The Other Side of "Love Never Fails"
I don't know whether you've ever spent time contemplating a certain aspect of the phrase "love never fails." I certainly hadn't until about mid-way through my junior year of college, when the phrase "I love you" suddenly took on a whole new meaning.
No, I didn't fall in love. Quite the contrary. A situation arose in which it became extremely difficult for me to go on loving a particular friend. It was then that I learned the other side of "love never fails."
You probably know what I mean, gentle reader, if you belong to a family. It's that moment of "I feel like braining my brother, but I still love him." It's the cost of loving. It's a soul-deep conviction that, try as you might, you will never be able to get rid of a fundamental commitment to that other person---that you can't get out of loving your brother. It's about faithfulness. It's a commitment, at many times a great comfort .... and sometimes it's the hardest thing in the world.
Example. Say, "I love some one. I am utterly in favor of him (or her). I find him (her) amazing, marvelous, a work of God that I could not believe possible, except he (she) actually exists, and so I must believe. I ask nothing better in this life than to spend it helping him (or caring for her) as he (she) seeks to glorify God in all he (she) does.
"What I love most about him (her), I think, is the way he (she) loves God. When I see him (her) adoring my Lord beside me, or near me, my heart could burst for joy. It is a pleasure beyond imagination simply to know that the same Holy Spirit indwells both myself and such a person. I cannot contain my gratitude to God for the gift of this friend, who exhorts, encourages, and draws me along the pilgrim path to Heaven.
"I am swept away in awe, and I would do anything, even lay down my life, to help him (her) become even more enthralled with Jesus Christ, because that is what would make him (her) ultimately happy, and would bring still more glory to my Savior."
That's the way you feel when you're thinking about it rightly. It's a total commitment. But the total commitment implies a total value that you have for the object of your love, and total value (as we learn in economics classes) implies cost---value is "what you are willing to pay".
What I am asking you to consider is that there is a great price to be paid. When God gives you love for someone, that love doesn't fail. Or, put another way, it never quits. It never goes away. It doesn't know the words "give up" or "let go," as pertains to it's hold on your heart. If God gives you someone to love, as far as I've ever understood or experienced it, you have to go right on loving that person until you are released... which means, I guess, forever.
Have you thought about that? I mean, really thought about it? I hadn't until a situation came up in which I wanted to walk away from my friend, wanted to stop loving, and found to my shock that I had been tossing around "I love you" as if there was no cost attached. When it came to paying the price of love---in humility, in bearing my friend's burdens, in admitting my own sin, in asking forgiveness, in forgiving her wrongs against me, and in committing to work towards reconciliation together---I found all at once that I was strongly inclined to run away. But love doesn't give up, and now, years later, I still can't rid myself of that love for my friend (who was almost like a sister) and my desire for her good.
Relationships can turn sour so quickly, with such heartbreaking ease. What was yesterday childhood's easy friendship is today's live-and-die dependence on one another. The strain is great. The need for grace is great. I'm grateful that love never fails, because otherwise it surely would fail under such a load. Still, the fact that it never fails means that you can't ever say "I've sinned enough against you, and I've hurt you, and I'm terribly sorry about it, and I think we should just call it quits. I can't love you properly, so I'm going to try not to love you at all."
No. Sorry. A Christian can never walk away from loving another Christian, particularly if God has put those two Christians together in some meaningful way (as roommates, as friends, as siblings, as parents and children, as husband and wife, etc.). As long as God keeps you with that person, you need to be pleading for grace to love them appropriately (by "appropriately" I mean 1 Corinthians 13, not selfishness, a crush, a manipulative relationship, etc.).
And even if God does release you from daily interaction, you still have to love from afar, not in bitterness or self-righteousness, but with a sincere heart for God's best in the other person. Love is for life, both for living it and for the entire duration of it. And I just want to ask, "Have you thought about that? Have you really considered it? Do you know what you're committing to when you say 'I love you' to another person? Do you realize what you're promising?"
That's the solemn part, but here's the flipside that makes it wonderful. When you do find out---as I did---about the cost of loving, you may find as I did that paying a price makes love and the object of your love far more precious. My family, each member of it, is more to me than anything else on earth. I sometimes think that my brothers, sisters, and parents are my very lifeblood. If even one of them died, my tears would be my food indefinitely. Similarly so with my friends.
