In the first part of this post on love, I went straight to 1 John 4 to say that God is love, and pointed out that, because God is the very definition of love, it's impossible to fully understand love. I believe that. However, in the Bible God offers three very clear explanations of God as love and, by extension, a model of love, even if we can't fully understand it or express it.
The first and most well-known example of God as love and as a model of love is John 3:16:
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."
This verse probably deserves a post of its own. I don't have children yet, but I can't imagine giving up my only child, my child who I love more than I can explain in words, to save people other people I love, let alone people who don't know me or love me back. But that's exactly what God did for all of us. He sacrificed that we might not die.
The second part of God as love and as a model of how we are to love is service. One of the most poignant examples of service found in the Bible is when Jesus washes his disciples' feet...
"Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with towel that was wrapped around him...'Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to was one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you." John 13:3-5, 12-15
It's hard to explain or understand the significance of this event given the fact that the majority of people I come into contact with every day wear shoes. Think about spending a week walking around in a cornfield bearfoot and then going to the White House for dinner and having the President of the United States wash your feet for you as you sit at his table, and you can beging to have some idea of what was going on here. What is more important than the act of service, however, is the attitude of service. Jesus is humble. He is serving not out of any motivation for self-promotion. He is serving as a demonstration of his love.
The third part of God as love and as our model of love is obedience. As with service, this isn't obedience out of compulsion. It's obedience out of genuine and complete devotion to another. There are several parables on obedience in the New Testament and several examples of obedience and the consequences of disobedience in the Old Testament, but the simplest and most powerful example of obedience in the Bible is Christ:
"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, how, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." Philippians 2:5-8
Christ, God in human form, was obedient to the Father. Not obedient to the point of giving away an old piece of clothing or buying your friend lunch or cleaning up the kitchen after the dinner because your mom asked you to. Obedient to the point of death. Obedient in humility. Obedient not to be exalted, but because he loved all of us enough to sacrifice himself for us.
Taken together, these three examples of love leave us with a sort of incomprehensible, non-sensical picture of an idea that gets thrown around so carelessly and easily in everyday life. Love isn't that electricity that runs up and down the back of your neck when you meet someone you think you want to know forever. Love isn't some sort of fuzzy, make your head spin, make your heart race kind of emotion. Rather love is an active and ongoing choice. Love is sacrificing yourself and your desires no matter how much it hurts you because you know it helps the one you love. Love is serving in humility. Love is obedience as the perfect expression of your devotion. Love is totally and completely unselfish. How does this connect back to crazy love? It's crazy to try to think about how much God loves us. It's crazy to think that God is this perfect expression of obedience, sacrifice, and service, because this combination of sacrifice, service, and obedience runs against the grain of most definitions of love.
Ultimately, we can't experience or express this kind of love apart from Christ. Because this love isn't within human capacity, it's out of God's enabling. Merely thinking through my day today, who and what I was obedient to, what I sacrificed for, who I served, I have a long way to go in knowing and understanding this kind of love. But I still want to. I want to give and receive this choosing, self-sacrificing, perfect, holy kind of love in every kind of relationship I have. Because, to go back to something I said in part one of this blog, without this kind of love, this divine love, I am nothing.
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