True Love
True Love
Scripture tells us not merely that God loves, but that He is love.
Let’s think through what that statement means.
Anselm of Canterbury (1033—1109), a Benedictine monk, theologian, and philosopher wrote that “God is that than which there can be nothing greater.”
We might define perfection as that state than which there can be nothing greater or better.
If God loves, and in fact is love, He necessarily loves purely, perfectly, infinitely.
So then, what does perfect love look like?
First, perfect love requires an object. To be said to have love, one must love someone or something. How could it be possible to love nothing? This concept can be illustrated by the love of a child for a Teddy Bear. This isn’t perfect love however, because we can easily imagine something better. Can you imagine a greater love than a love that is not returned like love for a Teddy Bear?
Certainly, you can imagine loving someone who loves you in return. This is obviously better. For God to be perfectly or infinitely loving, He would need to express that love and be loved in return.
Someone might argue that God could then simply have created beings who love Him by their nature. He could have made beings who must love Him because they were created for that purpose. This line of thought would be flawed however, because again we can imagine something better than loving someone who is forced to love us in return. Such love would be a sham.
Loving someone who loves us in return because they choose to love us by choice would be immeasurably better.
1 John 4:12 points us in this direction in saying, “No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.” (KJV)
For this reason, God created us with the ability to choose.
Within our temporal existence, we are free to believe God or not.
That belief is called repentance, the changing of one’s mind and deciding to trust God.
That’s incredible; and it is very good news.
God’s love is perfected in us when we love Him in return, and when we love our neighbor with that perfect love He gave us!
In the perfection of God’s love there is no error; no mistake; no neurotic need fulfillment. That is perhaps a strange idea to suggest in talking about God—and it should be. God has not acted in love toward us out of some codependency or because of some emotional need on His part. God acted toward us as He did because He truly and perfectly loves us.
He truly and perfectly loves you.
