Love

Love is in the air, la la la la, love is in the air. Isn’t it? Well, the month of February certainly has enough about romantic love, physical love, friendship love but what about true love? Paul told the Christians in Corinth that love was greater than faith and hope. Consider that circumcision, keeping the law, and ritualistic sacrifice defined the Old Covenant but Christ said that the New Covenant would be defined by love. Christ told his disciples that people would know they followed Christ because of their love for each other. He also told them that the entire law could be summed up into love God and your neighbor as yourself. So what is true love? The Apostle John gives us the definition of love in 1 John 3:16a and 1 John 4:9-10. God shows us the true meaning of love because He sent His Son to die so that we might live and Christ shows us the true meaning of love by willingly dying for us. So what does this tell us about the love we should be reflecting to those around us?

Love thinks and acts. God knew before the foundation of the world that he was going to have to send his Son to die for us-He had a plan in place for our redemption before He created anything and before sin even existed. God didn’t just think about a plan of redemption, He acted by sending Christ to die for our sin. Ruth and Orpah thought about their love for their mother in law Naomi and thought about returning to Israel with Naomi but only Ruth actually acted on her thoughts. Ruth left everything she knew to live in a strange land with strange customs in abject poverty. She didn’t know before she left that she would end up married to a wealthy man.

Love chooses and is sacrificial. God chose to send the very best for our redemption and Christ willingly chose to die. Not only did Christ willingly choose to die, He chose to die for his enemies. Paul notes in Romans 5 that even some unredeemed people might die for someone good, but who chooses to die for someone evil or an enemy? Jonathan chose to give opulent gifts to David and he chose to remain a faithful friend to David even though he knew David was going to be king instead of him. He chose to save David’s life nearly at the cost of his own. David remembered his promise to Jonathan and cared for Jonathan’s only remaining son who had nothing to offer David. The custom of the time in the surrounding countries was to kill all remaining relatives of the previous king so that no one could come after your throne. Not only did David not kill Mephibosheth, David brought him to live at the palace and restored the family lands to him. The startling thing is that Mephibosheth was a cripple and in that culture was completely valueless to everyone except David. He had value to David because of who he was-Jonathan’s son.

Finally love gives. There is a Christmas song (altered some what) whose lyrics express some closing thoughts
The Father gave the Son
The Son gave the Spirit
The Spirit gives us life so
We can give the Gift of love
When your life is full of Christ
then your life is full of love
You can give away the gift that began with God above
Just like ripples in the water the circles of our love extend
What was started with the Father is a Gift that has no end