God is Love

 

We meet with another couple and pray for our adult children. We also read helpful material about this task and study what the Word of God says. Our latest study takes us through 1 Corinthians 13 and shows us how important it is to love our grown children and family members as God loves us.

We’ve learned not to take parental love for granted. Even though we want the best for our offspring, this is not the same as the way God wants the best for us. While we can pray that they have good jobs, health, safety, and so on, God may use trials and difficulties for His purpose of revealing to them how much they need to rely on Him. This love described and demonstrated in Christ is like this:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:1–7)

His love is not necessarily shown in lovely words, prophetic utterances, great understanding or even sacrifices. We can do all of those things in selfish ‘look at me’ motives. Instead, the love of God is not selfish. God needs nothing, even though many Christians think He ‘desires and even needs fellowship with us.’
This verse grants further understanding: “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:8) as today’s reading echos. God is not merely loving, but He is love.

God is patient and kind; God does not envy or boast; He is not arrogant or rude. He does not insist on its own way; He is not irritable or resentful; He does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

When I read this, I’m also aware of my need because I am not always those things, not even with myself, never mind in my relationship with others including my family. Yet God loves me because He is love and cannot help loving, just as the sun is light and cannot help shining. God does not wait for me to be better than I am to love me.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6–8)

Some say we can love others without liking them. That is not the love of God. I cannot imagine Him doing what He did while feeling disgust or dislike for the people He created. He is not pleased with our sin but He says:

I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul. (Jeremiah 32:41)

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)

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. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:9–10)

I’m aware of the fallacy of thinking love cannot exist for those I don’t like. God shows me that my dislike is a fleshy thing and that love is a Spirit-filled thing. They cannot co-exist. If I’m going to love people, even my enemies, I must walk in the Spirit and consider my old nature as a dead and useless motivation to do anything God wants from me.

PRAY: Jesus, Your love melts hard hearts and exposes sinful reasons for trying to look good when I am not totally obedient. I’m to love others as You do, not just the people that appeal to me and feed my wants, but to those who live in ways that get a disapproval vote from me. Your love is only possible if I’m totally yielded to You, and if it isn’t there, I have sin to confess.