July 29, 2002
CYBERCOLUMN:
On love
___By Berry D. Simpson
___I spent the past couple of weeks working through one of my favorite chapters in the Bible: I John 4. I have gathered a few observations about love and God.
___For starters, love is from God. It is a personal characteristic of God, his essential nature and his trademark. Love doesn't define God, however, because God is bigger than any one description. God is not equal to love without remainder; he is also holy, righteous and true.
___We cannot abide in love—love the way God loves—without abiding in God and God abiding in us. One follows the other: We cannot love othe
r people with the agape love unless we abide in God, and we cannot abide in God or God abide in us without an outpouring of agape love on other people.
Berry D. Simpson
___Love is in us when God is in us, and we receive love when we receive God. We love one another, not because we deserve love or earn love, but as a natural outpouring from the indwelling of God. John says if we don't love it means we don't know God.
___This is not about the love like people normally love, like they sing about and write poems about. Even the pagans love one another in that sense. But the love of I John 4 is about loving one another as God loves, with agape—selfless, giving—love. Anything that does not come from God is not love. It might make us feel warm and fuzzy, but it isn't love unless it is from God.
___Love originated from God, and we are capable of love only because of him. We didn't love God first and convince him to pay attention to us. He loved us first and sent his Son in exchange for our sins to bring us to him and give us the capacity of loving. Love was not our idea and didn't originate with us. It was God's idea and originated with God. If we think it came from us first, we aren't talking about real love.
___Love is an obligation. The Bible says, "If God so loved us we also ought to love one another" (1 John 4:11). The word "ought" doesn't mean "should", as in, "Kids, you ought to go to bed right now or you'll be sorry." It is much more definite than that. It carries the weight of a moral imperative. We are obligated to reproduce God's love to one another.
___Love is God in us, and love in our lives proves the existence of God in our lives. No one has seen God himself, but we can see God in our lives through love. If we love one another, God abides in us, and we in God. Living in love is the same as living in God, and living in God is living in love.
___When we love one another (in the same way God loves us, with agape love), people see God in us. We are God's proxy, because we mimic his behavior, his love, by loving one another.
___Unfortunately, the corollary is also true. If we love each other poorly—if we fight and argue and turn on each other—people will think they are seeing God in us. They may walk away from this image of God without ever seeing who He really is.
___Love gives us confidence in the Day of Judgment, because the existence of love within us proves the existence of Christ within us, and just as Christ is holy and pure before God, so are we. With respect to our position, our relationship, to God, we are the same as Jesus. How can this be? Because when God looks at us, he doesn't see the sin and the misbehaving, he sees us full of his love. Knowing this, we can confidently face him. We are safe from judgment because as he is, so are we in this world.
___Love is a call for authenticity. We are not to claim love for God if we don't love our brother. Loving God means loving someone we have never seen and cannot see. How can we love someone we can't see if we are incapable of loving our brother that we can plainly see? It isn't a pick-and-choose kind of love; it is an all-giving and all-encompassing kind of love. Either we love or we don't; if we can't love "on the ground", we won't love God.
___John finished this great chapter with a command, the only command he gave: "And this commandment we have from God, that if we love God we should love our brother also." It is a call to integrity—a command to be authentic. It is a mark of the true love that comes only from God.
___Berry Simpson, a Sunday School teacher at First Baptist Church in Midland, is a petroleum engineer, writer, runner and member of the city council in Midland.
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