What’s Love Got To Do With It? (Part 2)

What’s Love Got To Do With It? (Part 2)

“No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.”

‭‭I John‬ ‭4:12‬

How do we love someone who despises or hates us?  How do we love someone we don’t even know?  

First we have to look at the type of love we are talking about.  In the first part of this series we talked about relationship, familial, parental or that mushy-type of love.  This isn’t the love that John talks about when he talks about the love of God.  The love of God is a sacrificial love. The sacrificing of one’s self importance. This is not the mushy, emotional type that we experience when we connect with someone through romance and physical attraction. 

Sacrificial love is the type of love we have when we put the needs of someone else in front of ours. It has no emotion attached. We don’t do it because we are married to that person or even if they are our children or family. This type of love is impossible without God and the Holy Spirit. This type of love is a joyful act of resolve to put the welfare of someone else in front of ours and to do it happily, or without objection.  This type of love is being able to love because it comes as a command from God. This is why it is impossible to have this type of love without God. 

Has someone ever mistreated you? Or lied to you? Or has someone ever hurt a family member of yours?  

Often times people will learn to forgive someone - yes, I said learn, because they truly don’t forgive them. They have learned an emotional response or detachment. 

Forgiveness to many, is a learned behavior. People learn to let time go by so the pain of the event lessens and they call this forgiveness.  Deep down inside, the bitterness and the hurt still lives inside of them and these true emotional feelings are far from forgiveness. Just because you can hide an emotional response, doesn’t mean you forgive someone. You’re just good at hiding your true feelings. True forgiveness is an act of caring for that person above the needs of your own, in spite of anything they have done to cause you hurt or pain. It’s an outward expression of true love, the way God has commanded.  

Now take this one step further.  Take the same person that has hurt you or mistreated you, and love them.  This isn’t kindness. This is loving them. Place their needs above your own.  Put the interest of theirs, in front of yours. This is sacrificial love.  You can look around you and see a lot of nice people. People who would do anything for anyone. People who pick up the phone when you call. People who check in on you often. Those are people who care.  It doesn’t mean they love you though.  Children you’ve raised or parents who have raised you, love you out of emotional connection. But what about the stranger who stands on the street corner begging for money? Or the person with a different political view?  How about the unsaved?

This is a difficult series for me to write, because I am struggling to let the Holy Spirit teach me to love like this.  Only born-again believers, those who have turned their lives over to Jesus Christ and have taken the Holy Spirt, will love like this.  It is a joyful, sacrificial love. It is Spirit-filled. Selfless. 

This type of love is allowing yourself to put the needs of someone who absolutely despises you, in front of your needs. Without question, hesitation or even blinking.  It’s loving a complete stranger.  I honestly struggle with even contemplating this.  This is a love of joy, no matter how you are being treated or not treated. This joy isn’t happiness, it’s an absence of anger, resentment, bitterness or anything negative. I know very very few people who have this type of love. 

You can’t fake this type of love.  God isn’t fake and He is the pure example of this type of love. It’s obvious, because you and I are sitting here, our salvation is secured, because of His love for us - this type of love. 

Many try to fake it. You may even hear them tell you they love you. Maybe you’ve experienced love-bombing before. Love-bombing is that over-the-top expression of love from someone in an attempt to make you feel like you’re loved so they can gain something from it.  You may hear people tell you how or why they love you - in an attempt to convince you that they love you. You may even hear someone explain that they forgive you or why they forgive you, so they feel better about themselves. This is not the type of love that John talks about. 

The love that God commands, is a love that we are to have with our neighbor. Our neighbor can be anyone. Think about it, we could have any person as our neighbor. That is the expressive term here. Our neighbor doesn’t literally mean the person next door. And I hate to admit this, as a new Christian, this is what I believed.  I actually pictured my neighbors.  When I read not to cover my neighbor, I though it meant the person next door to me.  I’m not ashamed to admit my growth and neither should you. 

What Jesus meant, is anyone, any person, anywhere. Many Christian’s struggle with this type of love.

As Jesus traveled during His ministry He visited and slept in many places. Imagine how many “neighbors” He had during those years.  Love, sacrificial love of self, was an important part of His ministry.  This isn’t a love that allows someone to take advantage of you, or a love that says you should be engaged with unbelievers in any business or marriage.  This is purely a love based on selfless sacrifice, absent most emotion. It doesn’t mean not to be angry. It doesn’t mean people will like you. And it doesn’t mean to give in to everything and not express the truth the Bible talks about. 

Loving like this is abiding in God. When we fully understand this type of love, we will be abiding in God. God is love. Those that can allow the Holy Spirit to show us how to love like this will be able to love like God commands. 

I admit, I’m not there yet.  I struggle daily with loving the way God has commanded me to.  Giving myself to God was the first step. Learning to be obedient in what God wants for my life is much harder than I imagined.  So we must pray daily that God will use us without us getting in the way. We must pray for God to reveal His love through us, for others.  And for me, I just need to listen to the Holy Spirit.  Easier said, then done. 

“And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment. Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.”

‭‭I John‬ ‭3:23-24‬

“By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”

‭‭I John‬ ‭4:13-16‬