As to my God, I have paid the uttermost price for loving Him. I have renounced the world in which I was born, the pleasures of the flesh, the pleasures of the eyes, the pride of life, endless moments of sensory gratification in a variety of categories, and the option of living for myself. I have paid with my soul. Granted, my soul belongs to God already, for He made it---but because God gave me free will (while yet retaining full sovereignty, a mysterious paradox in which I believe without understanding) it is nevertheless a true cost to me to freely offer my soul and life back to Him.
This great cost contributes (though it is not the sole contributor) to the fact that He is more precious to me than anything in this or any universe. This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend. This is the strength of my heart and the delight of my eyes, my portion forever. Whom else have I in Heaven? No one. There is nothing on earth that I desire more than His person, presence, fellowship, and what gifts of grace He is pleased to give me.
He is exquisitely beautiful. He has such a sense of humor! He works tirelessly, but always knows how and when to play. He teaches me about everything. It doesn't matter what we do together, so long as I'm with Him. No one laughs at my silliness with me as He does; and no one cries for my self-caused suffering as He does. No one knows me better and no one loves me more. No one ever paid so great a price for loving me, far greater than I could offer---but no one can ever tell me that He doesn't deserve all I can give to love Him. This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend.
Do you see, gentle reader? Do you understand? The very costliness of love is part of what makes it so sweet, so rich, and so powerful. When you think of the daily price you pay to love the people whom God gives you to love, rejoice! It is making them precious to you. And dearest reader, whatever else you do, when you think daily of the price Jesus paid to demonstrate that He yearns over you, may it make Him so precious that the tears rush to your eyes and your heart bursts for humble joy. For, you know, it works both ways. Love is more precious both when we pay and when someone else pays for us. Both enhance it to a white-hot brilliance.
Beloved, beloved, do you not know? Have you not heard? We live in the season of singing, and it is God who sings over us.
No, I didn't fall in love. Quite the contrary. A situation arose in which it became extremely difficult for me to go on loving a particular friend. It was then that I learned the other side of "love never fails."
You probably know what I mean, gentle reader, if you belong to a family. It's that moment of "I feel like braining my brother, but I still love him." It's the cost of loving. It's a soul-deep conviction that, try as you might, you will never be able to get rid of a fundamental commitment to that other person---that you can't get out of loving your brother. It's about faithfulness. It's a commitment, at many times a great comfort .... and sometimes it's the hardest thing in the world.
Example. Say, "I love some one. I am utterly in favor of him (or her). I find him (her) amazing, marvelous, a work of God that I could not believe possible, except he (she) actually exists, and so I must believe. I ask nothing better in this life than to spend it helping him (or caring for her) as he (she) seeks to glorify God in all he (she) does.
"What I love most about him (her), I think, is the way he (she) loves God. When I see him (her) adoring my Lord beside me, or near me, my heart could burst for joy. It is a pleasure beyond imagination simply to know that the same Holy Spirit indwells both myself and such a person. I cannot contain my gratitude to God for the gift of this friend, who exhorts, encourages, and draws me along the pilgrim path to Heaven.
"I am swept away in awe, and I would do anything, even lay down my life, to help him (her) become even more enthralled with Jesus Christ, because that is what would make him (her) ultimately happy, and would bring still more glory to my Savior."
That's the way you feel when you're thinking about it rightly. It's a total commitment. But the total commitment implies a total value that you have for the object of your love, and total value (as we learn in economics classes) implies cost---value is "what you are willing to pay".
What I am asking you to consider is that there is a great price to be paid. When God gives you love for someone, that love doesn't fail. Or, put another way, it never quits. It never goes away. It doesn't know the words "give up" or "let go," as pertains to it's hold on your heart. If God gives you someone to love, as far as I've ever understood or experienced it, you have to go right on loving that person until you are released... which means, I guess, forever.
Have you thought about that? I mean, really thought about it? I hadn't until a situation came up in which I wanted to walk away from my friend, wanted to stop loving, and found to my shock that I had been tossing around "I love you" as if there was no cost attached. When it came to paying the price of love---in humility, in bearing my friend's burdens, in admitting my own sin, in asking forgiveness, in forgiving her wrongs against me, and in committing to work towards reconciliation together---I found all at once that I was strongly inclined to run away. But love doesn't give up, and now, years later, I still can't rid myself of that love for my friend (who was almost like a sister) and my desire for her good.
