Interpersonal Relationships: Love – Part 1
Love is an important ingredient in building relationships. However, I cannot think of another word that is as misunderstood as this word. In the English language we use this word for so many things. For example: I love my dog, cat, or I love to drive, fish or hunt and then in the midst of all of this we say, “I love God” or “I love my neighbor.” When it comes to God and our neighbor the word ‘love’ has lost its meaning.
Another problem that we face is that love is often divorced from truth, and yet the two go together like a hand and glove and cannot be separated. I have said it before that love without truth is a wishy washy sentimentality and truth without love is hypocrisy. The two must go together.
One of the problems in our Western civilization is that truth is under attack. We live in a society where a belief in absolute truth does not exist. Sad to say, this has affected the church. It has been estimated that one out of every four adults and one out of every ten teen-agers do not believe in any absolute truth. Moral relativism has taken over. This means that love is not only divorced from truth, but also that we should not pass any judgment on anyone, and that our experience with one another should be based on feelings or how we feel at the time.
Love must be the cornerstone in any relationship, but when love is based only on feelings rather than on truth then we will find the whole relationship based on feelings, which is not a very strong foundation. No wonder we have so many broken relationships in our society today when everything depends on how we happen to be feeling.
It is important to come back to the Bible and discover what love really is, the type of love that only God can generate. This is the love that we saw demonstrated at the cross when Jesus said: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”
The thing that impresses people more than anything else is the quality of love being expressed in godly inter-personal relationships. “They will know that we are Christians by our love.” What did the Apostle John say: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35
Since we are to love one another as He loved us, there is a question that we must ask: How did Jesus love us? To answer this question there are four things that we must look at and consider.
1. He gave. This is one aspect of love to consider when we think about Jesus loving us. We see this coming out in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” So often in our human concept of love there is the taking instead of the giving.
2. He forgave. Instead of Christ cursing and complaining when they hung Him on the cross we hear forgiveness. “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” This is another aspect of love that we need to consider. Again, it has nothing to do with our feelings, but it is an act of our will.
3. He was aware. Another aspect of this love is a spiritual sensitivity, being aware of where people are and the conditions and situations that they might be in. We see this with Jesus, our example. He was aware of where His disciples were, as well as the people that He ministered to. The Bible records this about Jesus: “He was moved with compassion.”
4. He accepted. In the KJV of the English Bible we read in Ephesians 1:6 “To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” AGAPE love will accept us as we are. This is what the Lord did with us. He accepted us like we were. We read that while we were yet sinners He died for us. He didn’t wait until we could somehow change and make ourselves ready, but He accepted us like we were. ‘Just as I am,’ like the old well-known hymn sings out.
We have been accepted in the Beloved. Isn’t this one of the problems that we have in our interpersonal relationships; we are waiting for people to change before we accept them?