Chapter 3 :
love
The greatest of all, the fruit of a great single life
Part Five
Unconditional love
Before we can understand why God’s way of loving is ‘higher’ or completely fulfilling, we need to first trust God to renew our minds in our understanding of love. There IS a big difference between the world’s way of loving, and the world’s understanding of love – and God’s way of loving and wisdom. I think the key here, as I said above, is unconditional love. The world does not understand unconditional love – and neither do we – unless we daily lay ourselves down and pursue to know God.
We must see that God doesn’t have to ‘do’ love – as if it was something against His nature. He is not like us, who need a motivating factor to ‘do’ love. Our love is conditional – ‘if you love me, I will love you in return.’ Or ‘because you are beautiful, I love you,’ or ‘because you came to my rescue I love you.’ Even ‘because of your personality, I love you.’ In other words, it is not in our nature to love someone just because we love them. There is usually some sort of motivation, some sort of need or want or desire of ours that has been met that causes us to love someone.
This is not so with God – God loves unconditionally. He loved us first. He doesn’t love us because of what we have DONE, or even who we are – He loves us because He loves us. He loves us because He is love and cannot do anything else but love. Not because love controls God, but because God and love are inextricably the same thing. Therefore the love that God is can only be perfect, because God is perfect.
1 John 4:7-14
“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is born of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God – for God is love.
God showed how much He loved us by sending His only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through Him. This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”
So we see the difference – the world loves because of motives of need, or want. God loves because of motives of who He is – or, He loves because He has the motive to love. To put it another way, God loves because He is God, and God loves. It’s circular, because this kind of love is complete. God gives, which is His WAY of loving. The world’s way of loving is taking.
We see this all the time, even in our own lives. However, we can begin to understand it a little bit if we look to our parents. Good parents love their kids despite what their kids have done (well, theoretically). We can understand that they have an obligation to love their kids simply because they’re their kids. Of course, parents are human, and some have kids for other reasons. But, the theory is the same. And we can say the same for God – God loves us because we are His children. Not because of what we’ve done, how good we are etc. but because He loves us. In Genesis we see clearly that the reason God created us was so that He could love us. And this was a kind of overflowing love – God loves (He loves himself), and overflowing with love, creating human beings to love. He created us to enjoy Him, thus showing His love.
