Choosing Love that Gives

I first wrote the words “I love you” in a note to a girl when I was in the 5^th grade. It felt good. And the feeling was even better when I received a note back with the same words. A core belief took shape in me. From that point on, I understood love as something that was meant to make me feel good. Of course, my 5^th-grade love affair didn’t last long (I was too shy to actually talk to her). But the impression that love is defined by how another person makes me feel, stuck.

And then I encountered God.

Believing in His unconditional love felt good too. But He asked me to love others in the same way—even those I don’t like. How was that possible? If I didn’t have “the feeling,” how was I to love them?

Later in life, I remember reading through the book of Isaiah, grimacing over the descriptions of God’s loathing of sin and what it has done to His creation. Where was His love in all this? No good feelings here. It felt as though divine frustration was ready to destroy everything! But then the words of John 3:16 pushed into my mind. And I was struck with the awareness that even with God’s hatred of evil He longs to find ways to express His love and affection for those He has created. The familiar Bible verse declares God’s love to be an action, not a feeling! It shows how far His love is willing to go to deal with the sin problem. 

But how does this change how I love?

Here I find the definition:

To Love is to Give

“For God so loved . . .”

God’s capacity for love is beyond our ability to comprehend. Of course in 1 John 4:16 we’re told that He IS love. His love does not merely flow out of His feelings. It flows out of His identity. To know what love is, we must learn WHO God is along with the many facets of His character. His propensity to love takes Him to extremes. He does crazy, sacrificial acts because His love is such that it cannot be ignored or covered up for long. It’s WHO He is.

“For God so loved . . . that He gave . . .”

For confused humans to recognize what real love is we must look to the One who possesses it as His essence. True love, therefore, must always involve giving because that’s what He does. We mostly think of love in terms of what carries the deepest and most passionate feelings. And strong feelings will perhaps accompany love. But they are not the substance of it. Our passionate impulses in relationships most often lead to taking from others to fulfill our own emotional or physical desires, not giving. We easily slip into my 5^th-grade understanding.

Choosing to give to the point of suffering is God’s demonstration of love. An old definition of the word ‘passion’ is ‘to suffer.’ This turns on its head the idea of falling “passionately in love.” If we really comprehend God’s love, we may be left with the sense that we rarely love. The popular idea of love is an arrangement where we personally experience the most happiness. John 3:16 exposes that understanding as a twisted deception.

To Love is to Embrace Even What is Unlovely

“For God so loved the world….”

God’s example shows us the kind of love that pursues those who are unlovely. “The world” embodies many things, but particularly people—the good, the bad, the ugly and even those who say mean things. Though we the people have been corrupted with sin, we still carry something the Creator sees and loves—His own image in us (Genesis 1:27).

This challenges us to ask the question, do we have eyes to see what God sees in people, beneath the ugly stains of selfishness and abuse? Mostly no. Our human tendency is to reject those in the world we disagree with or don’t like and seek out those we can get along with—those who make us feel good.

You are Called to Be Like Your Heavenly Father

The simple words of John 3:16 paint a picture of God’s character and His commitment to save us who make up this world. But we also need to recognize the call it issues for us to be like our Heavenly Father. To learn to love with His love is a very personal call to each follower of Jesus. Truly loving someone may hurt more often than it feels good.

Do we really want to learn to love like He does?

Only then can the words “I love you” truly mean what they say – “I want to give to you something that’s valuable to me, even if it causes me to suffer in some way.” What would this look like for us? Our time, our energy, our limited resources, our affection and attention are all personal treasures that we naturally guard for ourselves. To love is to give to others that which is valuable enough to protect.

Remember, it’s not a feeling according to John 3:16. The One who is most offended by the ugliness of sin is also the One who has sacrificially given to save those most immersed in sin. And on top of that, we get a picture of what true love looks like when we choose to let it start flowing through us.

There’s no greater gift! Let’s learn to give it!

Response:

• In what ways have I understood love merely in terms of how it makes me feel?
• How does understanding love as “giving” change the way I see and do love?
• What parts of John 3:16 do I still struggle to fully embrace and believe?
• Who is that one person I don’t feel like loving, but I can choose to give something of myself to?
• Jesus, what does it look like for me to give when the world around me seems to be going crazy?

(Edited and reposted from March 16, 2020)