my first formal chapter as chaplain of delta alpha chi.
Love
With the week of Valentine’s Day drawing to a close, the thought of love has been on our minds quite a lot this week. Whether you walked down the Valentine’s Day aisle at Walmart, saw the vendors set up on the side of the road, or received a valentine, you were thinking about love. But what is love? Just how do we define this small, but powerful four-letter word? According to Wikipedia, love is defined as everything from a form of deep affection, pleasure, or devotion, to a score in tennis. In fact there is even an article on how to define love and how to love. As humans, it is the most powerful and passionate emotion we encounter. We all desire to experience love, and in return, to express love. We throw this word around everyday loving anything from God to parents, friends, and boys to food, bands, clothing styles, and movies. We have diluted the definition of love as a society and forgotten the extent of God’s love and commands for us to love. So, now the real question is, what it love for us as Christians? Love is not a new concept, it is an eternal concept. It is the fundamental part of what it means to follow Jesus Christ. There are three ways love impacts us as Christians.
The first is God’s love for us. His deep, passionate, and unconditional love for us is what has provided our means of salvation. John 3:16 tells us that “God so LOVED the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Not that God so pitied the world, or thought the world needed help, or even liked the world, but that He SO DEEPLY LOVED the world that He would send His son to give His all for us, regardless if we would accept it or not.
1 John 3:16 actually defines love for us. It says “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” This scripture tells us what kind of love God has for us, an unconditional love – not that we loved God, but that He loved us… It is a love that will continue in spite of how we live, what we do, or if we even give it back to Him. God has loved us from before we even knew of Him, from the beginning of time. 1 John goes on to tell us that the ultimate definition of love is God Himself. Twice in the fourth chapter of 1 John it states that “God is love.” The very essence of his being is love. This is why Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always perseveres. Love never fails.” This is our God and this is His love for us.
Lastly, we can never be separated from this unconditional love of Christ. Paul tells us in Romans 8:35, 37-39, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So not only are we unconditionally loved by a God that the very essence of His being is LOVE, we will never ever be separated from this love. We are able to soak in it for all of eternity.
Our God, as He unconditionally loves us, also deeply desires to be loved by His creation. We serve a jealous God who wants our love, devotion, and affection. This the second way we experience divine love, our love for God. We are commanded by Him to love Him. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is explaining to the Pharisees the greatest commandment of all, to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” – Matthew 22:37-38. The Gospel of Mark gives a second account of this saying “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Once we begin to do this, to LOVE our Lord with our entire being, everything else starts to fall in to place and make sense. Jesus tells us that the all the law hangs on this commandment and the command to love your neighbor. So, if we truly love our Lord with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, it become easy to follow His commands for they will bring joy to our heart and soul. For the commands and burdens of our Lord are light and easy. Colossians 5:6 says that “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” Our faith in God is expressed in our love for Him. By loving God we know God. 1 John 4:8 warns us that “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 Corinthians 7:3 tells us that “the man who loves God is known by God.” "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like Him.” states 1 John 4:16b-17. Now the question becomes how do we show God our love?
As Christians we have become carriers of the Spirit of God. 1 John 4:13 tells us that “we know that we live in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.” Because of His Spirit living in us, we are called to love as God has LOVED us, UNCONDITIONALLY. 1 John 4:11 commands us that “since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” By loving one another God lives in us and His love is made complete in us. 1 John 4:12 affirms this: “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.” Jesus tells us that the second greatest commandment, which is first to only loving God, is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus also says in John 14:15 that if we love Him, we will obey what He commands. He goes on to say in Chapter 15 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love. Just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remained in His love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” and down in verse 17, “This is my command: Love each other.”
So this is our call, our mission, to love one another, to lay our lives down for each other, just as Christ gave His all for us. This how the world will know we are Christians, followers of the great King Jesus, by us loving each other. John 13:34-35 says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” We will be known as Christ-followers if we love others around us, regardless if they are our sister, our family, our friend, or even our enemy. We are commanded to love as Christ loved us, unconditionally. 1 Peter 4:8 tells that “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” Loving your family and friends seems pretty easy, but we are called to love everyone, not just those we already like. You may wonder where you are going to find love for the person who has betrayed you or hurt you, for the person who is different from you or your friends, or for the person who hates you. You know that you can’t do it on your own accord. But that is where our God steps in, as carriers of His Spirit we have His love to give. 1 John 4:7 says “let us love one another, for love comes from God.” This unconditional and unending love comes from our God above. It is divine and unreserved and flows through us because of who we are in Christ Jesus. So we are equipped with the divine ability to do everything in love, as Paul commands us to in 1 Corinthians 16:14. So let us love everyone in every way and in everything we do. 1 John 3:18 tells us how to love, “Let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth.” Whether it be spending an day with a friend who is having a rough time, or helping some who dropped all of their things in the middle of Landis Green, or consoling someone with a loss, let us love them like Jesus. Let us show them the love that our Savior has shown us and the same love he desires for them to know through actions and in truth.
1 Corinthians 13:13 “Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” With love being the essence of God, love is the greatest element of our faith. It is the fundamental element of our salvation. This is how others see Christ in us and how we express our love to God, by loving His creation alongside Him, by letting Him express His love for other through our lives. So I challenge you to experience love as our God has created it to be experienced, not as society has made it out to be. I challenge you to experience it and express it passionately and ultimately UNCONDITIONALLY to our God and to our world. This is our call and our mission to all of the people in this world. This is what our generation needs to be remembered as, the generation that loved as Christ loved. This is what being a Christian is all about, loving the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and in turn, out of the overflow of the love of God in your heart, loving other as Christ has loved us. This my prayer for us: Ephesians 3:17-19 “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
my love to all of you in Christ Jesus,
ashleigh
