No Truer Kind of Love

By Khen Lim



Image source: faithoncampus.com

In 1 Cor 13:13, it is often quoted that of the many things we cherish in life, the greatest is love. We’re told that we can search the whole world and still find that no material wealth overpowers love. And yet time and time again, we are drawn into confusion because love may not be what we think it is.

When we rely on Hollywood for a definition, we invariably end up believing that love is cheap. Everyone thinks they know what love is because they watch An Affair to Remember or Love Story or An Officer and a Gentleman. But ask a child from a broken marriage and a horrible divorce and she’ll likely tell you she doesn’t believe in love anymore. And then the next thing we know, some famous stage celebrity waves at his adoring fans, blowing kisses to them all, saying, “I love you all!”

What does that even mean? No wonder, so many find love confusing. The wretched world view has trivialised the value of love. Everyone says ‘I love you’ without much thought but few understand the real meaning of it because we give it away freely, we apply it to everyone and every object we like and yet we cannot fathom the difference with God’s love. 

We are so included to love everything including our cars, homes, yachts, holiday trips, clothes, music – you name it. On the other hand, God’s love is reserved for us and nothing else. His is exclusive, specific and unique. God’s love is selfishly meant only for us but we, on the other hand, give it away to anything and everything under the sun.

Love’s gold standard is set forth by the One who invented it. He is the One who endows us with the sense of feeling love and experiencing it to the fullness. From God comes true love and its most profound and accurate understanding of it. While society is fast losing its real value, God is the only One who constantly reminds us what it is that we can continue to cherish.

Psalm 103:11-12 says, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His lovingkindness towards those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”

God’s abundant love for us underscores the reason for calling us His children. That He also provides for us is further proof of His endless love. And He loves us not just unreservedly but His love is a covenant – even before we know to love Him, He loved us first (1 Jn 4:19) and that is very profound because while we simply fritter away our love worthlessly, He only wants to love us. Even when we selfishly leave no room to love others or when we continually fail to appreciate the power of His true love, God is still there, thinking of us, providing for us and awaiting us to come to Him.

In 1 Jn 3:1a, the apostle reveals that God’s love is so deep and intense that He would call us His children. Considering that sin has been with us since birth, our enmity with God has also been longstanding. Yet He took us away from our doom, renewed hope in us and opened a way to His kingdom. Because He simply loves us too much to let us suffer our fate.

To appreciate God’s love for us, take a long hard look at a society that harbours great hatred for Him and then consider that we are all part of that setup. We take His commandments and stomp on them. We ignore Him but invest our passion in things that are abhorrent. We covet and idolise. We misbehave. We lie. We deceive others. We are corrupt and we corrupt others. We disobey and by our conduct, we cause others to hate Him. 

There is, therefore, every reason for God to be very irritated with us and to bar us from coming close to Him. If we were God, that would be how we feel and we’d do everything in our power to vanquish them or to at least not give any chance to reunite. But thankfully God is not as merciless.

In the most remarkable turnaround, God wants to call us His children and as such He wants to be a loving Father to us. He wishes to dote on us and as 1 Peter 2:10 says, “Once you were not a people but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.” Because of His mercy, we no longer inherit hell and damnation but instead are in line to claim His promise. Gal 4:7 tells us, “So you are no longer a slave but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.”

By our actions and deeds, we are in no position to deserve God’s mercy let alone love. We have, instead, done our fair share to earn His wrath. We should not dream of sitting next to Him in heaven. But as we stand, God’s love humbles us, knowing very well that we should be shamed by our own sins. We must understand and accept that in all we can ask of Him, His mercy is, in itself, a miracle. 

Therefore when God decides to call us His children, the awe of the occasion must be evident. It defines the enormity of the miracle, making it greater than any other (miracles) we have experienced and certainly the one that surpasses everything else we encounter in our lives.

We know God calls Jesus His One and Begotten Son (1 Jn 4:9) whom He is well pleased (Mt 3:17). Now He calls us His children. It is a joy for us to be able to draw these two statements together, to piece together an understanding that is perfected in God’s love. With this understanding, we will then realise that we not only don’t deserve our Father’s love but by the same token, we can neither buy nor earn this right. 

