Love, Love, Love!

1 John 4:7-12

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.

Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son

into the world that we might live through Him.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us

and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another,

God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.

As I start to read the opening verse of the passage I have been studying, I am reminded of a child imitating the parent he wants to be like when he grows up. This reminds me of one of my favorite verses, which happened to be the verse we picked for our wedding when we got married almost 15 years ago! It is all about imitating our Father in Heaven:

"Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children

and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us

as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Ephesians 5:1, 2          

As children of God, we are to imitate the example of love that Jesus Christ left us when He walked on this Earth. In these Scriptures I see God's love for me, and knowing that love motivates me to love like He does, to imitate Him and to pass that love on to others around me. We are His dearly loved children, and hearing that makes it easier for me to respond to His call. I want to give back of what I have been given!

When I stop and consider who I am called to love in these verses, it says to "love one another". It reminds me of the story in the gospels where a knowledgeable scholar was trying to get Jesus to specify to the people who was their neighbour (since they were commanded in the Law to love their neighbour as themselves). Jesus answered this question in the form of a parable, with one of His more famous stories, the story of the Good Samaritan (read about it in Luke 10:25 - 37). At the end of the story we see that it doesn't really matter where we are, or who we are dealing with, we are to use Jesus' example of love and kindness to those around us no matter what the situation. The verse above, from Ephesians, puts it out in even broader terms, saying that we are to live a life of love, or like another version puts it, to "walk in the way of love".

So now that I have reviewed these things, I have to examine this:

What Is this Love, and what is it going to Look like?

Here I feel completely inadequate to even pen any words. Countless works have been written on this topic, and many wise people have made many profound statements! Who am I to speak? One who has so often failed to love... But like the countless others, I too will give it a try.

Love comes from God. He IS love, and the love He gives is a gift freely given to us. We may receive this love and let it fill our hearts, and when it does, it should start to overflow and spill into the lives of the people around us. One thing love is, is a rapid multiplier. Where there is love, more love will grow! It is like a healthy vine that entwines itself around everything it touches, and like those vines when they have been allowed to spread, it is hard to remove. It wants to keep growing and multiplying, filling all the space it is given.

One thing that impacts me when I read this passage is that love is reserved for those who are born into God's family, for those who know Him. Those who do not have love show that they do not belong to God's family. Just like darkness, or evil, cannot exist where there is light and righteousness, a lack of love cannot exist where God - Love - is. So I think that true love must be tested and tried. If we say we love when circumstances are good and the living is easy, it might be that we are just feeling good about how things are, and we are actually only loving the benefits that we see in our own life because of that relationship.
In Luke 6:32, Jesus challenged that kind of 'love for return', when He said:

"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?

Even 'sinners' love those who love them."

He went on to tell us in the verses that follow:

"But love your enemies, do good to them and lend to them

without expecting to get anything back.

Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High,

because He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."

I wonder how much of the 'love' we see these days is real, according to God's standard, and how much is a cheaper, counterfeit version of what He talks about in His Word? In the verses above, I see the connection between being a child of God, and acting the way He acts. Since He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked, when we are that, we show our 'sonship'.

The 'Good Samaritan' gives a great visual to the model Jesus laid out in these verses. The Samaritan man was probably hurrying along, hoping to get to where he was going before the same fate would befall him as what had come to this man who had been beaten and robbed. When he saw this injured man lying on the side of the road, he stopped. Even though it was inconvenient for him to stop, he did. That was the first step. Or maybe the first step was actually looking upon the man, not just turning his face away and hurrying by, trying not to notice him. This man lying in his path was from a neighbouring people group whom Samaritans despised, and vice versa. Had the man been less injured, he might even have refused help from this Samaritan! These men would have been enemies, and in Jesus using this example in His parable, He was probably upsetting the mindset of the 'expert of the Law' who was questioning Him. But, as the Jubilee version of this passage points out,  "when he saw him, he was moved with compassion" (Luke 10:33). He was willing to lay aside any prejudices, to strip away the cultural differences, and to just be merciful! So in my attempt to love like Jesus, I need to still myself from my hurried pace, and I need to SEE the situations others are in, especially those less fortunate than me. I need to allow my heart to be moved with compassion when I see people in situations that cause them pain. I need to be willing to stop, even if it upsets my schedule and challenges my thinking.

The next thing that the Samaritan man did was to go to him. His compassion moved him to act, which is direct obedience to the instruction that we receive when we read the passage previously studied in 1 John 3:16-18, where we are told to love, not with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth. This true love comes from the core of our being, convincing us to lay aside our own interests for the sake of others who need us at that time. It is "doing to others what we would have them do to us" (Luke 6:31), because we are placing their well being before our own. We are used to "looking out for #1" (that is, "me"), but suddenly, we place someone else in that place, and do for them what we would do for ourselves, or want someone else to do for us.  

