Love DefinedSample

God gave, the Son died – this is love on display. This is a far cry from the feelings and personal rights driven dialogue that dominates our world, when speaking of love. 

God’s love is a dying kind of love. It gives up, preferring others before itself, and yet, in dying it brings life. This love, a sacrificial/ethical love, is a rebuke to our self-orientation, and a bold challenge to the cult of me and mine.  It stops us in our tracks. 

Unlike our love, God’s love saves, heals, and restores. 

However, our scripture is often read in a way that doesn’t do full justice to what John was saying - there is more to love than love. We tend to read past the last part as though it doesn’t quite fit or as though, unfortunately, John goes off the love track.  This is because we don’t clearly understand how God defines love. 

These verses open with the remarkable gift of eternal life being offered to anyone who hears and believes, through God’s great love for us. Eternal life is not speaking so much of endless ages, stacked end to end forever, but of a quality of life, endless to be sure, that shares in the very life of God himself, in his triune being. Words will always beggar what this means for us. 

This same love also declares that condemnation was not the purpose of the revelation of the love of God in sending Jesus. Salvation was the purpose – not condemnation.

But then the words perish and condemn appear in the text.  These are not lightweight terms. They exist in the same biblical framework as love and eternal life – although, certainly, virtual opposites.  We need to know from what we are being saved, what does it mean to perish and how does condemnation still seem to apply?  If we answer correctly love is only magnified, but if we attempt to push these terms to the side, we end up with a sentimental notion of love rather than a biblically based one. 

Allow me some quick definitions:

· Love is – the life, the words, and the cross of Jesus.

· Eternal life is – a state of blessedness, sharing the life of God himself. 

· To perish is – to not share in Gods life, eternal life. 

· Condemnation is – the constant state of humanity outside of saving faith. 

Taking this into consideration love takes on a more sombre tone than we sometimes allow for. God’s love saves us from the serious consequences of sin and death. To perish and to remain condemned by not believing demands we take seriously exactly what God’s love saves us from. 

This is – love defined.