(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Love is an awesome thing. We all desire love and to be loved.

Love has a not so good side to it as well. Why do we love, what is the reason behind it?

Many things are done in the name of love, things that are not loving and should have nothing to do with love. Killing has been done in the name of love, so has hating a person for what that person did to someone that (we) loved. These things are not love.

When we love is it truly selfless, or are we looking for something in return? I do not think we love selflessly if we are honest about it. When I love someone, I’m looking for something in return, even if that something is simply being loved in return because I love that person. However there is often more to it then that.

We expect things; we expect that the person we love will do certain things for us. Like what you ask?

Well how about these, do you see yourself in any of these?

We expect someone we love to:

   Overlook our faults

   Deal with our bad behavior

   Forgive us all things

   Look the other way in things we would not overlook in others

   Put up with our individual idiosyncrasies

   Agree with our way of thinking

There are many more that could be added to that list I’m sure, and I’m guilty of all of the above. Some of this is of course taking for granted the one that loves me; it is also an entitlement mentality. Both of these are wrong of course.

This is not how God loves…a very good thing for us. The only truly perfect non-self-serving love is God’s love. God loves us with no expectation of anything in return. “But wait”, you say, “God expects us to do things and love Him, the Word says so”. While it is true the Word commands us to love God, the distinction here is that whether or not we do all that He says, and love Him in return…God will still love us.

God has no burning need within Himself that needs fulfilling; therefore God is free to love selflessly. We on the other hand have needs that have to be met. These needs that are basic to all humans and are not necessarily bad things are at the same time what prevents us from truly selfless love. We as humans are capable of selfless acts of love, but not selfless love as a whole. If we could truly love selflessly as Christ loves us…we would have no need for Jesus. We shall be like this someday when we meet Him and He finishes His work in us.

Think of God as a self-contained unit. No needs of any kind that have to come from without Himself. Everything that makes God who He is is contained within Himself. God does not seek approval from others, He grants it. God is not out looking for love, He is love. God is not busy sinning and looking for a way to stop doing it, He paid for sin in His own body to abolish it from ours.

God is free to love because God is truly free, free of any expectations. Expectations is a word that has no meaning to God. Think about it if God is omniscient, and He is without a doubt, then why would He have any expectations? God already knows all that has happened, and is going to happen. To have an expectation is to think something is going to occur. God knows what is going to occur. When we have an expectation we think, or expect that something is going to happen, but we do not know that thing is going to happen…God does know.

Think on this as the perfect example of God’s perfect and selfless love.

Jesus who was both God and man came to save us from ourselves. He paid a debt He did not owe, and we could not pay. But wait, it gets even better. God’s own people, the Jews did not even recognize Him. They (most of them) would have nothing to do with Him and still do not today. This people that God selected for Himself, these people who did not even recognize Him, who spurned Him…who wanted to kill Him. God died to save these people. Not because the Jews or anyone else could do anything to Jesus without His permission, because they could not.

God died for His chosen people the Jews and also the Gentiles because He wanted to save us…that my friends is love.

Do you know this love?