But to measure love within our current frame of reference, or meager expressions and feelings, is akin to measuring life itself defined by the limitations of our current surroundings. Life was meant for more, and will someday be measured better. Love too, is so much more than what we have begun to scratch the surface at knowing. It is like asking a two year old child to describe advanced calculus; the two year old has a vague understanding of numbers (i.e. they would rather have 2 cookies than 1 cookie), but advanced calculus? We have a vague understanding of how love works, but are nearly as dim as the two year old of just what it all means. Yet even though our perceptions may have been stunted by evil, they are not completely gone. Take for example the life of a well desired puppy; the puppy goes home to his new family and is showered with love and attention. As he grows he develops a “personality” of his own. But the reason why dogs may be referred to as man’s-best-friend is that despite their limited brain capacity or functionality, they do seem to know how to love. They are loyal, caring, attentive, protective, desire companionship, enjoy our company at play, and from time to time wish to cuddle next to us and express affection. The family pet may never perform a single advanced higher learning achievement, but incidents that show love are in no short supply. Love then is not limited by intelligence, or the lack of it, it can be reflected in simplicity as well as complexity.
The expression of love is not confined to a single dimension. We love our spouse differently than we love our parents, our children, our siblings, or our friends. Each object of our love has a different method, or means of expression, custom suited to the object we name. For instance, even within the relationship of love between parents and children, each child is different; therefore the relationship of love between a single one of the parents, and a single child is expressed a bit differently. It is not to say there is a favorite child any more than there is a favorite parent. The love exists for all, but is expressed uniquely to each. Those who have ever been “in love” with more than one person over time, will attest that even the love they feel romantically is different from one former interest to another. The expression of love is different because the object of love is different. We may remain largely the same, but each unique object inspires us differently, as we inspire others in a unique way to express love to us. While there may be commonality in how love is expressed by definition, upon close examination, each relationship of love is truly as unique as those who engage in it.
So how then do we define love? Scripture defines love by defining God as love. In John’s first letter (1 John 4:7-12) the disciple writes of how integral love is to God, how that to love reveals the indwelling of God, for God is Love. The infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, all knowing God who has the power of creation, existence, and constructs of physics and reality – is summed up as nothing more than “love”. Perhaps all those other characteristics of God are the results of a better understanding of love itself, rather than the other way around. Perhaps concepts like the laws of physics, or even our realities, are better defined as by-products of love than by any other method. Regardless, our God is consistently defined throughout Scripture as the true God of love. It is interesting that in his efforts to counterfeit and replace truth with deception, Satan too has invented gods of love. But each of his offerings centers on the expression of lust without concern or care. His ideas of love are warped only by the expression of self-love, or attempts at self-gratification, and so his offerings of false deities reflect these traits. But our God is the true God of love and so He measures it differently.
Where Satan attempts to define love as the pleasing of one’s self to the exclusion of any other concerns, God begins to define love by how we care for another. The Ten Commandments were summed up by Christ (in Matthew 22:37-40) as loving God with everything we have, and then loving another as much as we value our own existence. In fact He states … “on these two Commandments hang all the law and the prophets” or the entirety of scripture to that point in time. Everything about our Bible was to be a definition of love from God to us. His priorities were important as well; loving God must come first, in order that our ideas about loving another can be first understood in the light of loving God. It takes God to change a heart. It takes God to reflect love through a heart. Once we begin to know what it means to love God, we begin to understand why we should not hurt another. Once we understand love better, by learning to know God, we realize why it is “good” not to lie or bear false witness, not to kill or murder, not to steal, not to dishonor, not to lust or defile another’s intimacy, not even to covet. Those acts that are prohibited in the law of love, deny us only an expression of self-gratification at the expense of another. Instead God defines love by what we do on another’s behalf.
In fact, Christ measures love in terms almost beyond our comprehension. Christ values love (perhaps in that sense He is valuing God, as God is love), more than He values existence itself. Love is more important than life. For God the Father would give His only Son, in exchange for a world who called themselves His enemies. God the Father would so value us, the objects of His love, that He would give us the thing most important to Him, most loved by Him, most intimate with Him, His only Son – for we who would never deserve so great a gift. And Christ His Son, would value us so much, that He would volunteer to be this sacrifice, to pay our penalty, to take on our debt, to suffer on our behalf. To save us from the disease of evil that we cannot save ourselves from, our Savior would be blameless, and would suffer and die for us. A life of perfect obedience to the law (reflected by how He so loved each of us He encountered); would stand in contrast to where the idea of self-love would lead – killing the Creator on the cross. Love for us, was more important to Christ, than was His very existence. He would rather risk permanent separation from His Father, for having borne the stain of our sin for eternity, than to see us perish as we deserve. His Father too would risk this separation. But praise God, Love was so well defined in what God did, that permanent separation from baring our stain was not required. Truly love conquered all.
