A Discourse on Love
by A.E. Annis
In order to even begin to understand what has been done for each and every one of us, we must put the Bible into context. The whole Bible. You cannot pick and choose what any particular verse may or may not mean without testing that verse against the context of the passage or chapter in which it is found, nor the chapter as tested against the book, and each book against the whole. Context is everything.
So into what context can the entirety of the Bible be placed?
From Genesis to The Revelation of John, there is only one that I have found which fits all the facts.
Only one which ties together everything that God has done.
Only one which makes sense...
Love.
That is the context of the entire Bible. It is as if God is telling us:
Look! Look at what I have done for you from the very beginning. Look at the love I have for you! Look at what great lengths I have sacrificed that you may live...
Does the Bible not show us that God, at any point in time, could have justly wiped man from the face of the earth (And almost did!)? At what point were we ever worthy of salvation? Not a single one since the moment of the inception of sin. Yet God showed His perfect love toward us anyway...
“for God did so love the world, that His Son – the only begotten - He gave, that everyone who is believing in Him may not perish, but have life age-during.”
John 3:16 YLT
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
John 3:16 KJV
That is a love that is pure. How many of us would sacrifice our only child for the rest of the world? God did. But it is so much bigger than just a Father sacrificing His Son! Our Creator became flesh and then died for us! Can any Christian deny that Jesus is our God and Creator? Jesus Himself said “I and My Father are one...” (John 10:30), so I would have to say that pretty much nails that down, yes? So our God (Jesus) came to earth, willingly leaving His Father's side, to die for our sins. The Spotless Lamb. One final sacrifice to end all sacrifices.
Why did our God die for us? What could possibly have motivated a perfect, sinless, Jesus – God! - to die by such an agonizing, brutal ordeal to free us from our sins? To absolve us in the eyes of the Father that we might reign forever with Him? Who are we?
There is only one answer that I can see:
We are loved.
And why are we loved?
Because God IS love...
There are many doctrines which proclaim what God is going to do in the afterlife. Hell, eternal damnation, purgatory, and others. But the truth is that no one (living) knows. Many think they do, but the Bible clearly warns against that. No living man has seen God, and no man can understand all the mysteries of God. No man can search the depths of God. Not His mercy, not His holiness, not His justice... and surely not His love. The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:12-13 - “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” (emphasis added by author).
Charity. That is, love. But the greatest of these is love. God is love.
The greatest commandment?
Love thy God with all thy heart, all thy mind, all thy soul, and all thy strength... and the second is like unto it: Love thy neighbor as thyself.
That seems like a pretty strong case for love, in my opinion.
Much love covers many sins...
But without love, I am the tinkling of a bell, the squeaking of a rusty gate... without love I am nothing more than the dust from whence I came.
So just what is love, anyway? Well, I would go about defining love this way...
God is love (1 John 4:8,16).
Jesus is God (John 10:30).
So, it seems logical to me that if we examine Jesus' life as a whole, and do not break it down into “who what where and when”, I would have to say that above all else, Jesus lived a life of sacrifice – and died one as well.
Therefore I would define love as caring for another more than oneself, or sacrifice. Willing sacrifice.
Love is willing sacrifice.
Can we even begin to comprehend the sheer magnitude of the sacrifice Jesus made in becoming flesh? We cannot even comprehend what He physically endured on the cross, let alone what He left behind to do so. But He did it for us anyway. Even in our blind ignorance of Him, He has always shown His great love for us.
Our God has walked the earth. Has borne our sins. He knows our pain. But He asks us to love anyway. In spite of the pain.
Why does He ask this of us?
Because He is love, and we are loved, and because as He is, so too should we be.
“He who is loving father or mother above me, is not worthy of me, and he who is loving son or daughter above me, is not worthy of me, and whoever doth not receive his cross and follow after me, is not worthy of me. He who found his life shall lose it, and he who lost his life for my sake shall find it.”
Matthew 10:37-39 YLT
Everything that God has done for us, every sacrifice He has made for us – all done from love.
Why? Why does God love us so much? What is so special about man that God would go to such great lengths to save us? Why not just wipe us out and start over? It isn't like He can't... right?
What could possibly make more sense than love? That is what every last second of creation is all about! Why does all the glory, hallelujah!, go to God?
Because God is holy. Because God is perfect. Because God. Is. Love.
Thank You, Father, for creating me to love as You love! For faithfully and constantly teaching me how to love as You love. For putting in me the will to love as You do. For giving me the strength to continue fighting against the pull of this world, and against my old sinful man, that the world will one day see my love – which is Your love - not in these words, but by my actions. By Your will, it will be so, Father. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
The Bible instructs us to examine ourselves regularly, whether we are living in the faith.
“Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” 2 Corinthians 13:5 KJV
“Your own selves try ye, if ye are in the faith; your own selves prove ye; do ye not know your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you, if ye be not in some respect disapproved of?” 2 Corinthians 13:5 YLT
To my mind, there is one question we must ask ourselves in honest reflection:
Have I truly tried to follow in the footsteps of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?
