WORD DEVOUR

Week 17

What is Love? II

Jeremy Pace

 

            “To is like to love. All reason is against it, and all healthy instinct is for it.”

                                                                                                ~Samuel Butler

 

            This is a continuation of the previous paper on love, where we learned that there’s a difference between “love” and “perfected love”, the difference being only Christians are capable of perfect love, since the world, in all there attempts to fulfill the lack of love in itself, gives into the world’s idol, “lust”. Now, for these next few pages, I want to dive more into what that “perfect love” that ever child of God is capable of is, and what it looks like in someone’s life.

            We’ve followed John in his letters that drip with the “l” word on our journey to what love is. After he wrote 1 John, he went on in his second yet shorter letter to say, “This is love, that we walk according to His commandments, that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it” (2 John 6). So we can see that what love does, is it motivates obedience. Love is the motive, in fact. In verse before John wrote, “And now I pleade with you lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning; that we love one another.” Love has taken on a new meaning since the New Testament. In one sense, it’s the commandment since the beginning, found way on back in the Law of Moses, to “love, or else”. Yet now it’s a new commandment, because Christ has come and He gave love a new standard and a new motive.

            The last things He told his disciples, just before Judas left the room to betray his former master, was, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another” (John 13:34,35). Love is the new commandment. There’s no more rules after Calvary. Only one, and that’s to agape one another, in Perfect Love.

            But yet, what is perfect love? 1 John 2:5 says, “But whoever keeps (God’s) word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.” Keeping the word of God? What’s that mean, to owe a Bible and never lose it? No, it tells us in 1 John 5:3, “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome.” Oh, His commandments! Love is the motive, and the motive to obey God’s commandments! That’d be impossible, if His commandments were the entire book of Leviticus and Numbers, but Jesus made it simple by just giving us one commandment! Or did He? Is this one commandment so easy? Love one another. “Love one another and you will be happy. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.” (Michael Leung)

            Why is it difficult? Because anyone who’s ever deeply loved another will tell you, it hurts. Perfect love in painful. A quote from Javen says, “When you truly know the meaning of the word love, you will also know the meaning of the word pain.”

Not to go into a tangent again, because now I know it not wise to mix recent life experience with my word devours… but who knows, maybe I won’t say this one in front of the class, or I’ll just skip it if I have to. But there’s a girl that I started to love very much over a year ago. I can honestly say I truly loved this person, it wasn’t just an infatuated thing, though I never went as far to say I was in love with her, since that is a can of worms I don’t want to open right now. I didn’t know how deeply I cared for her, until one night when she tearfully told me something that crushed my heart. She had been abused, very badly, by someone she hardly even knew. I was full of anger, of sorrow for her, of so many emotions, and yet the only thing I could think of was…. I wasn’t I there I to protect her? And without having to argue over it’s genuineness in my mind, I knew for a fact, that I would have done anything if I could go back and take her place, take the “bullet” for her, if it could only saved her from it. I’d never felt that way about anyone. And I promised God and her, that I would give my life for her if I had too. Well, I’m still alive… but I poured everything I had into her for the next 6 months. Every emotion, thought, and ounce of heart I had. And you know what? She left me and started dating someone else.

There, I had a choice. Would I curse her, forget about her, and talk bad about her everywhere I went in life from now on? That’d be the easy thing, wouldn’t it? Or should I continue to love her anyways? Because she does NOT deserve it. But didn’t I say I would? Say I’d give my life for her? Should that all change, just because she broke my heart? Or does real love, that goes far beyond attraction, go on? That’s the time in my life when I first believed something I’d heard for ages; “Love is a choice, not a feeling.” So I kept on loving her, praying for her, encouraging her, as my beloved sister in Christ. And God said, “Great, you finally learned how to love someone. Now do that for everyone else!”

Love is unearned. It’s like grace, everyone gets it, yet no one deserves it. Do we love the person for who they are, or for Christ is in them? Because none of us deserve love at all! “No women ever falls in love with a man unless she has a better opinion of him that he deserves.” (Ed Howe) You think any of us deserved the love Jesus talked about? Don’t we all long to be love unconditionally, yet so unwilling to give it to anyone else? An anonymous quote says, “No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.” I would like to add to that, “no one except Jesus.” “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love… Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.” (John 15:9-10, 13)

Abiding in Jesus love is the perfected love, which is only done by following His commandments. Can we do any less? He followed His Father’s commandments, clear to being killed on a tree. Whoever said perfect love is easy? If it were, don’t you think more people would accomplish it? Yet is so very rare. In my life I’ve managed it for possible one person. I’m commanded to do it for all. Lay down my life, for that is the greatest life.

“Love never fails.” The rest of that chapter basically says that tongues will cease, prophecies fail, knowledge vanish… “but when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away” (1 Cor. 13:8-10).  That’s right, perfect. Why do you think Jesus was perfect anyways? What’s the perfection you thought sin corroded? Perfect love. The only thing that will remain when it’s all done. “The story of love is not important. What is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.” (Helen Hayes)

“Love is everything. It is the key to life, and it’s influences are those that move the world.”    ~Ralph Waldo

“Love is an attempt to change a piece of the dream-world into reality.” 

                                                                        ~Theodore Reik