LifeLink Devotions

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

1 John 4:10 “This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” 

Romans 5:8 “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”  

What is real love? It seems that people are becoming less and less capable of answering that question. In the lifestyles section of the Chicago Sun Times  an article appeared entitled “Gen X Women Talk About Living Single” and its author, Maureen Jenkins, asks the question, “Why is finding true love these days like searching for the Holy Grail?” It seems that the basic philosophy of love has become very self-centered. Love is not about giving but about getting. Sex has become the definition of love and the means to achieve it. “It’s little wonder,” she says, “that we’re wandering aimlessly in a relationship wasteland,” she says.

Jillian Straus, author and former producer of the Oprah show states, “We tend to see compromise as a bad thing in our generation because we’re so independent. You think you can custom order someone to your specifications and it doesn’t work that way.” One of the three Chicago area women who were interviewed for the article is Dionne Lang, 32, a Naperville commercial real estate agency owner, and when asked what her plan was to finally find true love she said, “…just date more. If you get into a car accident, do you never drive again? No. You just get right back in the car. Date, date, date as much as possible. And throw ’em back if they’re no good.”

Pretty sad, huh? The people of today’s world are lost when it comes to understanding love, and it’s because they are lost. They are unable to experience human relational love because they have not experienced God’s redeeming love. How awesome is the love of God when contrasted to the philosophy of the world. He chose to love us even when we had not chosen to love Him. People today only respond to the love they receive. God initiated love when no response was present. People today love only the good and throw the rest away. God loves everyone equally and completely. People today love others only so long as the personal benefits remain. God loves for eternity and guarantees it to us.

Culture today doesn’t understand that kind of commitment. When asked about commitment, Fiona Verde, a 30-something radio talk show host said, “We aren’t necessarily a generation that truly understands the concept of commitment at any level. We don’t keep jobs more than a couple years.”  Dionne Lang had an interesting response to that. She said, “Sometimes I wonder because the divorce rate is so high, maybe the men we’re dating were brought up in broken homes. Many of the morals and values of the family have been diluted.”  People today don’t have enough real love role models.

Our mission to love is no different than Christ’s mission to love – we are to be the models of real love to a lovesick world. The only way to cure the worldwide disease of lovesickness is to inoculate people with the love of God. By the power of Christ’s love in us we not only can but must choose to love the people of the world regardless of personal benefit or response. We must love as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us. Real love is not about serving self, but rather serving others. May we accept God’s mission for our lives and be the light of real love that they need to see.

Pastor John