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Posted: 04/01/2012 at 9:40am
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"Love is The Most Important Thing"
by Erica Sze
"Love is the most important thing. Without it we are crippled."
So said my Art & Design History lecturer, more than ten years ago now, during my time at university.
It was her response to a question I had posed. As part of my final year major work, I conducted a written survey of as many willing participants as I could find - of varying ages, ethnicities, economic backgrounds, careers and belief systems - about their worldviews, their ideas on God or spirituality, the values they lived by and the things that were important to them. My lecturer - a self confessed agnostic feminist - was one of those who chose to take part.
Through her answers I saw that she had known suffering in life, and that she had known love. And in her sixty years upon the earth she had found love to be the most important thing. The truth and simple wisdom of her statement struck me to the core and has stayed with me since. She may not have known God in a conventional sense, but I could see she knew something that I was only just beginning to stumble into.
As a young adult I was hungry for spiritual truth, and my university environment proved a fertile ground for exploration. So while I completed my BCA, I took a year of Old Testament Survey, a year of New Testament Survey and a year of Biblical Exegesis. One of my favourite study purchases was a large Greek and Hebrew concordance. It meant I could indulge my inner nerd and look up Bible words in their original language. All languages have words and modes of expression that are unique to their culture - things that are lost in translation. So studying the root words and original language of the Bible gave me access to a whole new world of meaning.
One summer I took it upon myself to do a major study on Love. I very much wanted to know God, and had an inkling there was something in Love I hadn't yet grasped. So I bought a large notebook and spent my spare time writing out every Bible verse related to Love listed in my concordance (there are a lot), looking up the original language meanings as I went. It turned out to be quite illuminating.
When I reached 'God is Love' in 1 John 4:8, a divine spark lit up within and collided with 1 Corinthians 13, the famous passage on love. I saw that if God is Love, then these words about Love are also about God.
This is what it reveals when you substitute 'love' for 'God':
God is patient, God is kind. God does not envy, does not boast and is not proud. God does not dishonour others, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. God always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. God never fails.
This was an explosive truth. In all my years of reading I had never seen God like this before. I liked this God.
'Love' in these passages has been translated from the Greek agape and agapao, which mean God's active love. God actively working through Love.
This is not a passive love. Not the kind of love written in a Christmas card from the distant relative you haven't talked to in a year. It is not made of nice sentiments or pretty words, things that sound pleasing but mean nothing. Nor is it a cold, intellectual love that is unable to enter your world, unable to relate to you.
No, this is a love with robust physicality; love with personality; love with guts. A love that is actively involved in your life and personally invested in you. The kind of love that a parent has for his or her child...if that parent is perfect in wisdom and temperament, knows everything you need, and gives it when you need it. This love has your best interests at heart, is intentional about your growth, unwavering, empowering, selfless, freely given with no expectation of return, and always available. It is a love that is with you, literally. And for you, always. A love that fights for you, laughs with you, cries with you, and plays with you. A love that enjoys you. And understands you the way no other can. A love that is proud of you. A love that never gives up on you. A love that has been with you, is with you, and will be with you all the days of your life. It is a love so mature and whole within itself, it never has cause to take from you - it seeks only to give. And to enjoy relationship with you. This love knows who you are, who you are becoming, and cheers you on to explore everything you are capable of. This kind of love actively gives life.
And this love is the essence of God's being. God and Love are One. He cannot be separated from it. His very substance is Love, his personality, his heart. God cannot be understood or known apart from Love.
This truth had huge ramifications for how I began to experience the Bible.
If God and Love are One, then this is how the first words of John read:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Love, and the Word was Love. He was with Love in the beginning. Through Love all things were made; without Love nothing was made that has been made.
Our world was birthed out of Love. The divine motivation for the creation of the cosmos is...Love. Love is a powerful creative force, a personality of never ending creative energy. All things were created in Love, for Love and by Love. And Love does not exist in a vacuum. It only ever exists within relationship.
When Genesis 1 says that we are 'made in the image of God', this means then that we are made in the image of Love.
You are made in the image of Love.
Let that sink in.
And let it go deep.
Love is the mirror that reflects to you who you really are.
Just as we cannot know God apart from Love, we cannot know ourselves apart from Love. Only Love can tell us who we are.
In Acts 17: 24 - 28, Paul is speaking before a gathering of philosophers when he declares, 'In him we live and move and have our being...we are his offspring.' This means that in Love, we live and move and have our being, our existence. Love is the substance of the universe that holds all things together. Our existence was conceived in Love, birthed in Love, and is held in Love. If God is everywhere, then right now you are surrounded by Love.
And there is no fear in Love.
When John says this (in 1 John 4:18) and continues, 'perfect love casts out fear', the original translation of that word 'perfect' is teleios, which speaks of fullness, completion and wholeness. It carries with it a sense of deep peace
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John is writing about what it's like to come home to Love.
This is also what Paul refers to back in 1 Corinthians 13 when he says, "when completeness comes...then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."
In 2 Corinthians 3:18 he goes on to say, "we all, with unveiled faces, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory..."
As we journey into this love, beholding as in a mirror Love's glory, we find ourselves transformed into Love's image.
Paul's words join with those of my lecturer as he ends 1 Corinthians 13 by stating,
"These three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
She knew the most important thing.
I am convinced that all of life is a gradual unveiling of the reality of Love, a gradual unlearning of things that have kept us far from Love, far from who we are and far from who God is.
We are all on this journey and it is different for each of us, as unique as we are. But Love is the signpost. If Love is not there, you know that's not the way. As Tolstoy said, "Where Love is, there God is also"
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Erica Sze
Taupo, New Zealand
Fatherheart Ministries
Tree of Life Media
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Topic: Living in Wholeness
