WILL LOVE CONQUER ALL?

 

 

 

What we believe can kill us, or it can nurture us. If I believe that my wife is having an affair with the neighbor, this belief will severely affect me. However, if I believe that I can completely trust her, this will have the opposite effect.

 The same principle applies to what we believe about our fellow human beings. I had been supervising a unit of probation officers who only received sex abuse cases. Therefore, I was required to attend a training session. One intervention sounded particularly promising. Abused women would address sex offenders in prison about how being raped had devastated them.

 Certainly, this would sensitize these offenders to the horrors of what they had done, right? However, it was later found that a significant number had been encouraged by their victims suffering to seek the pleasure of raping again.

 This finding highlights the need to understand those we are supervising and even the one we intend to marry. It also should cause us to question, “ Love conquers all.” This adage takes many forms—“They need therapy not punishment,” or , “Kindness has the power to change the world,” or, “All you need is love.”

 No wonder the recent movement to defund the police! If love conquers all, then we need more lovers not punishers. Instead, if some are incurably attracted to evil, perhaps police are necessary, and perhaps without them, evil becomes even more alluring.

 Perhaps also we cannot lump everyone into this narrow adage, “Love conquers all.” Clearly, some indulge their evil tendencies while others restrain them.

 While it might be hard for the idealist to acknowledge this, evil is so deeply entrenched in many to the point that they are irredeemable, apart from a miraculous Hand from above.

 My years at probation and parole taught me many illuminating lessons about humanity. Those offenders, who I had trusted, most often turned out to be the most dangerous and manipulative. Some were so cunning that they were even able to deceive the police and the judges. One, who I had arrested and visited at the police jail, was even able to take it over. One day I even found him sitting in the chief’s swivel chair. He had the office to himself, where he was pursuing his crimes non-stop from his lofty perch. The police would even grant him leave to see his girlfriend. Without her permission, he began taking photographs of her in the nude, which he planned to sell. She had heard the stories about her “beloved,” but she refused to believe them.

 We are easily deceived, especially as our feelings and faulty worldview prevent us from seeing.

THE GLORY OF GOD’S LOVE

 Many of us feel that we are unloved by God. If this is so, this chapter is for you!

Many of us feel that we are unloved by God. If this is so, this chapter is for you!

Firstly, God is not robotic. If God’s love is no more than an obligation or decision to behave in a certain way towards His people, it would be difficult to see the glory in such a love. Instead, His love can be partially understood because we are created in His likeness. Therefore, we should expect that His love is passionate since our love is passionate. We become sick when our love isn’t reciprocated.

When God sees His people chasing after other gods He too is tormented, since He is jealous for our welfare. Therefore, Paul warned:

·       …I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? (1 Corinthians 10:20–22)

Besides, He actually suffers as we suffer:

·       In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (Isaiah 63:9)

During the times of the Judges, Israel continued to turn from their God. This caused Him to turn from them. But eventually, He could not bear their oppression any longer and sent His judges to rescue His people:

·       …For the LORD was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. (Judges 2:18)

Love is also the greatest command, the goal of all His commands, the icing on the cake. This tells us about what is His ultimate concern:

·       And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37–40)

He demands love from us because He is love and wants us to partake of His love. Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise that God is love before all else, and the Cross is the greatest demonstration of His love:

·       God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:8-10)

 

The Cross was also the time of Christ’s greatest glory:

·       And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:23–25)

The Cross is the ultimate testimony of the nature of God. It is this testimony that God is love and not a deceptive sadist as my depression and panic attacks had been telling me! A sadist would never suffer and die for our sins!!

 

The life of Lot reminds me of God’s love. In many ways, he had been a spiritual failure:

 

·       He chose to dwell in one of the most sinful places.

 

·       He entertained angels but wanted to speed them off early in the morning before they could see his town, Sodom, for what it was.

 

·       He was willing to give his two virgin daughters to a rape mob.

 

·       He allowed his daughters to get him drunk on two successive evenings so they could bring forth babies by him.

 

However, his sins did not disqualify him from God’s love:

 

·       and (God) delivered righteous Lot, sore distressed by the lascivious life of the wicked (for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their lawless deeds) (2 Peter 2:7-8)

 

How are we to reconcile these two apparently opposite portraits of Lot? The same way we reconcile the perplexing portrayals of faith we find in the “Hall of Fame of Faith,” and those found throughout the Bible, like:

 

·       By faith the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned. (Hebrews 11:29)

 

By faith? Israel had been in rebellion against their God as they heard the Egyptian chariots approaching them and indicted Moses for bringing them out of slavery. However, in the depths of their heart, God perceived a tiny mustard seed of faith, and that was enough. He also perceived the same faith in the heart of Lot.

 

The same thing pertained to Abraham’s wife Sarah who laughed in disbelief when this barren 90-year-old woman heard God’s promise that she would give birth the following year:

 

·       By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. (Hebrews 11:11)

 

By faith? Underneath, God perceived an element of faith in Sarah heart.

 

King David was the “man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22). However, he had committed adultery and then killed her husband to cover his sin. Then, he engaged in a cover up involving others in his sins. As a result, his first child by Bathsheba died. He named the second one Shlomo (“peace” in Hebrew) probably in hope that there might now be peace and reconciliation between he and God. However, the Lord had His own name for Solomon:

·       Then David comforted his wife, Bathsheba, and went in to her and lay with her, and she bore a son, and he called his name Solomon. And the LORD loved him and sent a message by Nathan the prophet. So he called his name Jedidiah [meaning “beloved of God’], because of the LORD. (2 Samuel 12:24–25)

 

Paul had been the worse sinner. Not only did he kill Christians, but he also forced them to renounce their faith in God. However, he too had been forgiven and was called to be perhaps the greatest evangelist and church planter:

·       though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:13–16)

 

Our God graciously and lovingly doesn’t want any of His precious children to be lost. In many cryptic ways, He reassures us that no one will ever pluck us out of His steadfast arms, not even our multitude of failures.

 

He is the good Shepherd. It is on the love and care of this Shepherd that I meditate daily. How else can we stand!