Where Does Love Come From?

The first and great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind and strength and the second is like it, to love your neighbor like yourself.

Have you tried it? I have. For decades I have kept these eternal charges at the forefront of my life. How have I done? Well, I’m not sure I want to talk about that, really. Honestly, I am growing, but I have failed miserably far more than I care to remember. I have been the good Samaritan a few times, but I also have passed by plenty of times.

The Westminster Catechism is a teaching of the church from the 1600’s. It is a series of questions and answers designed to help us think rightly about us as humans in relation to God and his creation. It begins by asking, “What is the chief end of man?” and the answer given is: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” It sounds like the first commandment with “enjoy” thrown in. I guess that does fit the idea of love! Glorify can sound so much like work, so adding enjoy helps to bring balance. All of this is intended to be fun!

So how do I do that? How do I love, glorify and enjoy someone I can not touch or see in the flesh, or talk with like I do with you. You and I can interact with and receive a recognizable, tangible response. God is the transcendent creator of EVERYTHING and he called it all into existence from of NOTHING!

How do I relate to that? How do you relate to that?

We can only love, glorify and enjoy the Creator of all things because He first loved us. The short answer to the initial question, “Where does love come from?” Love comes from God. Just as God is the source of all life, the creator is the source of all real love. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.”

Genesis 1 gives us a glimpse of the origins of love. (Emphasis mine.)

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

When I first learned that in the account of creation, God refers to himself in the plural, I was floored. Male and female are the likeness of the creator. God is complete and loving. It is the trinity of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who created us, in love, and declared that we are “very good.”

Accepting God’s word that declares me as “very good” from the beginning and forgiven from the foot of the cross, has helped me to begin to own the love of God for me. That reality in turn, fills me and becomes the constantly flowing source of unconditional love.

I have learned that I can not love God unless I allow Him to love me first. I have to cooperate.

God has given us all a free will to enter into relationship with him or not. I can choose to hold on to my independent ways and to nurse the offenses that have come against me. Doing so will keep a barrier between me and the fullness of God and the love he has for me. It plugs up the flow that is always available.

Or, I can choose to release the pain of those offenses and let God take it to the cross. I can hand over to him my tendency to want to live by what is right in my own eyes that I, with the rest of the human race, inherited from Adam and Eve. When I forgive and release, the access to the love of God is released in my life. This is the recipe for a life full of love.

Not only is our Creator the source of love, he is the sustainer. By handing over my fears, hurts and sins, I open the way to let love flow through me.  If I do not release them, I am the chief loser.

Will you join me in trusting God? Give Jesus everything the Spirit of God prompts you to release. Do not go searching or dig up things you have already dealt with unless it is clearly still a problem. But ask and listen. Will you then ask for a fresh infilling for the Love of God?

I challenge you to allow God to love you first! I promise, you will not regret it!