God is Love. All Christians grow up hearing this but few of us really get to experience the fullness of God’s love and many die without knowing it. The lack of knowledge and experience of the love of God is not just a characteristic of modern day Church. This problem had so infested the early Church in Ephesus that one of Paul’s earnest prayers was for them to know the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:14-21). Paul gave a reason why the Ephesians so badly needed to know the love of Christ – so that they could be filled with all the fullness of God. This means that there are levels to God which we can never reach without knowing His Love.

This Easter season is a perfect time for us to be reminded of God’s love for us. We looked at the God who loves us inspite of who we are in the first part of the Every Day Valentines series. We then looked at the God who is Faithful through and through in the second part of the series. We will wrap up this series by looking at how the perfect love of God enables us to love each other.

I really love hymns, and one of my favourite hymns has four lines which remind me of God’s perfect love for us:

See from His head,
His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingling down…
Love so Amazing! So Devine!
Demands my soul, my life, my ALL.

There is also nothing that reminds us about the perfect love of God like reflecting on our own human love for each other. One of the salient characteristics of being human is that we always want the best for ourselves. This means that when we are choosing anything, including other humans to do life with, we will look for the best that our eyes can behold. This does not only apply to marriage (although it is most critical in marriage). Even in friendships, we want friends who are there for us and who make us feel good and safe about ourselves. When you ask the average human being why they love another person, you should always expect a myriad of reasons.

The only problem with this is that 1st Corinthians 13 teaches us that love is unconditional. Yet human love to me feels very conditional.

Do this. I’ll do this.
Be this. I’ll do this.
Do this. I’ll be this.

This doesn’t make us evil. It just makes us who we are. HUMAN. Therefore sometimes we need to pause and perform what Dr Dharius Daniels calls a “heart check”, and realistically ask ourselves, “If everything I like about this person were to be suddenly taken away, would I still love them the same, and stay (wholeheartedly)?” Now, one should not expect a strongly positive answer to this question because like I said, “WE ARE HUMAN”. So, the billion dollar question becomes:

Where do we find the balance?

If I cannot love them unconditionally and they cannot love me unconditionally, how do we make up for the deficit in our relationship so that it works out? I believe this is the same question which led Christian marriage counsellors and psychologists to come up with the concept of the Christian Love Triangle. Although the Christian Love Triangle has been popularised in the marriage setting, it is still very applicable and very necessary in other types of relationship.

So how does this work? How does God fit into the grand picture of human relationships? First and foremost, it is important for us to be reminded that God is the only one who has seen us for who we truly are and yet has remained completely in love with us. He loved us even before we were formed in our mother’s womb. This basically means that He loved us despite whatever occurrence or circumstance got us into this world. He is also committed to loving us no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in while we go through life. That is truly profound and worth keeping in mind every waking hour of our existence.

God is the first person to ever love at first sight. And He is the only person we can rely on to love even after seeing the full sight. He knows everything we are, yet still chooses us EVERY DAY. Therefore, in order for us to be able to sustain the conditional relationships which we make and those we find ourselves in, we must reach out to the source of truly unconditional love.

Like a car needs fuel in order to keep taking us to where we want to go, we must constantly (in real time) feed on the love of God. So that we may have strength to love others; especially at times when they do not meet all the conditions to deserve our love (and many times they won’t).

That being said, Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the God who loves in three levels. He Alone is Worthy!