Eileen's Blog - Part 4: Live Life As If You Are Loved
What is love? How does it impact on our journey through life, our actions and reactions? We may have a varying idea of what we call love nowadays. We may have rarely experienced a depth and richness of care we like to think of as love; live that makes us feel secure, confident; somebody is on our side, whatever happens, a safety net of affirmation, a home where you are totally accepted abd never let down. Sometimes things that are called love can be a mixed experience; some don’t feel very nurturing or affirming at all.
Mostly these days, people hope that romantic love will lead to all these things, and sometimes it does. In the New Testament, there were different words for different kinds of love descibed. Sexual love, for instance was referred to as “eros”. There were individual words like “phileo” for friendship, or “storge” for family affection. We only have the one use-all word in our language and have to look at the circumstances or context to decide what kind of love we are talking about.
The word most often used in the New Testament (more than 116 times) is ”agape” because the love mostly discussed is the love of God. I think this is the closest allied to our “romantic love” because it puts the loved person above it’s own wants and needs. The apostle Paul describes the relationship between Christ and Church like a committed partnership (Ephesians 5 v 25) and the Song of Solomon is often interpreted as a divine love poem. “Agape” refers to selfless, sacrificial, fully committed love. All the other loves are dependent on transaction and has limits: you love me and I love you back; if not, it is compromised; I don’t love you any more or, at least, I love you less.
God’s love requires exactly nothing in return – nothing. It has no limits. You are passionately loved (agape) and cared for. You have to do nothing in return to gain that love: a big fat nothing! A change of mind set includes letting your mind over time develop the habit of that increasing awareness.
A large part of changing your mind set, or “metanoia” is to look at yourself differently- as the precious receiver and reflector of divine love. How do we know about this? Jesus keeps telling us! God’s plan is to allow you to develop your free will to the fullest extent possible and express his image in you freely. You are his Plan and He has every confidence in You.
This is the act of a perfect Parent who supports, comforts and guides rather than admonishes and controls. The perfect love of the perfect parent employs no fear to coerce. After all you are a “chip off the old block”, as they say! Like the vine and the vine dresser described by Jesus in John 15 he nurtures and cares for you so you grow in the rain and sunshine to be the best you can be.
Remember the return of the Prodigal Son in Luke 11: the father in the story is just glad to see the son, and is not interested in discussing where he went wrong! He in fact ignores the son’s professions of sorrow. This is not familial love ( storge) because agape love is unconditional love. To return to the father, there were no conditions such as “ You must say sorry and look sad” – which really annoyed the other son, who fully expected there should be serious consequences to his brother’s actions!
The Father in the parable very much wants to express himself by giving things, lots of good things. He immediately clothes and feeds the son with the best of everything. It is the highest expression of his love to give without holding back. This is the ultimate description of God’s love it is central for us to hear that message. There is nothing he would not do, nothing he would not provide, for you, the object of his love.
To live as if we are loved is to be fully aware and engaged with thus reality: we are the centre of his nurturing care, the home where he lives (John 14 v 23). Jesus assured his disciples of this when he said to them in Matthew 7:
7 “Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks will receive, and anyone who seeks will find, and the door will be opened to those who knock. 9 Would any of you who are fathers give your son a stone when he asks for bread? 10 Or would you give him a snake when he asks for a fish? 11 As bad as you are, you know how to give good things to your children. How much more, then, will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
It is made very clear that living knowing you are loved, unconditionally and passionately, means living in the expectation of good things- good things you want or need.
With hope
With an amount of faith- however tiny
With the knowledge that your Father “gives good things” and only good things (not bad things to “teach you a lesson” in some kind of unpleasant way- see the letter by the Apostle James chapter 1). So in a world of challenges, difficulties, hardships, cloudy weather and storms, look for the silver linings, the unexpected outcomes and surprise blessings, because your Father in heaven loves to give- and wants to give to You!