Source of Love and Life
God is the beginning and source of all love and life.
When we come to know God loves us, and has loved us first
we come to love God.
When we come to know God loves us, though we are with so many faults
we come to love ourselves.
When we come to know God’s love,
we come to love others.
When we come to know God,
we come to love life.
We may deceive ourselves of the values in life and of life, but we will not obtain any of it outside of God.
I think this as I think about myself and of others around me. Some have no love for God; some have no love for self; some have no love for others; some have no love for life. Some have too much — too much of one or the other. But the balance is in truth, and the truth is in God. And I feel passionate about this and live joyously because it’s not cliche dribble I’m writing to be fanciful, but because it’s true.
Being selfless but valuing self, living life with God as we were intended.
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* just so happened (as it often and eerily does with God things) the day after I wrote this that Pastor John spoke on true love as well, and pointed to this passage:
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 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. 10 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. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 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 [1] love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Such a rich passage! Each verse has so much weight it makes me to stop and think.
But let me just note one thing, which is the one easiest to misunderstand. “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (v. 16b). God is love. It doesn’t say love is God. The trap is to make ‘love’ your god. But love without God is incomplete; it is God that makes love perfect (ESV v. 17) and complete (NIV v.17). So while we are made in the image of God and have some capacity to ‘love’ as we are, with or without God in our lives, true love is from God only. If we love with our love, with trial and time we may fail or forget. But if we strive to be God’s vessel, we love with God’s love.
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:56 pm
1 John is so cool!
So fundamental, as the commands are sum up in loving God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength, and in loving our neighbors (Matthew 22:37-38). But the key is to know and grasp the dimensions of this love that surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3)!