Paul tells us
that what we can know about love at this time is like looking at a steamed-up
mirror. We may be able to see some sort of vague outline of love, but the
details so far are hidden from us.
“For we know in
part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass
away.”
But of course,
we being the type of people we are, even with all of this uncertainty of
knowing about love, it does not stop us from speaking as if we were experts. We
talk as if we have all of the insights and know the depths of what love is.
A teenage girl, who has just started dating, asks her mother, or a son his father, “How do you know if you love someone?”
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 it 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 of that first crush, 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.
In their opinion, the measure of worship depends on the level of emotion that
they felt.
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, if taken only that far, it is merely based on physical and emotional
connection. These people are only 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 with 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. “It was love at first sight. We instantly fell in love!”
But John says
that love is not something we fall into. Rather, it is instead something that we receive. If we are to love, then that
love must come from God, for “love is from God.”
When many
people think of being in love, they see themselves as being driven along by
love, like a ship that 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, but 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 being.
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, but
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 stages of a relationship, 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?
First of all,
we can learn about love by seeing what God has done. God taught us love by example. He demonstrated 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 something of the sort 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).
That is how God
demonstrated his love for us. Then 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.
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.
Actually,
loving one another is not an option for us. It is a command. Jesus said, “This
is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12 BSB).
And how has God
loved us? We have seen that even when we were sinners, He died for us. That is
the standard, and if we are seeking to have “God’s love perfected in us,” as
John said, then this is also our standard.
After Jesus
commanded us to love one another as he loved us, he told us this: “Greater love
has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12 BSB).
Dying to Self
Loving one
another does not normally dying a physical death as did Jesus, but it does
involve a death. Galatians 5:24: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have
crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
Paul also
writes, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ
lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
And Jesus said,
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross
daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).
Dying to self
involves giving up our own desires in exchange for a higher calling upon our
lives—that of serving one another. It is by serving one another that we show
our love for God.
Ephesians 5:21:
“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
**************
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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