzy feeling. But that did not happen.
I am not
saying that we cannot learn some wisdom when our good deeds are misused by
others, but what I am saying is that when we do something motivated by love, it
is not done for reasons of what we will receive in return. It is done for the
good of the other person. We are focused not on ourselves but on the other
person.
Loving God
The same is
true in our love for God. Just as many people enter into a marriage with
unrealistic expectations, many people come to God with unrealistic
expectations. They expect God to fulfill their every whim.
Like the man
who says he best worships God while out in nature, as long as his emotional
needs are met, he sees himself as loving God—every day is a clear blue day on
the lake and every time I cast out my line I catch a fish.
But this is
not loving God. This is not a mature worship.
We are focused not on God. Rather, we are focused on the feeling within
ourselves. It is what we are getting
out of the relationship that is important to us. We are simply getting from God
all that we can to fill our own needs. We are not worshiping God. We are using
God.
Just as in
our relationship with our own spouses, if our relationship with God only
succeeds or fails on the basis of whether or not we receive our own emotional
rewards, then that relationship has not yet become a true love. It is only an
infatuation. It is infatuation with God.
If our
purpose for serving God is only for whatever benefit that we might receive from
the relationship, then I am afraid that this is not love of God. It is more
like love of self.
True love of
God, true worship, means that we are focused on God. This is despite our own
feelings and despite whether or not we think that we are receiving anything out
of the relationship.
Demonstrating Our Love for God
This might
all seem clear, but how then are we to put this into practice? It is easier to
see this when we are talking about demonstrating our love to our wife or to our
husband. We can do things to please them, to make them happy.
But how does one make God happy? How do we serve God in such a way that demonstrates that we are doing it only for him and expecting nothing for ourselves?
But how does one make God happy? How do we serve God in such a way that demonstrates that we are doing it only for him and expecting nothing for ourselves?
First of
all, we can learn about love by seeing what God has done. God demonstrated his
love to us. We have that familiar verse in Romans that says, “God shows his
love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8 ESV).
In fact,
John also mentions this in the same passage I quoted above when he says, “In
this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son
into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9 ESV).
How are we
to show our love for God? How is our love for God made manifest?
Christ
showed his love for us by dying for us. Does that mean that the way to show our
love for God is best shown by dying for him?
As strange as it may seem to us, that is what many people involved with what they call “holy wars” believe. They believe if they die in battle, in what they see as a “noble cause,” it will show true love for God. But this is not love. This usually has more to do with pride than anything else.
As strange as it may seem to us, that is what many people involved with what they call “holy wars” believe. They believe if they die in battle, in what they see as a “noble cause,” it will show true love for God. But this is not love. This usually has more to do with pride than anything else.
What about
showing love on the practical level? We know how we can demonstrate love to our
spouses and even to other people. We see a need and we meet it. But with God,
it is different. We cannot see God or
approach him to do anything for him. Besides that, he has no needs.
John makes
this very point. “No one has ever seen God;” he says. But then he adds this
point—“If we love one another, God
abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12 ESV).
This is the
way! It is in the way that we treat each
other that demonstrates our love for God. “Beloved,” John says, “If God so
loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11 ESV).
We love God
by loving one another. We serve God by serving each other. This is the way of
the Christian.
If I asked
you if you love God, probably you would say that you do, and I have no reason
to doubt that you do love God. I also say that I love God.
But how are
we doing in our demonstration of our love? Are we loving God just by what we
hope to receive from the relationship, or does our love for God motivate us to
do something for only for him?
“Beloved,”
John says, “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
We love God
by loving one another. We serve God by serving each other. This is the way of
the Christian.
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