Perfect Love?

Loving others is important -- I think just about anybody on the planet would agree with that. Are you good at it? I'd like to believe I am, but I'm too fickle, too human, to love well, even most of the time. And to love perfectly? Out of the question, unfortunately.

John, the apostle who may have known Jesus best, says in his first epistle, 1 John 4 verse 18, that perfect love drives out fear, and fear is linked to punishment. Well, since my love isn't perfect, won't I get punished by God for that? I've beat myself up for decades on that one, trying to make my love perfect (and failing).

But that isn't the love John is describing here. It's not our love, but God's, that is perfect. Verses 9 and 10 say that "God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us..." So God's love is perfect, but how do we get his love?

John outlines God's love through the whole chapter in this way: Starting in verse 7, he says "Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God." Well, this love must be something special, not just romantic love, or fondness for a pet or for chocolate. Verses 9 and 10 (I quoted those just above) define the love he's talking about: a love that sacrifices what you want, with the good of the other higher than your own good.

In verse 15, he says "All who confess that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God." The Greek word for 'confess' in this verse means to recognize, face and admit, even to promise. It's commonly used in the New Testament to describe people's statement of allegiance to Jesus Christ.

What's with this "God living in them, and they live in God" stuff? In verses 2, 4, 6 and 13, he describes the Spirit of God and that it is the Spirit's work of living in us that produces God's love in us. Our loving like God depends on the Holy Spirit "who lives in" us (verse 4) -- not on our own effort. How do we 'live in God' then? By belief in -- allegiance to -- Jesus Christ, we have the promise of "eternal life" (verse 9); not just in the future, but since our life comes from him, we can say that we live 'because of him' and our lives are 'wrapped up in him' already in the present moment.

How do you know if you have the Holy Spirit living in you? Typically, from the time of baptism, although scripture also shows the Spirit drawing us before then. It gets down to this: if what John says about God's love, and our loving others, makes sense, if you know that you love this way (which is beyond yourself) and you desperately want to love more and know God's love more, that's the Holy Spirit's work. If you don't care, then the Holy Spirit hasn't gotten through to you yet.

But -- if this love is what your life has been missing, now's the time to pursue it. God has loved you since before he made the universe, but you can only experience his love by admitting how much you need it and asking him for it. How 'bout it? Why not now?