We’re all looking for love, but most often looking for it in all the wrong places and attributing it to a feeling. The problem with love being a feeling is that a feeling is an affection, an affection which is a feeling of fondness or liking, and if you like someone, you can unlike the person. “I feel in love with you today, but tomorrow when I see your flaws, I will feel out of love with you.” So perhaps the way to look at love, at least real love that will stand the test of time, is to attribute love to a ‘being’. A ‘being’, being the one who made love, and is love, and is the only one that can teach us to love as love ought to love: #unconditional.
The ‘being’, being God. For God is love; so when we walk with God, we take on His love and learn to love as He loves, and only then will we find ourselves truly loving. 1 John 4:15-18, “…God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” If love truly lives within us, then we will love as God loves and become love; and when we become love, we will love as ‘love’ [God] loves us: #unconditional. And when we come to this realisation of love; though we see their flaws, their flaws we will no longer see, for we will see their flaws in reverse… already knowing how they will be when the Potter is finished with them. When we come to this awakening of unconditional love, we will find that the flaws point to our vulnerability, which in turn points to the reason why we are all in need of a Saviour – that without Christ we are but the dirt that we came from and will return to; that without Christ, we remain imperfect humans, governed and tainted by our flaws. Because we are flawed, we unwittingly reject other people’s flaws, even those we claim to love.
But if ‘love’ lives in us, we will see their flaws through God’s eyes and know that we are the clay and God is the Potter; and all of us are the work of His Hands (Isaiah 64:8), and therefore, if the flaws are still visible, that’s because the Potter is not yet finished crafting the masterpiece, for “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). When love lives in us, their flaws we will see through the blood of Jesus, just as God sees us through the blood of Jesus, therefore rendering us perfect in His eyes, despite all our shortcomings.
When love lives in us, we will know truly what love is, for this is how we know what love is, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hope, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).
Without ‘love’, we can know what love is supposed to look like, but when the flaws appear, our heart is failed by our brain, and we are left short of practising the love of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. But in the quest for love, this remains true; love cannot be a feeling, for you cannot like a person to the point of dying for them. And this remains true, ‘love’, being true love, two thousand years ago, died not for one that loved Him, but for a world that despised, rejected and nailed Him to a cross.
And yet on the cross, He did not hesitate to spread His arms to demonstrate once and for all what true love really looks like … love that hung on a cross, naked and displayed for all to see, hanging to take our place for our shame and sins. Truly, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). When you finally see what ‘love’ did on the cross, you will love beyond the flaws and become the love that covers a multitude of flaws – 1 Peter 4:8-9 “Above all, love each other deeply because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.”
True love is not a player; it does not cheat; it does not adulterate; it does not lie nor intentionally hurt others … for true love, loves others as it loves itself – “Love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:331); Ephesians 5:22-31 “… Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her … He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body.”
©Katie Mliswa and MomentsbyKatie.M, 2017.