Our sins get in the way and we hence have no means on our own to subscribe to God’s love. For all that we are, we should be condemned to eternal damnation. Yet our merciful Father in heaven has honoured us to be the most unfitting recipients of the greatest miracle to take place.

By God calling us His children is also a signal that we have safe passage to return to Him as a family. But this is no ordinary family but one that has a magnanimous and flawless Father as its Head. The people of the New Testament understood how the concept of family was not just important but had meant everything to them. 

This was one of the earliest concepts of life that began with Adam and Eve who gave the world its first family. And with Abraham, God had extended the same concept with the covenant that He would be the father of all nations. As it was with Abraham, we all understand that in being integral as a family with God, there is an ironclad assurance of a guaranteed future and an inheritance enshrined in eternity.

The providence of a family made by God is purely divine in priority. Out of His great love comes a surety that only God the Father can provide and only He can exceed. God’s greatest provisions are so beyond our imagination that regardless of how much we love our own fathers in this world, none can hold a wick to Him for He is the only One on whom we can pin all our hopes (1 Jn 3:3). Only our Father in heaven can remind us that we are no longer alone to deal with our worldly issues. Only He can placate us when we are threatened. Only His comfort works when we feel like we’re at the end of our rope.

We have always assumed that the days of the Early Church were the most harrowing for first-generation Christians but by all stretches of the imagination, today’s world could be at a greater risk. The modern church in many ways is seriously endangered with a litany of problems that can destroy from within. The wickedness and the sheer intensity of debauchery that are present in society are fundamentally mind blowing. Evil today exists in countless forms and flavours that we never thought possible. For every good thing in life, the devil has infiltrated and turned it all upside down.

The world seems unstoppable as it careens out of control. Nothing appears to be able to arrest this decline and nobody seems even a bit interested in stanching its doom. Yet as God’s children, we no longer need to be in despair but quite the opposite, we can be comforted by the assurance that God truly loves us.

1 Thess 5:5-6 says, “You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled.” Equipped with faith and cossetted in the bosom of a truly loving God, even a sin-tainted world will have no ill-effect on us anymore. As children of God, none of these can sway us (1 Jn 3) because He has provided us till the cup runneth over (Ps 23:5).

Unfortunately not everyone thinks this way. Clearly the joy of experiencing God’s love doesn’t appear to appeal to everyone we meet. We can count among friends and relatives, those who shun the greatest gift in the world in preference for the ways of the world and the abundance of knowledge it offers. For them, there is great difficulty in distinguishing truth from lie. The lure of deception continues to reinvent itself from one generation to the next, worsening at every turn and blurring the line between right and wrong. 

Every day, we face these challenges, knowing that we’re edging closer to the End of Days and yet these lies aren’t slowing down. Sin continues to redefine itself in greater intensity, enlarging its influence and tightening its grip on so many around us. For them, escape appears impossible but only because they make their own choices not to want to walk away.

If we remove the rose-tinted glass, the world doesn’t look that good anymore.

There is not a lot that isn’t gloomy. The prospects of another global-scale war has never been more imminent than today. Terrorism looks unstoppable and hardly anyone is genuinely interested to try. Economic downturns forever threatens and with unpredictable oil politics, we really don’t know what to think anymore. And amidst all of this, God still wants to call us His children because He wants us to experience true love in our lives. How wonderful it would be if only we can bring as many unbelievers as we can to savour God’s powerful love as well.

We are reminded of this: “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.” (Php 2:14-16)

Remember, we were once born at odds with God. Despite being created in His image, our sin had set us apart from Him to whom we belong. We had led sinful lives and have done deplorable things. We were so abominable towards Him, causing the Lord great unhappiness. Still in one truly remarkable stroke, He wipe the slate clean, declare us His children and avail Himself to offer us an eternal heavenly inheritance, saying, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with lovingkindness” (Jer 31:3).

And we the undeserved cannot but be forever grateful and in debt to such a loving God.