The meaning of love
If you're a Christian, you've hopefully heard these words: Jesus loves you. If you've been one for a long time, you may know the song.
Much of our faith, our belief, our values, our walk, stems from this fact.
It's child's play, it's rote, it's known, it's a thing that is so obvious that we almost see a need to move past it, to grow into the meatier needs, to understand and process things at a level beyond this.
And yet, the older I get, the more I start to recognize that I don't really get it. I see glimpses, pieces, parts of the whole, but to know what love is at the level that God proclaims—it's an ongoing journey to figure it out.
Maybe you've grown up with a similar background to me, maybe not. But in this world, when we mix ideas from all around us and try to combine them with a Christianity that we hope to live and breathe, it's easy to get confused with concepts that aren't actually from a Saviour above.
Alongside this idea of love, there's always been an opposing view. A perspective that pretends to align itself with our view of Jesus, but offers just a little extra, just something more, just a little action on our part to better ourselves to deserve eternity. It looks almost the same from the outside, but it seeps inside and attempts to put the onus on us, for us to do things that only God can do. It's easy to try and figure out, in this life, this walk, this Christ-follower journey, that the path to success, the path to life, the path to Jesus and heaven, requires of us something we can obtain. If I try harder, do more, be better, then I'll merit the love of God.
And even there, we know better. I used to say that I understood salvation and God's love, and that good works came as a result of that. I had the logic turned around correctly, at least when I said it. But the belief didn't truly follow that. In my heart of hearts, I really knew that I needed to do something, to strive forward, to do better, because—theoretically—I'd been saved. But I didn't truly buy in. I didn't truly understand (and, if we're being honest, still barely do) what that act of love and salvation means.
So, we have the chance to come full circle. If we grew up in this, we learned about Jesus' love, and then many of us learned that there's more involved, more to do. Then some of us come back around to the earliest concepts and try to grasp that love aspect and figure out what to do with all the rest.
And if you're somewhere on that journey, just know that you're not alone. It's something that we all wrestle with in one way or another. Because, yes, Jesus came to save me. What does that mean for me? What does that mean I'm to do, or not do? It's a mess, and it's something that we've seen the theologians, reformers, and the apostles all wrestle with.
So, back to the core. Does Jesus love me? I choose to believe yes, and to see in what he's done with my life the answers, to see in the way we commune with one another a glimpse of that love.
And that core element, that love from our God? It is unquestionably, uncompromisingly eternal. It's everlasting; it doesn't end. We might choose to step away from it, but it keeps calling, beckoning. All this, without force or coercion. God doesn't want love that's undesired, but he desires to show us how that love can transform and change us from the inside.
So, God's love, Jesus' love? I spent the first 40 years of my life trying to unravel what it meant. I hope to spend the next 40 diving deeper, letting that love transform me, reshape me, and change me into God's character.
That's the religion I seek, that's the story I'm looking for: what unending love does to transform and change us, how it heals us, how it beckons to us, and how we can come together in