John records Christ talking with His disciples in his Gospel chapter 15, verse 13, saying … “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Again Christ reminds his followers that love is measured by what one does for another, and that love is more important than existence itself. You cannot have perfection absent love. Life is not worth living absent love. There is no reason to create absent love. Love must find its object and cannot exist in isolation. These are the lessons not only of our origins but of our destiny. When every last remnant of evil has been swept from our desire, and every suspect intention is no longer part of who we are, love will remain. It will fill the void our selfishness left behind. It will become the larger part of who we are, that today is mired in the disease and addiction of evil. We will one day be known as love too. But in our case, the love will be implanted, re-created, and placed there by Christ. We will never be the source of love, but we will one day reach a state of perfectly reflected love. We will one day become perfect vessels of love, each unique, each precious.
The parable of the lost sheep found in Luke’s gospel chapter 14 verses 4-7, where the good shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to seek out the one, is not just applicable to the Savior seeking the one lost soul, as compared with those who remain behind in church; for in that sense, each of us is that lost soul – so who would be left behind? The ninety-nine, or figuratively the rest of sentient life still bathed in the perfection of loving God (i.e. the rest of the Universe) is what was left behind while our God sought to redeem this single lost world. He left the splendor and perfection of heaven, where the expression of love to others was complete and regular. Every other species, every other creation, every other world beyond our reckoning was still perfect, blameless, and able to see and know God, to worship Him for the love that He is. He did not love them any less than He does us. But despite how much love already was in existence, God would NOT leave us behind, forgotten, discarded. He would so value us, as to risk losing all that He had. He would set aside the vast accumulation of created life prior to us, in order to redeem us from the fate we would come to choose and embrace. He did not value anything He had, more than He valued our redemption. That is a measure of love an eternity will not be long enough to fully understand. Angels will bow their wings in awe of that sacrifice. The redeemed will cast their crowns on the ground in the humility of knowing we deserve no such honor. And our tender God will wipe our tears from our eyes, and raise us up to the redemption He has given.
It is important for us to see just how much God values love, and to what lengths God will go to define love, by living it, or even risking His own existence over it. Only in love, can scripture be truly understood. Only in love, can doctrine of any kind be espoused and accepted. The differences between different Christian faiths have less to do about facts and varying interpretations than they do about allowing love to decline and suffer in favor of self-promotion. We wish to be “right”, more than we wish to reflect love to one another. We therefore do not tolerate differences over ideology because our ego’s become offended. We discard the wisdom another may bring us, because our pride might suffer to accept in humility what we may have failed to see on our own. It is the break down in love that causes dissension and division between denominations and even within them, even to the point of seeing single churches split up. It is the lack of love that drives away the unbeliever. It is the lack of love that would drive away even those who seek redemption. It is the lack of love that distinguishes those who call on the name of Christ, from those who truly know who Christ is. The lack of love defines nominal Christians from genuine ones. It is the trait of love implanted or re-created within us that separates sheep from goats. Christ tells even those who performed miracles in His name to depart from Him (Matthew 7:22), in favor of those who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and visited those in prison (Matthew 25:32-40). Love was the defining characteristic of segregation. It was more important than even the defying of the laws of physics in the name of Christ. A simple expression of concern for another was more important to Christ than the seeking of fame by doing miraculous good deeds in His name. Love matters more than doctrine, more than what we call “truth”.
Notice in his warnings, Christ does not say that sheep would be separated from goats based on who paid tithes and who did not. He does not segregate his flock based on who worshipped on which day, or what you believed occurs when you die, on how you were baptized, or whether you allowed electronic instruments in church at worship music time. Instead He measures His flock by the indwelling of love that finds reflection in how you treated those in need. It is not a measure of money, but a measure of care. “Visiting” those in prison is not the same as donating funds for legal defense initiatives, or seeking to reform laws to make them more fair, electing the right politicians who reflect our ideas of morality, or showing patriotism in how we pursue justice. Christ does not make the distinction that we should only visit the wrongly accused in prison. Instead, He includes all who are in such need. The guilty need redemption. It is those who believe they are innocent outside of prison that are truly at risk.