The Samaritan used provisions he had packed for himself in order to help the man on the road. He gave up his comfort, and set the man on his own donkey - his mode of transportation. He stayed with the man through that first night, taking care of his needs. Ministering to an injured person who cannot function for himself is not an easy task, even when it is someone you love. Imagine taking the time to do that for someone you had never met! I wonder, would I give up my rest? Would I give up a night of comfortable sleep in order to help someone for no return? Would I do this when it wasn't expected or demanded of me, even if no one was watching, and I could not even benefit by gaining any praise or glory for my sacrifice made? I might say that I would, because saying so is easy to do. But when such an opportunity comes, will I offer myself? Will I do it?

When morning came, the Samaritan had to be on his way. But he didn't shirk the responsibility he had taken on. He gave of his riches. Paying the innkeeper a decent amount to take care of the injured man until he was well enough to travel again, he promised to come back again to check up on the situation, and to add to the amount he had already given, if more should be needed. He was free with his time, his resources, his heart. He was a neighbour to a man he had no obligation to love, and who may never have given anything back in return. That is the story Jesus used to show us how vast our responsibility is to love the people around us. A failure to love endangers our Christian testimony, and causes others to wonder at the truth of our words when we say that we know Jesus, because, remember, we show we know Jesus when we choose to live in obedience to His commands (1 John 2:3-6)

Jesus challenged us when He gave the example of the Good Samaritan's kindness towards a hurt and helpless man, and now, in the book of 1 John, the author challenges us by giving the example of God's love towards a hurt and helpless world! God gave of His resources too, and His was the gift of giving His only begotten Son, Jesus. Jesus is a mighty, all powerful King, sitting in Heaven at the right hand of God, yet He was given (Himself fully willing to go) to go live as a man among the people of the world. He lived and suffered in the trappings of a limited, human body, and then He died, so that He could be the perfect sacrifice that would pay for our sin and save us from spiritual death. He was the atonement needed to bring us back to life, out of the spiritual death that has been the fate of all mankind since the garden of Eden, unless we come under the redemption offered through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The word atonement always stumps me a little bit. It's like I can't fully grasp a definition that gives it the full value of what I know that word truly means. I went looking again (like I so often have) for a definition that would do this word, and this act of God through the life of Jesus, justice. I liked this synonym:

Restitution - restoration to the former or original state or position

This would mean that the atonement that Jesus gave in dying for us restored us to the way we were before sin. Before Adam and Eve sinned, they enjoyed joyful communion with God. I imagine it as being a childlike free trust in God; in what He said to them, in who He was. They didn't doubt or question Him, they just took joy in being His. But then, after they sinned, there was this wall. The humans tried to hide from God. They didn't realize that He was the only help for their sin. There was a tension between them and God, and it shows up all over the Old Testament, as we read so many stories where mankind doesn't know how to come to God, how to relate to Him, how to view Him anymore. This is also prevalent throughout time, after the Old Testament and until today. But atonement was the act that broke that tension, restoring us (through Jesus) to the way that it was before. One site I looked on for a definition defined atonement as "a condition without tension. When Christ died on the cross for us, He removed the tension between us and God. His shed blood reconciled the conflict between us and the Father." This gives me a bit of a better idea of the reason for the gift God gave, and in it, it shows the love He had for us. He wanted to give us that untainted, beautiful, free relationship with Him again. He wanted us to know Him again, rightly. As He is. We were the wicked and ungrateful (from the verses from Luke 6), and He was extending a life-saving kindness, on a much greater scale than the kindness of the Samaritan towards the Jew.

So now, "since God so loved us...", what do I do with this love? God wants us to receive it and to let it change us, and then, to pass it on. He wants us to reflect His love to others. Those touched by this kind of love will hopefully examine the source, and find out that in looking at God's people, they are really being directed to look at God Himself. When they do that, then our life has been the ministry that God had in mind. He wants us to be vessels that carry His love to a lost and hurting world, but that always, they will eventually see Him at the centre and realize that He is the true fulfillment of what they need and are searching for.

As the moon shines beautifully in the sky, yet holds no light of its own, so it is with the love that we hold in our hearts. What we give, as far as love goes, is just a reflection of what and Who He is. It starts with God as the Source, and it finds its completion when it has come full circle back to Him. Our love for each other, whether it is for our brothers and sisters in the family of God, or whether it is for those souls who yet need to find salvation, is the evidence of God's life alive in us. It is evidence that we are attached to the Vine, that we are legitimate children.

I am reminded that as we learn to truly love each other and to show this with our actions, His life will live in us, and this is how the world will see Him. We are the tools He chooses to work through, and it's humbling. We all have so far to go! But our God is a patient God, and willing to work with us in those areas of failure, because love is patient and love is kind (1 Corinthians 13:4). Love doesn't keep a record of wrongs, and as I come to accept that this is true of God and how He sees me - through Jesus - maybe I will learn to love like that too, to reflect His kindness to the people I know. To let the grace He extended to me, just like He extended it to the thief upon the cross, flow freely through me into the lives of those who need to see it most. And as He works to make that perfect love complete in us, as He turns these caterpillars into butterflies, O Lord, may You have Your way with us!

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after Thy will,
While I am waiting, yielded and still.

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Hold o’er my being absolute sway!
Fill with Thy Spirit till all shall see
     Christ only, always, living in me.   *

* taken from the hymn, "Have Thine Own Way, Lord", by Adelaide A. Pollard