by Louise Struwig
It’s all about love
According to a quick Google search, the top love song of all time is ‘I will always love you’ sung by Whitney Houston from the movie The Bodyguard made in 1992 – that’s 31 years ago and this love song is still considered to be the greatest of all time. Probably only a handful of older blog readers will even remember the movie, a rather creepy but intense story involving a beautiful and successful celebrity, a determined stalker, a jealous sister, a lethal hitman and of course the handsome bodyguard.
That brings up the point that love through the ages has spanned the whole spectrum of emotions from intense hate or the antithesis of love, to jealousy, desperation, young unrequited crushes, affection, companionship, platonic friendship, self-love, familial love of parents and siblings, hot passionate sexual love, illicit love, compassion and the ultimate expression of love, sacrificial love.
Almost all of these types of love can be found in the Bible. We read of the platonic but deep friendship between David and Jonathan; the hot passionate love of Samson and Delilah; Samsons illicit encounters with prostitutes; the compassionate love of Hosea for his wife who kept straying away from their marriage; King David’s love affair with Bathsheba; the lifelong marriage of Abraham and Sarah with all its ups and downs; the redeeming love of Boaz for Ruth; the self-love/care of Daniel and his friends when they refused the rich foods offered to them and chose to make the healthy choice of vegetables and fruit. There are many more examples, but the greatest story of love is the one told throughout the Bible, the love that God has for all mankind – you and I. This is the central theme – God’s unconditional, eternal and all-encompassing love for humanity. We read in 1 John 4:9-10 This is how God showed His love for us: God sent His only Son into the world so we might live through Him. This is the kind of love we are talking about – not that we once upon a time loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. (The Message)
Throughout the Bible, God displays His love,
- By interacting with men and women directly. God spoke directly to Adam and Eve, to Noah, to Moses, to Abraham and many more. Throughout the Old Testament we read how God had direct conversations with various people.
- By speaking to the nation of Israel through His prophets, warning His people to repent and draw close to God as He yearns to have His people’s hearts and to be involved in their lives, guiding, protecting, providing and nurturing.
- By sending Jesus, His own Son in human form to heal, to teach, to guide and to die as the ultimate atonement for sin, doing away with the continual need for offering sacrifices. Jesus dealt for once and for all with sin past, present and future. Hebrews 9 from verse 11 tells how year after year, sacrifices had to be made to atone for the sins of the people, but when Jesus died His blood cleansed us inside and outside of all our sins forever.
Since Jesus is central to showing us the love of God, let’s take a closer look at His life here on earth and what He taught us about the love of the Father.
There are many examples where Jesus showed compassion for the sick. He performed miracles and demonstrated God’s care for our needs – physical, emotional and mental. In fact, Jesus was so compelled by the love of God that He broke the rules of society. Jewish law is strict about no work done on the Sabbath, but Jesus ignored that when He came across a man with a crippled hand. All Jesus saw was man who couldn’t earn a living due to His handicap, and so He stretched out His hand and healed the man, bringing criticism and anger upon Himself from the Pharisees who left the meeting place plotting to ruin Him. Read about it in Matthew 12:9 -14. There are many other times when Jesus ignored the rules and chose to see the need and respond. The woman who touched the hem of His clothes, should not have been out in public due to her problem of constantly bleeding. Yet, all Jesus saw was her desperation to be healed and included, and so he healed her. Read about this story in Luke 8:43 – 48. There are many more stories in the New testament where Jesus saw the individual need and defied the rules because His love was greater.
Jesus told parables that taught of the Fathers love and forgiveness. The parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan are examples of this. The prodigal son is welcomed with open arms and great celebration when he turns away from his rebellion and foolishness and returns to his father. The same way our Heavenly Father treats us when we repent and return to Him. The good Samaritan demonstrated what compassion is like when he stopped to help a beaten up man. In fact both a Priest and a Levite had pretended not to notice the problem and walked on by. The Samaritan, though stopped, did whatever first aid he could and then took the man to a place of safety and paid for his care. He even planned to check up on how the man had recovered, because he told the innkeeper that he would return to reimburse him if expenses exceeded the amount he had given. These parables can be found in Luke 15:11 – 31 and Luke 10:30 – 37 respectively.
But the ultimate proof of God’s love was shown when Jesus sacrificed Himself to death on the cross taking the punishment for our sin, forever doing away with the need to continually shed blood and ultimately buying us salvation. Then He rose again from the dead, proving that with God nothing is impossible, He even has power over death and the grave, giving us hope for day to day life and for eternity.
So, what do we do with this all-encompassing love that God shows to us? Let’s again look at what Jesus said:
- Jesus said to love the Lord God with all our hearts. Luke 10:27
- He continued by saying that we should love our neighbour as much as we love ourselves.
- Jesus said to love one another as He loved us and that this (love for one another) would indicate to all that we belong to Him. John 13:34
Let’s follow the example of Jesus and spread the love that He has shown us to all around us.