God’s Love and Grace.

Human love can never endure the test of time. Actually when one looks around at the world today, real love is difficult to identify. Human love is often expressed in material ways. The giving of things is supposed to mean “I love you”. This expression of human love often hides the real motive and there is no real unconditional giving. Even the physical and sexual side of relationships have been counterfeited as the real thing.
As human beings we have been raised, most of the time, to believe that love comes as part of a reward system. If you perform in this way then I will love you and prove it with this gift. If you step out of line you step out of my love. If you don’t live up to MY standards then you don’t deserve my love. Human love is in most part granted on achievement. Human love is based on feelings and sentiment. Human love is a happiness hype. Human love is selfish and soulish. It resides in the emotions and that is why it needs to be fed. The self must be elevated. If you really loved me then… manipulative.

Human love is self-seeking. Another word for this is lust, not only the sexual kind but the lust of wanting, wanting for the sake of self gratification. Lust takes but love gives.

God so loved… that He gave. Which kind of love do you think God extends to us? In ancient writings different words were used to describe the different kinds of love. In Greek we have the words agape, phileo and eros. Most people know the third one. Well here is the meaning of each.

- Agape: seeking only the benevolence of others. Unconditional. Expecting nothing in return.

- Phileo: brotherly or social love, friendship.

- Eros: physical or sexual love.

Jesus said we are to love one another as He loves us. How does He love us? He showed us the Father’s love and then demonstrated it. He never considered Himself. He spent Himself for others. He only gave, gave, gave. Never asking anything for himself in return. Unselfish. Selfless. Sacrificial. He could not do anything else because He is God and God is love. Even when they hung Him on that cross He thought only of the good and said,”Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing”. Remember that He had the power of the entire universe at His disposal. He could have done anything but He chose to forgive. That is LOVE.

When human love is put to the test it retaliates (reacts) in different ways. None of them good. Certainly there is little or no grace extended to the “offender”. LOVE COVERS A MULTITUDE OF SINS. The word “covers” means that when some one says or does something that is hurtful, not only do we not retaliate but we also do not even mention it to any other person. In other words we do nothing that will in anyway break down that person’s character. How then do we deal with the hurt? Firstly we forgive. Forgiveness is an act of love and the more intimate our relationship with our Heavenly Father is, the easier it becomes to truly forgive. This is possible for us because God is continuously pouring out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. The veil of tradition begins to crumble in the presence of God’s love. When that veil is taken away we come to realise that it is only by His grace that we are able to forgive others as He has forgiven us. Grace is God’s unmerited favour extended towards us because of His love. The greatest act of love ever was God giving His son to die, in our place, to pay the price for our sin.

God’s grace is powered and motivated by His love. It is part of His character. God is Love and love is God. HIS LOVE IS TOTALLY UNCONDITIONAL. That is something that we cannot come to grips with. Unconditional love. It is this unconditional love that overflows into grace.

Love,

Jack Viljoen.