Love Beyond Reaon

Love Beyond Reason

Ask any Christian (or non-Christian) “what is the most important thing we can do in life?”, and most of them should tell you, love. It is our number one commandment.
“’Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all you soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’ (mind in Mark’s gospel). This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘love your neighbor as yourself’. There is no commandment greater than these.
All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22: 37-40 (w/ references to Deut. 6:5, Lev. 19:18)
(The old and new testaments both are built on this)

It is the basis for all of God’s works. I hardly even feel the need to stress the importance of love. If you are alive you want it. You need it. It is like air. It is an essential part of life and everyone, at heart, knows it.
“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” Galatians 5:6b


But what is love?

Many times I ask myself after hearing the greatest commandment, “But how?” Sometimes I hear it and feel worse about myself and think how hard it is to love.
I’ll read something like 1 John 3: 14b-18
“Anyone who doesn't love is as good as dead. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know very well that eternal life and murder don't go together.”
And think, “Oh man. Is that me?”

It is impossible to love this way unless we receive love from God.
“We love because He loved us first.” 1 John 4:19
In fact it says that God is love.
“God is love…For love comes from God.” 1 John 4: 7-8

God will supply us with what we need, but we need to receive it first. A life in God is a reaction to God’s love for us. When we realize that we are beloved by God and really believe that we are loved by God it changes the way we live.

And the most powerful way that God shows his extreme love is on the cross.
“This is how we've come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us.” 1John 3
The cross says,” I love you.” It says that you are important to God. He is willing to go through pain and suffering and shame, and even death for our benefit. Just on the chance that we might see how much he loves us. He takes on our punishment and shame and even death just for us.
God never intended us to stoically and miserably go through life “loving” people. He intended it to be an expression of the joy and love that is welling up and overflowing up within us.


I am going to talk about two types of love:
1) Love that seeks value in it’s object, and
2) love that creates value in it’s object.

Pandy, bro-jon bun, elli
“she was not a particularly attractive doll. In fact, to tell you the truth she was a mess. She was no longer a valuable doll; I’m not sure we could have given her away. But for reasons that no one could ever quite figure out, in the way that kids sometimes do, my sister loved that little rag doll still. She loved her as strongly in the days of Pandy’s raggedness as she ever had in her days of great beauty.”

We are all rag dolls. Flawed and wounded, broken and bent.
But we are God’s rag dolls. He knows all our raggedness, and he loves us anyhow. Our raggedness is no longer the most important thing about us.

We are most used to a type of love that looks for someone or something of great worth. This love celebrates the beauty or strength of the beloved. The love we’re most familiar with is drawn to an object because it is expensive or attractive or lends status to the one associated with it. This love satisfies my desire, wins my admiration, or fulfills my appetites. It is a treasure hunt.
We learn about this kind of love early on. (Eros. Cinderella, babies, snow white)

Eros is to precarious a love to build your life on when you’re a rag doll. You will be trapped in an unwinnable contest to prove you’re pretty enough, smart enough, strong enough, or spiritual enough to deserve loving. You will be afraid to let the ragged edges of your true self show. No, rag dolls need love made of sterner stuff than mere Eros.

There is a love that creates value in what is loved. There is a love that turns the ragged stuffed animal you had when you were a kid into a priceless treasure. There is a love that grabs hold of imperfect people for reasons that no one could ever quite figure out and makes them precious and valued beyond belief. This is the love of God. This is the love with which God loves you and me.
“I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have drawn you with my loving kindness.” Jeremiah 31:3
God draws us. He loves us into who he wants us to be.

And when we allow this kind of love to enter us and only when we receive this kind of God love can we love in this way ourselves.
We don’t just give our love to people who can give back to us. We love broken people, imperfect people, even people who don’t love us. Loving is a choice we make that no one can make us change. It is the greatest gift in life. Loving recklessly is the fastest way to life.