Loving God

Loving God
Jack Radcliffe
3/5/2013
I recently read a story of a teacher who was talking with a group of students about the idea of love. She asked them to define love. After an awkward pause, she offered to give them a definition and let them agree or disagree. “Love,” she said, “is that feeling you get when you meet the right person.” Everyone agreed. At some level, every student believed love is an emotion, a feeling that wells up inside when we are physically or emotionally attracted to someone else. That feeling is what we trust to tell us when we’ve met Mr. or Ms. Right. As quickly as it emerges, it can disappear. Love seems to be something outside us that affects us but which we have no control over.

Unfortunately, this is how many of us understand love with God.

First John 4:7-10 paints a different picture. The relationship humanity is to have with God is based on love—on the very nature of God. Love for what we cannot see, touch, or tangibly experience is challenging. Yet learning what love is comes from God as demonstrated in Jesus Christ. So when John says that “real love” is shown by how God loved us first, he is saying it is a choice. Scripture is full of stories of times when, if love were that magical feeling, God would have run all out of it for us.

Love is action. We wouldn’t know love without Jesus’ demonstration of it by laying down his life on our behalf. The message: God loves you, and there is nothing you can do about it. Many of us have a warped sense of love because we don’t know God. God gives us the understanding of love and the ability to love him—and others.

And love can’t be forced. It’s freely given. It seems as if there’s a catch here. There’s something not quite right about something that good being free. I’ve seen many reject it so they can work to earn it. The reason we fail at loving God is that we don’t accept love’s nature: freely given. Love is not love if it or the response to it is coerced or forced.

Freely given, freely received, given freely again. What we don’t own we can’t not give.

Three of the Gospels tell the story of a discussion Jesus had with Jewish spiritual leaders. They asked him which of their 613 rules was the most important to follow. They wanted him to answer them so that they could show how right they were. Jesus responded with two commandments. The first: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind” (Matthew 22:37, NLT; Mark and Luke use slightly different wording, adding “and all your strength” to Jesus’ list). The greatest command is a choice to learn love by freely receiving God’s affections, thoughts, attitudes, and actions and then freely giving back.

Of all the important things in the Christian faith, nothing is more important than loving God with our entire being in the way he has shown us.

Having a tough time with this? Maybe this will help: God calls those whom he loves “beloved.” If you are reading this, you are beloved. It means you are chosen and wanted. When we draw meaning and identity from this truth, it makes receiving and giving godly love seem natural.