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Perfect

             Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. (I John 4:11-12)

The other day, I wrote a little about the idea of God making it so that we could not sin. Today’s passage from Biblegateway.com brings that to mind with an implied question. Can God’s love be incomplete? My Κοινη (Greek) isn’t good enough to extent into the various tenses, but the word translated “complete” in this verse comes from the same word Jesus spoke on the cross, that we translate “finished.” It looks as if the second part of the word may indicate an ongoing completeness.

If God’s love is made complete in us, in what sense might it not be complete apart from us? Does incompleteness not mean imperfection? How can God be perfect, but His love be imperfect? Part of the answer is the fact that love can and does involve a process. Our love for our children doesn’t involve our teaching them to park a car at the age of two. In fact, we would be considered imperfect parents if we put the child through hours of training in parking at that age. Our perfection, therefore, requires incompleteness.

Another of the pieces to this puzzle is the fact that while God’s love would have been perfect and complete without us, He created us to be less than Himself because if He created us as perfect beings – the sort of beings that my friend suggested – God could never be able to demonstrate love that is undeserved, unearned – and love that is earned is easy love. It’s when the one you love makes it hard to love that the depth of one’s love can be plumbed.

And, just in case it needs to be noted – that’s precisely the reasons why God brings those people who are perfect pains in our necks into our lives – because that’s the only way our love will be perfect and plumbed. 

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