MISSION:LOVE 1

God is Love. (1 John 4:8)  God chose to describe Himself as Love.  Our efforts of understanding God based on words are pale metaphors compared to God’s true nature.  God is like human love, but also unlike it.  Love is naturally passionate, forceful, determined and enthralled.  So that must mean that God is like human love, only more so.  God is more passionate, more forceful, more determined and more enthralled.

Love isn’t just sentimental hearts and flowers. Love is a raging torrent rushing toward union. Love is a river tumbling irresistibly toward the ocean; the ocean sweeping  the river up as the waves pound the shore.  Love is usually very messy, very troublesome, very dangerous and very consuming.  Love has been described as not only the desire to posses, but the desire to be possessed.

Is God really like that?  Doesn’t God want us to understand Him as something sweet and nice vs. something turbulent, demanding and fearsome?  We must realize that God doesn’t play word games. 

Love emerged in humankind as a result of our being made in the image of God. The bond of love produced a family, and by doing so, humankind.  We can have wide variety of “loves” because we have such powerful capacities to bond. Why does God want to identify with human bonding?  Because He wants us to understand that it’s in His nature to bond with us.

That’s what Jesus accomplished on the cross! Because God first loved us, and gave His only Son to die for us, we are able to obey God’s two most important commandments to love Him, and love each other.