The Manifesto of God’s Love for You: Part 2
by 
Glen R. Jackman
In the Greco-Roman world, only the wealthy could afford the luxury of having a facial mask sculptured. Today we use photographs or paintings, as well as sculptures which are usually of famous men like Churchill or Lincoln. The following mask was unearthed from an ancient ruin site in Greece. Deterioration due to its age has made it appear to have tears running profusely from its eyes. When I see this photo it reminds me of the misunderstanding of God’s love for those he came to redeem – a visual allegory for the dysfunction of love in our world. We do selfies galore to boost our self-worth or to fit in with society, but inside we may feel a degree of disconnect from others. We can feel unloved, like an outcast or lack mutual trust.
Photo by Glen R. Jackman
Jesus foretold our day in which we live: “Sin [missing the mark of love] will be rampant everywhere and the love of many will grow cold”. (Matt 24:12) The apostle Paul said the same thing, with an emphasis on the powers of love becoming self-directed; not firstly God directed, and further not properly expressed to others: “For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred”. (2 Timothy 3:2) Many people today are breaking the two laws of love, considering “nothing sacred” while “scoffing at God” and loving “only themselves and their money”. Do you see this in our current society?
Jesus spoke of the two laws as all encompassing to live by:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27; cf. Deut 6:5, Lev 19:18 ESV)
Our hearts often deceive us and create thoughts and emotions that are destructive and against the second law of love, to truly love others. A man spoke up “desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (vs. 29) When Jesus spoke of the heart, he meant the mind. He knew our problem was a universal issue that most people struggle with at some point in their lives. We do not, and we cannot change our way of thinking, when we continue to disobey the commands to love both God and others.
Why does loving God become a determining factor?
If we side-step loving God with an attempt to love others without His influence, this will fail, because we cannot appropriate the blessings of love without abiding by the first principle addressed by Jesus Christ in our life, to love God. Love is empowered by the Spirit of God, when God is reciprocally loved in return for His love. In fact God, who “is Love”, manifests His uniting love, when two or more people, who love God meet or converse: “For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them”. (Matthew 18:20 NIV) Moreover God’s love is reliable and inseparable from loving others: “…we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him”. (1 John 4:16 NIV)
This is often seen when one or more individuals’ unity appears to cool off and drift. A man cannot fully comprehend love without understanding the motivation of God’s love from His source purpose to bless the families He created and to have generations taught to love and serve Him first: “But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him. His salvation extends to the children’s children” (Psalms 103:17) The acknowledgement of God’s love in the widening circles of the family can be noted in many scriptures such as: “Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created may praise the Lord” (Ps 102:18)
Without understanding the two principles of love as Jesus taught, the Agape love of God uniting the family in a generation-to-generation continuum via the powers of love, unity begins to break down in either the first or a successive generation. Consciences are then weakened, love fades, division occurs, and mankind begins to prey on one another’s weaknesses magnifying our selfish fallen nature in our society. Jesus taught: “If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand”. (Mark 3:25)
Our best human analogy of the characteristics of love permeating interrelating minds together is in a sharing relationship of two loving individuals sharing mutual dependence upon one another as found in the case of a genuine marriage. Here a man and a woman become “one flesh”; that is, live according to a common life pattern of loving God and each other. There is no more creative human relationship either physically or spiritually. The outcome of this affects the children and our grandchildren. Likewise, for the Christian individual the new life in Christ is unexcelled in bringing meaning and hope to life lovingly with others – family and friends alike.
Clarifying the term “sin”
Because all true law is based on Agape love, when we misperceive this love, we will misunderstand that all God’s moral laws are intended to support His Spirit’s empowerment of love for the good of man. Breaking any one of God’s laws premised on God’s true love, is referred to as “sin”: “Everyone who sins is breaking God’s law, for all sin is contrary to the law of God”. (1 John 3:4) Another way of putting it is “sin is breaking the principles of true love (Agape)”. The end result of this misconception of love is that sin is man living from the center of his selfish heart, which is the opposite of living by the Spirit directing a man in the path of God’s motive of true love.
Why has man become so selfish?
Bear in mind, that Jesus came to teach us why we were and still remain in a mess. Today with many temptations at every turn, the mind’s judgments may not be based on the protective Spirit managing Agape love from within. The mind is easily distracted and wanders off in any one of the mind-sets and behaviors that destroy love, ways that Jesus pointed out. The primary mistake man makes is the misuse of his free will when he begins to follow his lust versus the guidance of God: “For from within, out of a person’s mind, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness”. (Mark 7:21)
How do we limit our selfishness?
God promised to abide “within” our hearts/minds but Jesus noted it is the mind “within” that actually creates these thoughts, precursors to behaviors. So what is our society’s main problem? The majority of people no longer acknowledge, listen to, or have the Spirit of God abiding in them. “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Cor 6:19) Many have entirely ignored, or defiantly shut the Spirit of God out of their lives, as they freely choose to walk separate from God. Mankind has developed many philosophies, physiological reasons, academic replacement theories, 1,000 religions, ideologies, idolization, corruptions of God’s good gifts such as sex, and endless superstitions to side-step facing the truth of our dilemma.
Jesus taught that there is an aspect of our heart that leans towards thoughts that miss the mark of love, which leads to deeds that harm others. “Sin” is missing the mark of love. Sin is the antithesis to love. This aspect of man’s anti-love character has separated man from others and his God. All the prophets talked about this problem. Jeremiah, one of the greatest prophets, wrote: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9) And Job was one of the few men on earth that remained close to God in ancient times. He said: “Who can bring what is pure from the impure? No one!” (Job 14:4) Thus our efforts to live within the scope of good behavior, becomes impossible without the indwelling Spirit, regardless of the many alternate views we accept to explain man’s love-less mean disposition, or the popular masks that we hide behind in order to fit in with the world’s viewpoint that it is more important to take care of number one, at all costs, including the value of loving others.
Why can’t a man make himself good?
Paul taught that people who do not practice the two laws of love can lose their conscience, one of the perceptive faculties of the conscious mind: “Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from the true faith; they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings …their consciences are dead”. (1 Tim 4:1-2) Mankind is medically concerned about various diseases of the mind such as Schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow disease etc., but are we collectively concerned about losing our individual consciences, the governing, directorial facility of our mind?
The ruination of our consciences has been achieved through deceptive “teachings”. Much of our loss of love can be attributed to the influence of others who deny the love commands given by God, beginning by hating, not loving God: “They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful”. (Romans 1:30) Many influential people in society loathe the Bible as “haters of God”, denying His very existence and refer back historically to the defamation of Christianity in general by the errors of both Catholicism and Protestantism, such as the “holy wars” and the terrible acts against martyrs and those who did not believe specific doctrinal truths. I agree that the history of the false front of Christendom as religious eccentricity, ecclesiastically and gross times of militaristic intent was horrific, and failed for the same reason that we are failing in society today while living in a false pretense of love. It failed because it was devoid of the empowering Spirit of God and His Agape love.
The only restoration of love for God and our fellow man is firstly to be restored to friendship with God, through Jesus Christ: “For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son”. (Rom 5:10)
Jesus was not far off when He said: “What comes out of a man’s heart is what makes him ‘unclean.’” (Mark 7:20) “Unclean” is a term that means that mankind in general trends towards collectively corrupting his purpose of life, to love God and others. Corrupting himself, by either not understanding or by disobeying the command to love God first and others reciprocally, mankind has collectively separated from God.
Jesus Christ has offered to give mankind a better view of our heavenly Father’s love and has given us the Spirit to restore our capacity to love God and each other. As the song goes, Let Your Love Light Shine!