Us, God, and Love

God created us out of love, for and to love, redeemed us by love, and reconciles us in a divine marriage.  From Genesis to Revelation we read about the love of God.  We even read that God is love.  Therefore, is not this life one unfolding love story?   Why are we as agents of love created by divine love itself, so torn and broken on the subject?  Why do we so often misconstrue the basic premise of love and all of its facets?  The answer is simple, because what we know as love is not love, it is a fraud.  We are broken, and unless their is an exchange of the counterfeit for the sincere, we may never know love, period.

In 1 Corinthians 13 we read that "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Corinthians 13"4-7)  This isn't the love that I see portrayed on primetime, or even the love characterized by those claiming to be "in love".  The fact is we could never know love without intervention.  We could not know love by any plight or plea at divine love; not through any of our own spiritual concoctions, any selfless act of service, or any emotional response invoked to create an authentic sense of love.  The truth is, we are all broken where we were intended to flourish. 

God gave man the distinct ability to love.  When He created Adam in his own image, The Lord created man as a moral agent.  He had the ability to reason.  Right and wrong were built into his framework.  The Lord breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.  All for the purpose of one thing; to have a loving union with the God who made him.  Thus, man was given the ability to choose and unfortunately he chose otherwise.  We, being in Adam, are now destitute of all love; desperately cleaving for that which we may ratify as being love, while attempting to downplay the importance of it at all.

Take for instance our attorneys and lawyers.  Shall they not plead insanity for the serial killer who lacked love in his upbringing?  Shall not our psychologists brand children as inept when they do not receive the proper love and nurture in a whole home?  Is it even possible to imagine what a whole home looks like when we have built families upon a counterfeit love void of a foundation?  Therefore, we recognize the importance of genuine, altruistic love, but does man have the ability to fully love without the intervention of God?

The best one can do is love with what love one thinks they have.  Men will continue to marry.  Whether they marry men or women is another result of the counterfeit.  Men will beat their wives bloody and wives will help themselves to their neighbors, as their husbands serve overseas.  Their loveless relationships will spawn children and children will suffer.  According to a recent UNICEF survey:

•  It is estimated there are between 143 million and 210 million orphans worldwide
•  Every day 5,760 more children become orphans
• Every 2.2 seconds another orphan ages out with no family to belong to and no place to call home
• In Russia and the Ukraine, studies have shown that 10% – 15% of these children commit suicide before they reach age eighteen
• Studies also show that 60% of the girls become prostitutes and 70% of the boys become hardened criminals
• Another Russian study reported that of the 15,000 orphans aging out of state-run institutions every year, 10% committed suicide, 5,000 were unemployed, 6,000 were homeless and 3,000 were in prison within three years…"

In an era where truth is supposedly "relative", the need for real love is not!  Many orphans are orphaned for circumstances their parents cannot prevent.  However, the reality is that individuals are overlooking the sanctity of life and would rather "Stop the bloodshed" and go vegan, then turn the spotlight on genuine need.  Thus, we find ourselves steeped within a society that must pass laws to keep sixteen year old girls from dumping their newborn children into dumpsters and storm drains.  Is it beginning to dawn on us that there is something wrong with the way we love?

Society as a whole is involved in the rationalizing of their broken condition. Adults and kids alike idolize their sex drives, being told by their teachers that they are unconscious byproducts of reproductive human nature.  They are merely animals, all branched out of a meaningless tree of life, and thus love is merely a fallacy.  There can be no love when all humans owe their existence to mindless abiogenesis and social deterministic outcomes.  As early as the sixth grade, children are told that it is ok to indulge in sexual tendencies despite the natural result of intercourse, just as long as they are in close communication with their local planned parenthood (for free condoms and morning after pills).  They could not be further from the truth.

Jesus told his disciples, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13) and the Apostle Paul told the Romans that "...God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)  As agents of love we can perform loving deeds, but we cannot know love, save for that which love accomplished for our benevolence.  Christ died that we may be reconciled to God and be ushered into loving union with Him.  Jesus petitioned the Father on our behalf when He said;

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17:20-23)

Words could not portray the exchange between Holy Father and Son at this point in history.  However, one thing is clear.  Jesus asks the Father that all believers be grafted into the eternal union and wellspring of love that emanates between the Triunity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We then find ourselves faced with the implications of the apostle John; "God is love" (1 John 4:8).  This is no light statement.  Take for instance the insight of C.S Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity;

"All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that 'God is love'.  But they seem not to notice that the words 'God is love' have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons.  Love is something that one person has for another person.  If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.  Of course, what these people mean when they say that God is love is often something quite different: they really mean 'Love is God'.  They really mean that our feelings of love, however and where they arise, and whatever results they produce, are to be treated with great respect.  Perhaps they are: but that is something quite different from what Christians mean by the statement 'God is love'.  They believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else."

This is the love that Jesus prayed that we enter into.  This is the love that we were intended to possess.  This is our created purpose and without the intervention of God through Christ on the cross we could never know it.  It is a grandiose statement, that we, fully permeated by sin, could have fellowship with a holy and eternal God, but it's true.  It is up to us whether we shall exchange the counterfeit love we have in Adam for the eternal and true love we may have in Christ.

God's provision was the offering of His Son so that all who believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  Is it any wonder then, that when one is truly regenerated and grafted into this eternal union of love, that he puts off his former sin?  Does it arise any suspicion that to the Christian, homosexual marriage is an abomination?  Could anyone bring testimony against the man who loves his wife and realizes that despite his emotions at times, he and his wife have entered into a covenant relationship before God that cannot be broken?  Ethics and morality proceed forth from divine love.  Without the complete love that God offers us through union with Him we are left in the attempt of rationalizing the counterfeit love we have paid for with our lives.  We can do only one thing then; lay down our lives at the cross and die to self that we may live for Him, and one day when this world finally passes away, we shall be restored in full glory to the loving and eternal relationship that was to exist since the beginning.  Praise be to God for the gift of life and the love of Christ that rescues us, regenerates us, and reveals to us the truth.