Focus: Love At Its Best

Text: 1Jh.4:19

"We love HIM, because he first loved us."

John is known as the Apostle of love. In the Gospel that bears his name, he presents himself as "the other disciple whom Jesus loved." The love of Jesus Christ transformed him from a "son of thunder" to a Spirit-tempered and loving gentleman. Now he says to us, "We love, because he first loved us." I intentionally dropped the word 'him' from the text, because it is not in the original Greek. It was added by the translators. So taking it literally as it is, without the word "him," it is clear that John is not essentially talking about loving Christ back, but about loving at all. The love of Christ is the reason we love in the first place. His love inspires and motivates us to begin to love.

The Fall of Man in the garden of Eden renders us incapable of loving in the true sense of love. Man's love degenerated into love for personal gain. Human love is now a caricature of the divine. Our love has self at the center of it. Love is originally for the good of the other. A God-centered love is love at its best. It is love as God intended it from the beginning.

LOVE is Liver to the soul. It is Oxygen to the soul - and also, its organic nutrient - very healthy for the soul. It is a holistic Vitamin for the soul, and it is the Ethic of the soul - the soul's moral principle. Since we are no longer able to love like God due to the Fall, Paul tells us that "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us" (Rom.5:5). Our whole being is flooded, inundated and saturated with God's kind of love. The Spirit of God in us is now the propelling force of love. Now we can love as we should. The spring of love has been opened in us. It is an inward reality. From within us, it flows out to everyone about us. Externally, we are looking at the cross as the symbol of sacrificial and supreme love. Internally, we are experiencing the surging power of the Spirit of love. God, according to Paul, has given us the spirit of love, of power, and of sound mind.

Tell me, what is life without love? Pablo Picasso says "love is the greatest refreshment in life." Another has said that time not spent on love is wasted. The aroma of love is sweet. Divine love is without condition and has no complications.

On the physical level, love makes a huge difference in our lives. It is said by psychologists that the excitement of being in love increases heart rate. They say that our faces radiate, our lips redden, and under-eye circles actually become less noticeable. One of them says that "heightened emotions cause our pupils to dilate, so that our eyes look brighter and clearer," and he says that "we have been so constructed that even our bodies become lovelier when they are loved."

Child of God, you are wasting if you are not loving. Take love into your relationships, into your business or career, and into every dimension of your existence. Paul teaches us that "love is the fulfilling of the law." Love is the chief law. Open up your whole being for God's love to flow and overflow. Love is the one thing that we owe every man, and by the empowering presence of the Spirit in us, we can do love - love at its very best. Let us love in word and in deed.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter