Love is that which binds one person to another. If love is true and complete, it will reside in our hearts, in our minds, in our words, in our choices, and in our actions. For many of us however, love is partial, or even artificial. We say what we know we're supposed to say, or do what we've been told we must do. But it splits us up, because our hearts don't agree with what our words or deeds say.
The only source of true and complete love is God Himself. All of us have some connection to God, because we have received from Him our life, our identity, our personality, and our desires. No living human can be entirely separated from God, no matter how evil or destitute his nature becomes. At the same time, no human can be fully connected to God apart from the redemptive act of Christ's salvation and His imparted Spirit.
These are not new thoughts or new teachings, but rather are the bedrock of Christian truth that has endured through the centuries. What we may not have understood, I believe, is the twofold character of love. When Jesus taught that we must love God with ALL our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and yet still have love left over for our neighbors and ourselves, it is arguable that He is speaking of two different kinds of love.
A close examination of I Corinthians 13 will give us a very clear picture of one of these loves. Paul describes this love as patient and kind, self-giving and forgiving. It hopes for all things and endures all things. It is a love that has its basis not in the goodness or beauty or desirability of the one who is loved, but in the nature of the lover himself. This is the love God shows to us. If we were to name this love, we could call it cherishing love.
In contrast, the other kind of love is love that specifically responds to the nature of the one who is loved. This is the love we have toward God. As we come to know more and more deeply His beauty and His holiness and His power and His goodness, we respond with a love that eventually fills our hearts and minds and souls, and causes us to serve Him with all our strength. Whereas cherishing love loves "in spite of," this kind of love loves totally "because of." We will name it honoring love.
It is this division of love that is implied in Christ's commandment in Mark 12:30,31. We are to give God all honor, because He is all-deserving. At the same time, we are to cherish our neighbor in the same way we cherish ourselves, with patience, kindness, and a strong hope for his highest wellbeing.
What might appear to be a simple dividing line is, however, a little more complex. You see, the Bible often speaks of us honoring other individuals, such as our parents, those who rule us, and even "all people" (I Peter 2:17). We can understand this best when we define honor as being an acknowledgment of value. The honoring love we give to God is our confession that in Him alone is everything of value. However, His valuableness has been dispersed throughout His creation. Thus, wherever we see the valuableness of God, we are to give it honor as though we are giving it to Him.
For example, we are commanded to honor our parents because they are the channel of God's life-giving power and authority in our lives. To mistreat or to rebel against a parent is to essentially do the same to God. We are to honor the king because he also represents God's authority. We are to honor each other because each of us is made in the image of God. Peter tells husbands to honor their wives specifically because they are fellow inheritors of the “grace of life” (I Peter 3:7).
We should note, however, that these are all examples of what might be called "positional" honor. We give honor to those who in some way have been given a position of worth in God's created order. If we fail to give this kind of honor, we are effectively dishonoring God. But this positional honor is not exactly the same as honoring love. These people are to be treated as valuable whether or not they have any commendable or desirable personal qualities whatsoever.
Honoring love, on the other hand, honors because there is something powerfully attractive in the one who is loved. As we've said, this honor is only completely deserved by God alone. However, because God's beauty and goodness can be seen in others as well, it is not contradictory to give honoring love to those in whom that godly nature is manifested. Thus when someone is kind to me, or when someone demonstrates God's strength or beauty or wisdom or creative power, then it is not inappropriate for me--because I appreciate the value of these qualities--to respond through an expression of love for that individual.
The problem arises not in my loving that person, but in the misunderstanding of what my love means. Our tendency is to see the person himself as deserving the love, whereas it is ultimately God who deserves it. This will become clearer if we temporarily change the phrase "honoring love" to the word "worship."
Worship is the strongest expression of our "“because of" response. Worship acknowledges the attractiveness and desirability of another. At the same time, worship innately requires the perfection of that other person. Worship thus sets itself against "in spite of" love. When I worship someone, I not only want them to continue to be the source of the good things I see in and receive from them, but I will press them to become the source of other good things, even all good things. For this reason, only God is the proper object of our worship.
I have come to believe that the only solution to this human tendency to seek out false gods is to set our minds and hearts and wills on discovering the full beauty and strength of the true God Himself. We have a profound need to worship, and to the extent we do not know God we are driven to create imagined gods out of whomever or whatever we find at hand. But none of these will adequately nourish our spirits, and eventually we will become angry with them and will become filled with despair ourselves.
Let us now consider the other love, which I've termed "cherishing love." Whereas honoring love is centered on the acknowledgment of value, cherishing love is distinguished by its ability to establish value. It is clear that this creative power must originate with God, as do all forms of creativity. Thus while we may have some residual capacity to cherish others simply because we are made in God's image, our fallen natures are predominantly preoccupied with our own neediness, and most of our natural love focuses on what we can receive.
When, however, we have our true neediness filled by God's own cherishing love, there arises in us the ability to share in His creative outflow. As we saw in I Corinthians 13, cherishing love is characterized by its willingness to accept someone "in spite of" every disagreeable aspect of their nature. The origin of cherishing love is described in Ephesians 1:3-6.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
The Greek word that is here translated "accepted," charitoo, is the same word the angel spoke to Mary when he told her she was "highly favored." This kind of acceptance is far more than a casual tolerance, but is rather a full reception of that other person into the realm of all that is of great worth. Paul describes this process in Romans 15:1-7.
We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves.Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification.For even Christ did not please himself; but as it is written, "The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me" For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.
I have been told that when someone is in a drug-induced state of euphoria, one of the strongest feelings they experience is that of being completely safe and completely accepted. For those few surreal moments, all fear and failure and rejection mysteriously disappear. When the user is cruelly plunged back into the horrors of reality, this moment (enhanced no doubt by other physical dependencies on the drug) drives him to set aside any other desire but to return to that small oasis of peace.How much better is the gift of true acceptance and true safety which God has offered to those who will receive it. We must understand however that while this accepting, cherishing love raises us to a place of infinite value, it does so at a cost. Christ allowed our “reproaches” to fall on Himself, and He calls us to pass this kind of love on to others in His name, pleasing them instead of pleasing ourselves.
This then is how the two commandments of Jesus are joined together. As we deliberately direct the full force of our neediness toward His all-encompassing completeness (which is a much more profound activity than what we often envision worship to be), we enter into the authentic place of joy of which the addict's euphoria is a counterfeit. There we come to understand both our absolute worthlessness apart from Him and our total acceptance "in the Beloved."
From this place of healing there arises the strength and incentive to love as we have been loved. When we see the pain and despair of those around us, our spontaneous desire will be that they might share in what we ourselves have gained. Instead of focusing on their corruption and failures (as we might have done when we ourselves were searching for God in all possible corners), we begin instead to comprehend His vision of what they could become. This comprehension moves quickly to the expressions of cherishing love, for it is our greatest joy to see God's nature fully displayed in every element of His creation--in others even as it has been in ourselves.
