Love II - Grounded in Love ...

Monday, Aug 3, 2015. We have started to talk about one of the most fascinating topics of life, about love. We have started to look into the biblical perspective on love. And we have started to talk about it by talking about “love your enemy”. The point we want to make here is that when the bible talks about love, it does not mean an easy and cosy type of sympathy only, and we do not speak of sexuality at all at the moment. The love the bible talks about is far more and far beyond all this.

Foundation …

What is the foundation of our love? Is it our own weakness? Is it our dependency? Is it our need? Human love can have a lot of weakness and need. As a little infant, we are needy, we are completely dependent on what our parents give us - food, attention, care. Here, we need love. We need to experience care. But do we love because we are needy?

When you grow up, you discover your own desires. Love can consist of the fascination about someone else, his or her body, his or her mind, his or her muscles, his or her character, a smile, hair, skin. Love can be driven by the desire, not to be alone. This is a kind of need as well - in our desire to find a partner we are as needy as an infant, we need the other person. But love can be much more. Let us read from the letter of the apostle Paul to the Ephesians, Chapter 3:

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is

the breadth and length and height and depth,

19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3, 14-21)

Rooted in Christ …

Paul talks about Christ, who dwells in our hearts through faith. The biblical idea is that when you believe, God comes through his spirit into your life, into your heart and mind. There he lives, and when you follow him in faith, he can shape your heart and mind and your whole life further. You experience “the fullness of God” in your own life.

The love of Christ is beyond your own need. It is beyond sympathy. It is beyond sexuality. It is beyond friendship. It can contain all this, where adequate. But Christ did much more, he became human. He gave up his heavenly majesty to live among us as a simple carpenter. He then died ad the cross, died a terrible death, just because he claimed to be what he was: the eternal God who lived on earth. In his death, God created salvation and reconciliation for every human. Christ showed his deep love to mankind by coming into it, by suffering and pain.

We are meant to be rooted in his love. We are called to experience and to live a deeper kind of love: his love. We are to be grounded and rooted in Christ. Only here, with the Lord, we will be linked to the original source of love and of life. Only here full truth and trustworthiness can evolve. We are meant to be grounded in the love of Christ! (RWEP) ... more texts