Beginning the New Year in Love

It seems only fitting to begin the year by writing of the Love of God.  Appropriate in the first place because I have been studying through 1 John for some time and am now reading through the whole book daily to soak in things I may not have seen in a verse by verse study.  Secondly, it is fitting because God has so chosen to bless my wife and I with our fifth child (due late May or early June 2012).  Children are such a blessing, and I say without hesitation that I have learned more about God's Love for me through parenthood and the love I have for each of my children.

Having said that, and with love as the backdrop for kicking off 2012, let me begin by getting right into 1 John and talk about the bookends of chapter 4- God is love.  In verse 8 of chapter 4, John writes, "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."  Verse 16b states just as explicitly, "God is love."  Between these bookends is the description and explanation of these bookends.  First, in verse 10 we are told what love is - namely, "not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."  So we see that love IS sacrifice.  God is love, because God is sacrifice.  God is three in one, Father, Son and Holy Spirit - the Son is an atoning sacrifice once for all.  Therefore God is love.  How do we know this apart from the words in some book that is thousands of years old?  Verse 9, "God showed his love among us:  He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him."  God is love, and He demonstrates that love among us in time and space as a part of human history forever recorded and attested by Biblical and extra-biblical sources alike.

Love is inextricably tied to sacrifice.  We only know what love is because Christ Jesus laid down his life for us (Chapter 3 verse 16).  So any talk we may have about love that is devoid of an acknowledgment of sacrifice is no love at all.  It may well be a good description of temporary happiness, of physical pleasure or the promise thereof, of getting or being able to use something for one's own ends, but it will not be love.  So, what do we make of things like "irreconcilable differences" as a reason for divorce?  The only conclusion is that there was no love in the first place.  This is a very difficult statement to hear, but think it through.  If the only way we know love is through a demonstration of sacrifice, if we are told clearly that love is God sending His Son to be an atoning sacrifice for the sins of man, and that because we know this concerning love we ought to love one another just the same (chapter 4 verse 11) then there logically can be no differences that rise to the level of being irreconcilable.  Jesus Himself taught that divorce was the result of a refusal to forgive, a point at which one party was no longer willing to sacrifice for another.

Apart from the example of marriage, we are also instructed to love our brother in the same way God loved us and demonstrated that love.  We are told in scripture that the world will know His people by the love we have for one another.  We must not misunderstand the gravity of the word love as it applies to our relationships.  Loving God and loving one another.  In chapter 4 and 19-21 we see that the demonstration that we love the God we cannot see with our eyes is by how we love those we can see and interact with physically each and every day.  If we do not love one another - through sacrifice - we do not truly know what love is or love God.

There are two points that are critical in my mind that should serve as a challenge to us all in the new year.  First, we must not, we can not, attempt to separate sacrifice from love.  We must not try, as some have done, to present love as a tacit or celebration of anything and everything under the sun as if love is tantamount to acceptance of all behavior, that all is OK since the goal of man is to be happy in how we each choose to live our lives.  If love itself is God's sending of His Son to die as atonement for our sins, and if we only know love because of the demonstration of Christ's sacrifice for our sins through crucifixion, then we dare not be so cavalier with our understanding and universal application of the term.  Second, we must strive to continually reaffirm our love for God by preaching to ourselves the Gospel and to love one another by sacrificing of ourselves for the sake of the Gospel and by preaching it to others through our words and deeds.  Perhaps if we all as believers set out to accomplish this in 2012, the year will be marked with an increased awareness that the Church is set apart from the world and its members are easily seen as markedly different in that they love one another and therefore love their God and can then successfully preach to others the love of God available to all.

Happy New Year, and may it be one of great love for God an one another.