United in the Love of Godናሙና

Love Takes Initiative

What is initiative in the context of a relationship? It is the willingness to take the first steps to “move” toward another person, to choose to be in relationship with them, to preemptively choose to know them and connect to them, to continue to move in the direction of that other person.

The strongest example of initiative is with God, shown in His moving to choose, or elect, a people for Himself. Because He chooses to be in relationship with us, He takes the initial necessary steps toward us to make that possible.

God does not do this begrudgingly or reluctantly. He is not forced to do it or tricked into it. Rather, God eagerly seeks His people. He is the one willing to make the first move, even when we move away from Him.

Without His taking the initiative, we would have no relationship with Him, because there was nothing in us that was even looking in God’s direction. It’s more accurate to say we were actively moving away from Him. Our regular tendency is to ignore, disobey, and fight back against God. Yet He still moves toward us. He still keeps calling us to Himself.

As God’s initiating love draws us to Him, it will also draw us to one another. As Ephesians 2 makes clear, God in Christ Jesus moves toward us to bring us who were far off from Him near to Him and also then near to one another, such that we can be joined together to God in Christ Jesus. God’s pursuit of us, His election of us, His choosing of us in love, flows to us and now flows through us to one another. We ride the momentum of God’s love for us to then love one another. We move in love toward one another because God first moved in love toward us (1 John 4:19).

This does not naturally happen. In fact, our tendencies today are to move away from others rather than toward them. We expect others to take the initiative. But initiative is fundamentally about moving toward others and doing so without expectation or need for prompting.

God’s love works not because of the other person, but in spite of the other person. Not every person will respond to our attempts to help or show love or take the initiative. But God’s love is especially about acting toward those who, like us, could never earn and do not deserve relationship with God, yet still receive it.

This initiating quality of divine love is within us by faith. And so it is what we draw from to help us overcome passiveness and isolating habits. It empowers us to show attention and sympathy and forgiveness, and to be willing to be the first to do that in our relationships.