God’s Love- Do we try to bypass it?
When people try to explain how God saves us, it sure seems that they often become too mechanistic, as though they are describing how an internal combustion engine works. Cold, hard steel. This moves this way, causing this to move this other way and this is the final outcome, Got it? If we explain God’s process of salvation, in mechanical ways we will miss the full appreciation of the beauty, the fullness and even the fun of it all.
As with most things spiritual, we’ve been given a picture or representation of the spiritual in our everyday lives. We don’t have to look too far to find this picture, in fact it seems to be found as a theme of life, almost everywhere we look, in everything from popular music, literature and even in our own personal, private thought life. In fact, since I am pretty sure that you, in your heart, are fully convinced of the importance of this thing called “love” I won’t waste your time trying to convince you of it. The title of the song, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” is catchy, partly because this thing called love, is in reality no little thing. Phil Keaggy and Randy Stonehill addressed this in their song, “Love Is Not The Only Thing”, when they continue, “but it’s the best thing!”
It is only fitting that love should hold such a huge position in our world, in our lives. It is the closest picture of God, His love, His salvation for us and our potential relationship with Him. Of course, it’s not a perfect picture, but my goodness, what an amazing powerful image He’s given us to understand how His love works.
In movies, from Disney to most other more “realistic” movies, love is often portrayed as an almost magical, spiritual experience. And surely, who would try to deny that experiencing love is almost magical, or rather miraculous. For when secular stories call something magical, they are actually reaching for that amazing, unexplainable aspect which is in truth, and originally, miraculous.
The ungodly would love to simulate the miraculous which in truth, only God can bring us. They will always be disappointed with their own feeble attempts when it is gobbled up by God’s true manifestations, just as Moses’ serpent ate the magicians’ serpents. They want what we, as Christians, have, but they refuse to come to the One who can give it to them, namely Jesus.
Love is so hard to explain yet we all know what it means. So it is with the love of God. There is no thing so powerful as God’s love. Perhaps this is why some try to explain salvation in more mechanistic terms. But, the mere strength of God’s love explains how He can do what would be impossible for man to do by himself. God’s love can woo, soften and change a hard heart. God’s love can evoke a loving response from a previously rebellious, hard heart. God’s love is much more than a mechanical, push-button, process of conversion. God actually appeals to the most complicated thing in the universe, the heart of man, which is made in His image.
When God wrote about love in The Song Of Solomon, He didn’t try to make it mechanistic or dry. Rather He included all the emotion and mystery that we all feel. Just try explaining that book in a mechanical way. It is a picture, at least in some way, of God’s love for us.
Rather than bypass this aspect of God’s interaction with us, His love, we should acknowledge it, appreciate it and enjoy how God has chosen to deal with us. He loves us and certainly enjoys when we love and worship Him in return.
God’s love –Don’t miss it by trying to be too smart.
Frankly Speaking 