In espousing “clothing” the naked, He is not merely advocating membership in a Dorcas society in the local church body. It is not just about dumping the bags of aging clothes that no longer fit, or have long passed fashionable display, into the bins provided by the Salvation Army. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is not the same as taking a personal interest in someone who needs. There is much more fulfillment in showing love to a person, than in anonymous donations to a bin. It can break the heart of the proud to see gratitude in the eyes of those in need for the slightest gesture of sharing. It reminds us how much we have, and how reluctant we are to part with it. We begin to realize that perhaps we did not need 2 coats, or 5, or ten in our closet, while the homeless stood cold on the street. Perhaps even some of the clothing that does still fit us, is fashionable, and cost too much money – would be better suited on the person who has none, than in our overflowing closets and dresser drawers. We would be glad to empty them on our own, if we saw in the eyes of those we gave to, what it means to them. If we viewed the homeless through the heart and eyes of our Savior, they would each become precious to us. But our distance shelters us from this experience of love expressed, and so our hearts remain untouched, and unchanged.
When we allow the love from God to infect our souls, it changes who we are. We become different. Love has a transformational effect. The effective testimony of witnesses to the redemption of Christ in our lives, have only one thing in common, His love shown to us. It is not merely that our God exists that brings change to our hearts, and reform to our will. It is that He loves us. It is His act of loving, that then causes us to desire to become like Him. It is He who draws us to Him because of His so great love. Love draws; it does not reject or push away. Love does not distinguish based on preconceived ideology. Instead it completely changes the nature of who we are; leading us to see others like Christ sees them. It leads us to want to give. It leads us to want to work for another, want to sacrifice what we own, want to do more than we do. Our hearts, which were once calloused and desensitized at the plight of those in need, become broken at the mere sight of the sorrow of those in need. We begin to empathize as Christ empathizes. It no longer matters to us “why” the poor are poor, only that they are in need and we can help them. It no longer begins to matter to us “if” a person is guilty, or may deserve a break as we learn that we are ALL guilty, none deserve anything, but love gives anyway. We begin to discern that Christ never found a limit in how much He gives to us. And so we begin to see that the more we give to another, the more like Christ we begin to see the wisdom in giving. Fulfillment begins to be defined in the reflection of the love of God to others. And the changed and re-created heart is finally able to obey the command of Christ (John 13:34) to simply “love one another”.
When love replaces judgment as the defining characteristic of how Christians are known in the world, a reformation will begin that will be like no other in all of history. It will bring about the end of all things. It is what God has been waiting for us to begin to realize. The end of the world is not waiting on a new doctrinal revelation. It is not waiting on our ability to persuade, cajole, or enforce a Christian dogma on the whole of the world. It is waiting on us to merely accept the gift of redemption, the gift of Christ to save us from ourselves, and the re-creation of love reflected through us to ALL, without judgment, preconception, or regret. Unyielding love is all the world needs to begin to see Christ clearly in the lives of those who profess His name. One cannot claim doctrinal purity in a voice that is absent the evidence of love. Theology will not covert the world, love will. Ideology will not meet the needs of those who ache, love will. The strength of those who give to others from a sense of duty, responsibility, community, or even guilt, will eventually fail. Human strength is simply not sufficient to meet the needs of so many in our world. But a reformation of who we are, that begins by allowing Christ to re-create who we are, allows us to tap a strength of divinity embraced by our weakness. We can become more than we are. We gain motivation we have never had before, strength we know we are simply not capable of. And the reformation begins. Church becomes a place of family, where the bonds of choice are as great as the bonds of blood. Judgment becomes a word we leave only to God. Acceptance becomes the mantra of Christianity. Not the acceptance of evil within us, but of the escape of evil that only comes from Christ, and can only be affected by Him. Therefore we leave the salvation of other guilty souls to the same Christ, who saves our own. We judge no one else for the evil we might recognize in them, and instead focus only on prayer that the evil is removed from us and them. And like Christ, we love them all. Those who society rejects become those who we begin to love. Those who the church has formerly condemned becomes those who we now only long to love. No sin separates us from source of Salvation, so no sin can separate us from showing love to another. Unyielding love that simply will not be denied; in this alone can a genuine reformation be found.
Love is in our origin, and in our destiny. Love is the basis of our religion, and the defining characteristic of the God who is its author. Love is the reason for our creation, and the method of our redemption. Love is large enough to encompass all, but unique enough to find personal expression in each of us. Love makes our existence of worth. Love embodies what perfection must be. And the study of love will be our eternal pursuit, where we will no longer be bound by any limitations in its expression to another. We praise our God for His love, and we praise Him because He is love.
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