What Part of Love Don't You Understand?
by David VanCronkhite www.bloodnfire.com
Email: david.vancronkhite@gmail.com
Whose love is this love that we are actually commanded to give away? What love is this that the world can witness and know the reality of Jesus?
We are absolutely guaranteed disappointment if we try to love man through our filters, images, and ways. All we can see in those we desire to love are the failures, which at best are forgiven but not forgotten. All we can measure is the time it will take to prove that the ones we said we believed in are once again untrustworthy, unlovable. Perhaps they can win back our trust, our love, but only if they do enough to prove it will not happen again. And depending on how deep the hurt, violation, or the sin -- real or perceived -- I, and only I, hold all the cards for how and when to love them again. I lay out the ground rules for the judgments to be cleared and love restored.
Make no mistake. If it is our love, it is second best. In fact, it is worthless. Our love, as great as it might be, will always have some limitation as long as we have some form of flesh about us.
But what if it were possible to give away His love. What if we went into the heavens, spent time with Him, saw and heard Him, and then purposed to be like Him in His love and ways?
And what if God, the One who instituted compassion and love and grace and mercy, said:
My ways are higher. I am not man that I would lie, or the son of man that I
would change my mind. I am faithful. I will do it. I am a God of great love,
great mercy. Call it cheap grace if you want, gooey, sloppy love if you want,
but if you will give grace and love like I give grace and love and have mercy, you will find your relationships strengthened, not damaged.
Could He say that? Would He dare? Could the world handle that degree of love? Shouldn't judgment triumph over this love to keep us in line, to keep us in fear and bowing low?
What would a God of love, a God whose name is Jealous (for us), want from us? How about love? Absolute, unconditional love must be the answer or He is no God at all.
Why does He say "I forgive you for the wrongdoing, which is now as far as the east is from the west?" Would He, this God of love, continue to haunt and hound those He loves by constantly dangling the memory of our sin in front of us instead of His constant gift of love and grace, mercy and loving-kindness?
We, mere men, have love born of hearts so deceitfully wicked that we think we are pretty good when actually we are nowhere close to the place He designed us to be. Were He to hold our hearts against us -- our dishonesty, our guiltlessness over sins of omission; the way we treat our neighbor and the aliens, the widows, the orphans; the way we capture the broken hearted into our systems of performance and rituals; our favoritism and classism, exhibited in the unjust wages we pay our workers; and our definitions, labels, and rating of sin and holiness, forgetting when we break one of the lesser we are as guilty as the dreaded sex offender, the homosexual, the adulterer -- well, the good news is that He doesn't!
Maybe all He is asking is, "Do you love me (because that is why I loved you first)?" and then the follow up, "Did you give my love away?" He never asks us to give our love away. It is far too tainted, far too demanding, far too costly and manipulative.
Oh, but His love!
"Did you receive My love?" He cries out!
"Did you give it away?" He weeps.
And we answer, "Yes, we received it, but what we gave away doesn't look, feel, or act like Yours. Ours is conditional and manipulates. Yours allures. You give first, but we demand first." And on and on it goes.
So how does this love affair take place between us? He seems to say, "It's gotta be, it's gotta go supernatural. It is nothing you know in the natural. You can only get it from Me. You have to start by coming up here with Me. Come on up! Hurry! Are you coming?"
He makes a way and then says, "Now that you have seen Me and heard Me and experienced Me, what part of love do you not understand? It's not anything out of a textbook. It's nothing out of law and performance. And it is certainly not out of guilt and shame that you can receive and give. My love is from above and it is overwhelmingly righteous and peaceful and joyful, and that only in the Holy Spirit!
"I love you with a love that is unfathomable so that you can love Me and your neighbor. If it were not so I would not tell you it was, and I am faithful to do it. And now I will show you the most excellent way! Now you are ready. Now I will, I will, I will. But do you believe me?"
And all I can say is "Yes! Yes! Yes! I believe! I believe! I believe! Because You have been so faithful, so loving, so forgiving, so merciful, so full of grace and wonder and grandeur. I am in awe of You and in awe of this magnificent expression of Your essence that only You can display, Your amazing love!
"For You, oh God, are Love!"
