No idol can do what God can . . .

The day that Christ entered my life was sunny. I remember sitting on my front step soon after that encounter and marveling at the change in my understanding. Truly the sky seemed bluer and the flowers more brilliant, but what I noticed most was a new attitude toward people.

Prior to becoming a Christian, I knew that I should care more about people, but I could not make that happen. I was more concerned about me and that was that. But Jesus made a difference, and I immediately noticed the change in my affections. Of course, that was a mere beginning. Love starts as a trickle before it becomes a Niagara!

As I drop the idols that pull me away from God, the Lord reminds me of what a friend once said, “When I love God, that does not mean that I hate my wife.” I’m to love others, but with the right kind of love, God’s love.

The love of idolatry, if it can be called love, is different from the love of God. Idolatry is all about what that idol (which can be money, fame, even another person) can do for me. The love of God is about what I can do for others. John describes it well, then adds this clarification . . .

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:19–21)

Hating others makes loving God impossible. He says we demonstrate our love for Him by obeying what He commands, and He commands us to love one another. As a non-Christian, I knew the command but had no power to obey. I probably didn’t really want to anyway, but Christ made the difference.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Christ is the answer to the love question. From Him comes the love that God commands. His love is not like mine. He never places it in the wrong god because He has no attraction to idols of any sort. When my attitude toward money, fame, other people and any potential idol is the same as His attitude, then idolatry is not a problem.

Furthermore, my love fades or gives up when the object of it no longer does what I want, no longer feeds my ego, or fills my pocketbook, or blesses me in some way. His love is not like that. It endures . . .

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods, for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures forever . . . (Psalm 136:1–3)

Loving others in the power of Christ usually involves some sort of personal sacrifice, yet I still benefit for I am also receiving that love that He asks me to pass on to others. In that, my love for Him increases. The math might not work, but the love of God isn’t math. He keeps giving and the more I give back, the more I receive.

The love of God means that I can love Him too. He saved me and gives me eternal hope. I love Him for He is my strength (Psalm 18:1) and “I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy.” (Psalm 116:1) But most of all, I love Him because He first loved me.

Agape Love

If anyone knows the Bible at all, they usually know John 3:16 that tells how much God loved the world, sending His Son that we might believe in Him and never perish.

A few might know the verses that say, “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7–8).

This sacrificial kind of love is so unique that a word was coined for it. It is a love that depends only on the heart of the one who loves, not on the recipients. That is, no one can earn or deserve it. It flows from God like light and warmth from the sun. We can either bathe in it joyfully, or because it also exposes everything about us, we can choose to run for darkness in the shadows.

Because this love initiated with God, it is foreign to anyone who does not have a saving relationship with Him. Before Jesus Christ came into my life, I could love like a mother, wife and friend (always with reciprocation in mind), but I could not love like Jesus loves.

For this selfless aspect of God’s love reason, the Bible says agape love is a measurement of genuine faith. Jesus told His disciples that the world would know that they belonged to Him if they loved one another, again using this special word.

The Apostle John also said that how we love one another is a measure of how we love God. 

We love Him because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also. (1 John 4:19–21)

I’ve known people who are not easy to love, taking me back to Romans 5. The Bible is clear that the love of God is present for sinners. If He lives in me, then this love is in me. Because of Jesus, I can love even the difficult people (and if they are Christian, they can also love even me).

Yet what about being loved in return? What if I am unloved, or at least feeling as if I am? God has shown me something about that unhappy situation. He points me to Jesus who loves sinners so much that He died for us all, yet millions of people do not care one whit about His love. A friend was dismayed last month while reading a Bible story to a young grand child. When she said the word “Jesus” he interrupted her with, “Oh, don’t say that — that’s a bad word.”

For many, the love of Christ means nothing. They only know His name as a curse word. How does that make Him feel? Does He stop loving just because it is unrequited or He is rejected? Not at all.

The love of God is a totally giving love. It reaches out without demands or threats. There is no fear in this love, no fear that He will leave or forsake me, no fear that someone will steal Him from me. I am continually assured that no matter how badly I mess up, God still loves me.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31–39)

Can I love others like that? Not without Him. In my sinful self, I want at least some appreciation and at best, total reciprocity. But the love of Jesus asks nothing, only that receive it, then pass it on.

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Lord, today I will be talking to many people, welcoming them to an event and sitting at a registration table. You have loved me without prejudice or reservation. May that same love, the love of Christ go from Your big heart through me to every person You put on my path today.