First off, Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Today, if any, it seems all the more fitting to write about love. If you are single or in a relationship, then you have come to the right place! Why? Because the main topic addressed in this blog is about what makes love, truly love–what love really is, and how it should be demonstrated, understood, and experienced in our lives.
Indeed, if we get our foundational understanding of love wrong, then our love relationships that are built on those views will crumble over time. Therefore, it is imperative that we get to the bottom of what love really is, and likewise, make it the bottom and foundation for all our relationships–especially for our most sacred one with our future spouse and the Lord.
(**Ironically, the answer to ‘bottom of love’ is at the very ‘bottom’ of this blog** yes, you can peek)
Here is a short excerpt from John Piper’s book, “Don’t Waste Your Life”, which addresses how Western culture has fundamentally distorted how love is defined in the Bible. Piper argues that seeing God’s love rightly gives us a correct understanding of love, which enables us to love others rightly, truly, and deeply. Essentially, he shows what love is, and what love is not. Check it:
“For most people, to be loved is to be made much of. Almost everything in our Western culture serves this distortion of love. We are taught in a thousand ways that love means increasing someone’s self-esteem. Love is helping someone feel good about themselves. Love is giving someone a mirror and helping him like what he sees.
This is not what the Bible means by the love of God. Love is doing what is best for someone. But making self (or others) the object of our highest affections is not best for us. It is, in fact, a lethal distraction. We were made to see and savor God—and savoring him, to be supremely satisfied, and thus spread in all the world the worth of his presence. Not to show people the all-satisfying God is not to love them. To make them feel good about themselves when they were made to feel good about seeing God is like taking someone to the Alps and locking them in a room full of mirrors.”
To be locked in a room of mirrors when the beauty of the Alps is at hand would be a tragedy. How much more so with God, the Creator of these mountains and the purest embodiment of love (1 Jn 4)? Therefore, as far as relationships are concerned, if we deprive our relationships from the source of this Love, then how can we expect for the best? Where else, then, will ‘love’ come? (From our imperfect hearts. Which is imperfect love.)
And, if the love we express to them is solely based on our making much of them without an overall focus on the God from whom all love is derived, then are we not trapping them in a room of mirrors when they could be reveling in the glories of God? By making much of them at the expense of God, we ultimately belittle their utmost joy. Why? Because our joy is made complete in fellowship with God (Jn 14,15,17).
So, brief recap: We can only, truly love when our love is flowing from the only source of true love—God. Thus, we can only, truly love when we (1) revel in and glorify God’s love as central and (2) demonstrate that love of God in our relationships at the most fundamental level.
**You want sweet, lasting romance? You want consistent, faithful friendship? You desire loyalty and like-mindedness? While there might be more variables to these equations, if you take out the bottom denominator of savoring and demonstrating God’s love, then you will undermine them regardless.
God desires that we experience love to the full—but let us not forget that we were made for God first and for each other second. And when we put the second in front of the first, the power of the first will be eclipsed of its blessing for the second. Similarly, just as removing the foundation from under a building will inevitably cause collapse, so also will our love relationships fall if the love of God is removed from the base.
Lastly and essentially, to love people is to give them what is best for them. Love is to joyfully show and demonstrate to them the greatest treasure in all reality. And if we refrain from sharing this truth in our relationships—especially our most intimate ones—we will be robbing them of the greatest opportunity in life.
Love is imaging God to one another, because God is love.
Love is unpacking, treasuring, and sharing the greatest gift of all—together. In fact, we would not be loving them (indeed, hating them) if we ignored or neglected to tell, show, or demonstrate to them the most eternally-weighty, life-giving, joy-producing gift, which is given and gloriously beheld in the beauty of the Gospel and God. It changes everything. The grace, love, selflessness, generosity, kindness, patience, peace, encouragement, and joy we find and savor in God is the only source that will vitalize our relationships and our souls.
Thus, the lifeblood of all healthy, flourishing, and vibrant relationships is one that is connected to the source of all that is truly and unwaveringly good—Jesus.
Original link: http://christianityapplied.com/2012/02/14/to-love-to-be-loved-2/
