The world’s answer would point to the desirability of the person being loved. Predominately, that’s why a man and a woman marry. A mutual desirableness exists, stirring their hearts and minds towards a promise to bind together forever. Parents love their children most out of all the children in the world because their own children mean the most to them. The parent’s desire for a relationship with her child is overwhelmingly strong, and becomes even stronger as she cares for her child in a myriad of ways.
Desirability for relationship creates an emotional bond of love. In that kind of relationship multiple blessings can flow back and forth. So it’s not a bad thing.
It’s just not the best thing. 1 John 4:19 says this: “We love because He first loved us.”
A person could argue that he loved others before God ever entered his life. After all, we can learn to read before we ever enter school. We can learn to throw a baseball before we ever join a team. Thank goodness, we learn how to dress before we ever step out in public.
But once we start school, our reading ability quickly accelerates. When we join a baseball team, throwing a baseball takes on multiple dimensions and intricacies. Once we step out in public, everyone around us appreciates our ability to dress.
The same applies to God. Once He enters our lives, our capacity to love spreads in so many different directions, like spilled milk on a smooth tabletop in a ship’s galley during the fury of a tropical storm. Emotion can certainly be an aspect of it as it is in other loving relationships. But there’s more to it than that.
He takes us down the path of selfless love. Sounds scary, huh? 1 John 4:18 warns us that may happen: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear…”
Catch that? In perfect love, there is no fear. In fact, perfect love makes a person fearless. When we possess perfect love through Him, we don’t have to guard the fences we erect around ourselves. In perfected love, we can let go of our worries about being rejected, ridiculed or taken advantage of. We don’t have to zealously guard our possessions or our territory. Perfected love frees us to give lavishly.
It’s because we’re able to stop loving ourselves above all else. We become the second most important person we love. Everyone else becomes the most important person we love. So we step in their direction without fear.
Our God is our best example. He has always loved us more than He loves Himself. We know that because He sent His only Son to die so that we might live. His Son then proved He loved us more than He loved Himself because He went to the cross even though He was innocent of any crime. Who would do that? Someone who possessed so much perfect love that He stepped fearlessly even into death’s darkness so that He could have a relationship with us. We didn’t deserve the relationship at all. But He desired it so much, He went to the cross and died for us.
That’s one of the foundational truths behind Jesus teaching us that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. When we embrace His offer of perfected love, it releases so many worries and burdens from our lives. Our lives become secondary in importance to everyone else’s lives. We put down our burdens and help them carry theirs. Perfected love in action.
The only way to possess perfect love is through Him. Ponder what perfected love would do for all your relationships. It’s a journey worth taking.