Skip to main content

Light Before Love


           This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (I John 1:4-7)

           Everyone thinks of I John as being about love, but he doesn’t begin there. He begins with light (just as he begins in the Gospel of John.) I believe there is good reason for this: love is not blind. Infatuation and lust are blind, but love is not. In order to have fellowship with God, in order to love God and to best receive His love, we must walk in the light. It is only then that we can have fellowship with one another. It is only then that we can be purified. Being purified is necessary in order to love as well and as fully as possible.
          Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that if you aren’t Christian, you cannot love at all. I am saying that everyone’s capacity to love is more limited than it should be, but that it is only as we walk in the light, only as we live in light of the truth that we can reach our potential for loving. Walking in the truth is not only necessary for the lover, it is the lover’s goal for the beloved. A lover does not stand by idly while the beloved insists that sticking a knife into a live socket is safe. Truth and light are vital to love. 
         Some people may say that this must be wrong, because true love is unconditional. If one loves, one loves no matter what. I believe John would agree, and I agree that one loves no matter what, but that doesn’t mean that one doesn’t always seek to bring the beloved into the light, to guide the beloved into the truth. Hannah Hurnard once wrote, “Love is gentle but love is terrible too. The greater the love the less it can tolerate anything that is hurting the beloved. For the perfection of the beloved (us) the Shepherd may have to allow much terrible suffering to perfect the beloved. (He is a consuming fire) (p. 142 of Mountains of Spices)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more