Love

Here we are at the heart of the paradox of Christianity. To love, one must die, extinguish oneself, extinguish bodily egoism, extinguish the temptation of the world, in order to live for God, in God, with God, eternally.

What does it mean to love? It means to place another at the center of one’s life. Do I love my child? I do if my child matters to me more than I matter to myself, if I regard myself as existing to make it possible for the child to come to a good maturity. If this desire is lacking in me, if what I chiefly desire is rather that my child shall amuse me and serve me, or, even worse, that my child shall not bother me, shall not prevent my doing as I please, when I please, then I do not love my child; I love myself. Do I love my friend? I do if I look on that friend with thoughts not of what that friend may do for me but of what I may do for that friend.

In our day, the word "love" is greatly abused. "I am in love," we say, and mean by this that we wish to be loved. Now being loved is a pleasant experience, but it is not a necessary one. "To be loved" - that is passive. I do nothing. I sit serene and complacent while someone loves me. To love is not a passive thing. "To love" is active. When I love I do something, I function, I give. I do not love in order so that I may be loved back again, but for the creative joy of loving. And every time I do so love I am freed from enslavement to that most intolerable of masters, myself.

My beloved, my parent, my child, my friend, my mate, may or may not love me in return, or may once have loved me in return but have ceased to love me in return. That does not fatally matter. If he or she does not love in return, I can still love. "For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye?" asks Jesus (Matthew 5:46). "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven:" (Matthew 5:44-45).

No one can take away from me the one great treasure, the love I bear without demand of love. The beloved may hate or kill, but there is one thing the beloved who spurns my love can never do. He or she can never break my heart. When one cries out that the beloved has broken one’s heart, it is not love that has caused the heartbreak. it is rather disappointed self-esteem.

This is a hard saying, this assurance from God Himself that happiness is arrived at only in terms of loving without demand of love. It is so hard a saying that we keep struggling to find some way of happiness less onerous. We eat and drink; but we are not merry. Or we seek to find in amusement the key to felicity; and before long we are bored. Or we cry out for applause; but soon we are more and more aware that those who flatter us are apt to be fools, or knaves with an ulterior motive in their adulation, or both. Or we crave meaning in terms of exercise of power; and find ourselves hated, condemned to dwell at last with our tiresome selves. Or we suppose that increase of knowledge will suffice; only to find that the more facts we master, the more the meaning of things and of ourselves continue to elude us. So disappointing are these lesser avenues that most of us give up the search for real happiness. Instead, we compromise with life, hiding our lonesomeness even from ourselves, daring no longer to live in terms of high romance. No, nothing can take the place of love.

How very hard it is to love! We must love without demand. But we cannot love that way. This is man’s tragedy, the tragedy called Sin. For what is Sin? It is the refusal to love. And the wages of Sin is death (Romans 6:23).

But Jesus not only commands this incredibly difficult loving, He also promises divine assistance in loving. He reveals to us that God is the perfect lover. We who are incompetent lovers, we who are afraid to love without demand of love, when we approach God in prayer, find ourselves touched by Him, are empowered to dare the impossibly necessary. His love breaks down our cowardice. He gives us power to become the sons of God, free to live, free to care, free to suffer vicariously for the unloving. Loving with no demand of love remains as hard as ever, but it is no longer a thing impossible.

1 John 4:8, "He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."
Unless we are able to love others, we cannot really know and love God. If you don't love someone you can see, how can you love God whom you have not seen (1 John 4:20)?

Love and the Commandments:

As followers of Christ, we are supposed to live on the basis of God’s knowledge found in Scripture. But most Christians function no differently than non-Christians. Most will not obey God’s Law.

Take, for example, the phrase that Christians use every day, "I just love Jesus." When asked to define love, most will say something like "Love is patient, love is kind, love is blah, blah, blah," and so on. But, these verses ‘describe’ love, not ‘define’ it. Thus, they do not know the difference between a description and a definition. If one cannot define love, one does not know whether he loves or not. Without such a definition, held clearly and self-consciously in the mind, one could hate someone else and never know it!

The Definition of Love

Of course, Scripture defines love very clearly, but this definition implies certain things that the modern Christian doesn’t want to deal with. So, just what is love? Well, our Lord defines love as:

2 John 1:6, "And this is love, that we walk after his commandments."

1 John 5:2-3, "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous."

Romans 13:8,10, "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."

John 14:15, "If ye love me, keep my commandments."

John 14:21, "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."

John 15:10,12, "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you."

1 John 2:3-5, "And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him."

1 John 3:23, "And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment."

1 John 4:21, "And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also."

John 13:34-35, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another."

Galatians 5:14, "For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

James 2:8, "If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well:"

Genesis 22:18, "And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice."

Mark 12:30-31, "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these."

Conclusion

Looking at the Ten Commandments, the first four Commandments show us how to love God. The last six Commandments show us how to love our neighbor. The reason Christians do not deal with the definition of love is because it has implications that they do not like. These implications are that if a Christian is to truly love his wife and family, the church body, his neighbors, his enemies, and all else, then he can only do so by keeping God’s Law. If we take this seriously, it means we must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29), and this will bring us into confrontation with the world.

Romans 8:7, "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be."
This is the reason why commandment keeping has never been popular. To those who desire a way of forgetting God which will pass for remembering Him, a gospel of "love" that requires no obedience is readily accepted.
The bottom line is, love is what one does, not what one feels or professes. Love is a verb, love is an action. ‘Actions speak louder than words’ is an implied maxim of God’s Law. Knowing God’s plan for us is not difficult if we stick to God’s Word and not the opinions of men and the humanist world. The most important law to know is God’s Law because it is our standard by which we measure and judge all other systems of law. Then, when we confront other laws and measure it by God’s standard, we can judge whether such laws are godly or not.

Psalms 119:18, "Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law."
Obedience is easy when you know you are being guided by a God who never makes mistakes.