Love, love, love, sang John Lennon to open the Beatles “All you need is Love”, one of their hit singles from the “summer of love” – 1967. Against the backdrop of tremendous civil unrest, and with America in the middle of an unwinnable, brutal war, love seemed to be just what the doctor ordered for our troubled society. Yesterday, we saw how love fulfills the law and that one of God’s primary aims through his law is to create people who love. Were John, Paul, George, and Ringo on to something? Is it true that all we need is love?
We will leave the biblical definition of love for another devotion, but I do wish to address its source. In John’s first letter to the church he wrote,
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)
This John also calls for us to love one another but, critically, directs us to its source: God, “for love is from God.” Love is not something we do in our own initiative or strength; we need God. “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love. (Galatians 5:6)” Love is a fruit of faith, and the working out of God’s Spirit in our lives (Gal. 5:22). As much as I appreciate the sentiment of “All you need is love”, it is a fruitless sentiment without God; the origin in our lives of love is God’s gift of a heart of faith.
Something to Praise:
Praise God that true love is shown to us in its perfect form – Jesus Christ!
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. (Gal. 5:9)”