Relationships can turn sour so quickly, with such heartbreaking ease. What was yesterday childhood's easy friendship is today's live-and-die dependence on one another. The strain is great. The need for grace is great. I'm grateful that love never fails, because otherwise it surely would fail under such a load. Still, the fact that it never fails means that you can't ever say "I've sinned enough against you, and I've hurt you, and I'm terribly sorry about it, and I think we should just call it quits. I can't love you properly, so I'm going to try not to love you at all."
No. Sorry. A Christian can never walk away from loving another Christian, particularly if God has put those two Christians together in some meaningful way (as roommates, as friends, as siblings, as parents and children, as husband and wife, etc.). As long as God keeps you with that person, you need to be pleading for grace to love them appropriately (by "appropriately" I mean 1 Corinthians 13, not selfishness, a crush, a manipulative relationship, etc.).
And even if God does release you from daily interaction, you still have to love from afar, not in bitterness or self-righteousness, but with a sincere heart for God's best in the other person. Love is for life, both for living it and for the entire duration of it. And I just want to ask, "Have you thought about that? Have you really considered it? Do you know what you're committing to when you say 'I love you' to another person? Do you realize what you're promising?"
That's the solemn part, but here's the flipside that makes it wonderful. When you do find out---as I did---about the cost of loving, you may find as I did that paying a price makes love and the object of your love far more precious. My family, each member of it, is more to me than anything else on earth. I sometimes think that my brothers, sisters, and parents are my very lifeblood. If even one of them died, my tears would be my food indefinitely. Similarly so with my friends.
As to my God, I have paid the uttermost price for loving Him. I have renounced the world in which I was born, the pleasures of the flesh, the pleasures of the eyes, the pride of life, endless moments of sensory gratification in a variety of categories, and the option of living for myself. I have paid with my soul. Granted, my soul belongs to God already, for He made it---but because God gave me free will (while yet retaining full sovereignty, a mysterious paradox in which I believe without understanding) it is nevertheless a true cost to me to freely offer my soul and life back to Him.
This great cost contributes (though it is not the sole contributor) to the fact that He is more precious to me than anything in this or any universe. This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend. This is the strength of my heart and the delight of my eyes, my portion forever. Whom else have I in Heaven? No one. There is nothing on earth that I desire more than His person, presence, fellowship, and what gifts of grace He is pleased to give me.
He is exquisitely beautiful. He has such a sense of humor! He works tirelessly, but always knows how and when to play. He teaches me about everything. It doesn't matter what we do together, so long as I'm with Him. No one laughs at my silliness with me as He does; and no one cries for my self-caused suffering as He does. No one knows me better and no one loves me more. No one ever paid so great a price for loving me, far greater than I could offer---but no one can ever tell me that He doesn't deserve all I can give to love Him. This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend.
Do you see, gentle reader? Do you understand? The very costliness of love is part of what makes it so sweet, so rich, and so powerful. When you think of the daily price you pay to love the people whom God gives you to love, rejoice! It is making them precious to you. And dearest reader, whatever else you do, when you think daily of the price Jesus paid to demonstrate that He yearns over you, may it make Him so precious that the tears rush to your eyes and your heart bursts for humble joy. For, you know, it works both ways. Love is more precious both when we pay and when someone else pays for us. Both enhance it to a white-hot brilliance.
Beloved, beloved, do you not know? Have you not heard? We live in the season of singing, and it is God who sings over us.
posted by Praelucor at 9:15 PM
3 Comments:
! :-) Thanks Christy.
And even if God does release you from daily interaction, you still have to love from afar, not in bitterness or self-righteousness, but with a sincere heart for God's best in the other person.
Ok. I get the message. I should ditch the waistcoat.
Well, okay, so maybe out of love for SARAH, you should ditch the waistcoat (I don't actually know how she feels about it, but let's pretend)... on the other hand, out of love for ME you should keep the waistcoat (I think it makes you more of a Paddington Bear than ever). What do you do? Quandary! Cut the waistcoat in half!
That'll teach you to cross-apply my sincere posts to silly subjects. ;-)
I have no opinion on the waistcoat. When I saw the picture, my reaction was, "Huh. He's wearing a waistcoat. People do that." :D
I approve of this post. So much truth here, Christy, dear.
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