Perfected By Love: Learning to Love God and Others
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13
The ability to love and receive love is a profound and sacred part of what it is to be human. It’s interesting that when questioned which was the greatest commandment, Jesus replied: “‘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. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37-39). It sounds simple—love God and love others—and yet so often things get in the way.
Loving God
Sometimes God seems distant. Sometimes we wonder if he is there at all. We question whether he loves us. We worry we’ve let him down. Perhaps he is angry at us. Maybe he wants nothing to do with us. There is much that comes between us loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind. We complicate it. We fear being abandoned even though he assures us, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5), and even when he tells us, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness (Jerimiah 31:3).
Yet we don’t always take him at his word. Sometimes we are close, other times we are distant. Sometimes we are faithful, other times we falter. Yet despite our fluctuating emotions and behaviour, God never leaves us. He is faithful to remain. He loves us no matter the condition we show up.
Loving Others
It’s no easier loving others. People let us down, they hurt us, they behave in unloving ways, and sometimes they stop loving altogether. Sometimes they leave. It seems there is no end to the hurt we suffer at the hands of another. This can cause us to lose hope and determine to stop loving. Yet we read in 1 John 4:7, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”
Although Jesus knows how we hurt one another, and having experienced first-hand the depth of hurt himself, he tells us, “But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:44-45).
This kind of love often feels impossible. Truly apart from God’s help and healing it is. We will spend our whole lives learning to love God and others the way Jesus modelled for us and the way God asks of us. But in doing so, we are told we become sons and daughters of God in heaven.
Letting Ourselves Be Loved
We also long to be loved. It is our deepest need. Even so, we don’t like to feel this vulnerable. To lay our heart bare for another is both wonderful and terrible. Because of this, sometimes we push love away, hiding our hearts for fear of being hurt—again. Sometimes we wonder if we are lovable. And yet, despite all of this, God whispers to our spirit asking us to open ourselves to receive love, both from him and others. He reminds us that “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18). And so, we cling to God, opening ourselves to his gentle work in our lives and to being loved for who we are.
Being Perfected by Love
In this we see a miraculous truth: we are made perfect by God’s love. That we even have the capacity to love at all speaks to the fact that we were made in the image of a loving God. The Bible teaches that, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). To open our heart to another, to be kind and tender with one another, to faithfully remain even when it’s hard, to care for another in their hurt or sickness, and to offer forgiveness when harmed exhibits the character of God. God is love and when we love, we are behaving like Jesus and our Father in heaven.
Throughout our lives, we continue to be perfected by his unfailing love. A love so deep and wide that it reached out to us when we were far, when we rejected it, and when were bound in sin. A love that died to set us free. A love so fearless that it enables us to lay down our lives for another. To offer preference to another over our own immediate need. To forgive and to love our enemies. To become unselfishly, extravagantly, fearlessly loving. Effectively, to become like Jesus.
Deeply Loved by God
While on earth, Jesus taught us how to love through his example in word and deed. In his death, he made a way for us to be with his Father. And now, seated at the right hand of God in heaven, Jesus intercedes for us. He also gave us his Spirit to live within us, to help us, and to ensure we are never alone.
Knowing we are deeply loved and forgiven by God drives out fear and enables us to love others. To not withhold affection. To no longer hide but be brave in our love for others. To love even when we are hurt or wounded—just as Jesus did. He loved us, giving all he had, laying down his life to die in our place when we were still his enemies. Our hearts struggle to comprehend the fulness of such sacrificial love. But because of this love, we have all we need to love God and love others through Christ who made it possible.
The Assurance of Love
In Psalm 5:12 we read, “Surely, Lord, you bless the righteous; you surround them with your favor as with a shield.” Surrounded by God’s love, we are not only comforted, but we find rest. No striving, no working hard to be loved or loveable, just the full assurance and security of being loved by the Lover. Firmly rooted in his love, we have strength to live out what he commanded—to love him and love others. In this way, we display the full expression of our humanity: to love and be loved.
The Blessing of Love
In the end, those around us will not care what we did for a living, what car we drove, or how many awards we received. They will remember how we loved. They will recall how we made them feel. The ways we laid down our lives by trading our comforts to assist another. The small, seemingly insignificant acts of kindness and the gentle love we tucked around them. In this way, the blessing of God’s love extends to others.
Even now, we can ask ourselves, did we leave others better than we found them? Could we be found when needed? Could those around us see by our actions the God we follow? Did they feel his love through ours? It’s never too late to love. Because when everything else fades away, “these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” And love is indeed a miracle—for God is love, and we—created by him—have the capacity to love like him.