That question, if reflected on with self-honesty and in sincerity, can lead one to a deeper understanding of our loving God. God wants us to reason and reflect on Him. He wants to give each of us a deeper relationship with Him...
but we have to want it, too. More than any thing else. More than family. More than mammon. More than safety and security. More than religion. More than life itself.
It is not an easy thing to do, being honest with oneself. But it is necessary. In order to love fully, there cannot be deception. Even – maybe especially – self-deception. One of the hardest things for me to learn to accept since giving myself to Christ has been to accept that there are things I cannot know. Don't misunderstand. There is plenty that I don't know. But there is nothing in this world that I cannot know, only those I do not know. That is not true with God, however. The Bible says – and I believe – that God's ways are unfathomable. Meaning can never ever be found out completely. What man can know the mind of God? Not this one, and it was very frustrating at first. I thirsted greatly for God's living water (and I still do). But it use to frustrate me greatly that I could not just know. In this world, and most especially in this present age, if we want to know something, we have access to literally hundreds of millions of databases and libraries and search engines... yet all of it combined cannot teach me a single truth about God. All it can do is teach me what other men have said and believed about God. Truth is, there is only one place we can go to find out about God if we wish to know.
To God Himself.
Who better to teach you about God, than He Himself?
And what He has taught – and is still teaching – is love. Pure, unadulterated love like only God who is love could.
Listen to me and listen closely.
Or to use an older idiom:
Verily, verily, I say unto you...
Our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, made this point clearly...
I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:16);
He has been given authority to execute judgment over all things (John 5:27);
I and My Father are One (John 10:30).
Do you really want to get to know what our amazing and glorious Father is like? Study Jesus. For He is the express image of the Father. Everything He did, everything He said, showed us the nature and character of our God. This is the point which seems so often missed when we look to Scripture to learn about our Creator. We tend to keep the nature and character of God (as revealed in the Old Testament) separate from the nature and character of our High Priest, Jesus (as revealed in the New Testament), even though the Bible tells us:
“And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch. Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me. But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him. Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped out of their hand.” John 10:23-39 (emphasis added by author).
It does not get much clearer than that. Jesus was the image of the Father made flesh. One may claim that the Bible says that about man: “ And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:” (Genesis 1:26), however the issue with that is that man was not created divine, whereas Jesus is the Word made flesh. Jesus is deity, man is not. Adam, in all his sinless perfection, was never deity.
Jesus is God. He is deity. It is as simple as that. His character and nature are the Father's character and nature. He himself said that He could only do and say as the Father gave Him to do and to say. Nothing more, nothing less.
So it seems perfectly logical – at least to me – that studying the character and nature of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, will reveal perfectly the character and nature of God the Father.
What it all really boils down to is this:
He who lives by the sword, shall die by the sword.
We can all understand that basic statement, but in it I find a correlation beyond a simple pronouncement of “evil begets evil” and “you reap what you sow”. I see it also as a metaphorical statement for the whole overtone of Jesus' interactions with the scribes and the Pharisees:
He who lives by the letter of the law, shall be judged by the letter of the law (and its corollary, he who lives by the spirit of the law, shall be judged by the spirit of the law). See Zechariah 7:12; Romans 7:6, 8:2,4; Galatians 5:18.
Jesus, though he followed the letter of the law in every respect, did not judge by the letter of the law, but by the spirit of the law. But do not take my word for it. Let me prove it to you...
“And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the (letter of the) law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own consciense, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more. Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”
John 8:2-12
Jesus not only judged her by the spirit of the law (love - Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more), but also kept her from being judged by the letter of the law (death - He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her). Do you think it is just coincidence that the Bible should tell us to be led by the Spirit? To follow the Spirit? To dwell in the Spirit? To live in the Spirit? I certainly do not! That Spirit – the Holy Spirit, which searches the deepest places of the hearts and minds of men - is none other than the Spirit of Love. It is the love of a faithful God who is love, living within us, guiding us as the Father would have us move.
Here are a few more instances of Jesus proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that He lived by the spirit of the law, not the letter... and that He and the Father are of one nature and character... and that Jesus only ever said or did what the Father commanded Him to (and therefore, this is what God the Father has to say):
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe. Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me. But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.” John 14:27-31 KJV
“For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.” John 12:49-50
“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”
John 13:34
“This is my commandment,That ye love one another, as I have loved you.” John 15:12
Does it get any clearer than that? God the Father, through our Savior Jesus the Christ, gave us a commandment: That we love one another, as He has loved us. So tell me this, my friend:
How much does God love you?
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
John 3:16
That is how much God loves you. And believe me...
It is more than we can possibly imagine.
May God's grace flow like rain upon His children, that we may worship Him in truth, and in love... always.
