Apart from Christ You Cannot Love
Love is an impossibility in the world without Christ. Here is the deception of Satan: take a concept and twist it to mean something else. This is what the world does with the concept of love.
The Bible teaches us that God is love (1 Jn 4:8). So, the adversary takes the knowledge of God and twists it. This is why he earns his biblical title, “Liar.” He lied to Adam and Eve in the garden and none us have done well under his subsequent tutelage.
Because Adam and Even once knew the love of God, and all humanity was in Adam, we have the notion of love in us. The problem comes at the fall of Adam, where all things became distorted. Of course, working with a distorted version of love is inherently frustrating. It really is not love.
St. Valentine was a martyr for the Christian faith. Somehow, cherubs with bows and arrows, coupled with chocolates, and greeting cards entered that story. The distortion is hardly even considered when each February rolls around.
When Jesus taught, “Apart from me you can do nothing (Jn 15:5),” he meant nothing good. You can sin without Jesus. You can lust without Jesus, but you cannot love without Jesus.
God is good, all the time. God is love. God does not change. Therefore, love is good, but if you do not have God, you do not have love. You have a perversion.
The impossibility of doing anything good without the Source of good is a bit overwhelming for prideful (that’s a sin) people, who think they are good (that is a deception). Man is not good (Rom 3:10–12), and he does not love (Jn 5:42). People object to this assessment of themselves because they are deceived by Lucifer in their assessment of what is good (especially them!). God is good, but the devil’s work has always been to lead men to any conclusion other than that one.
So if love is good, God is love, and God is good, then having God is what we need in order to begin loving. God demonstrated love by sending His Son, Jesus, to die the bloody crucifixion death on the cross (Jn 3:16; Rom 5:8). The Bible teaches us that Christ crucified is love. A simple comparison of your version will show you how far off the mark you really are in God’s reality.
When God shines His love in the hearts of His elect people (Rom 5:5; 2 Cor 4:6), then that true version of love begins to control their minds, their hearts, their souls, and even their bodies (2 Cor 5:14). The love of God has commenced its heavenly transformation of the person’s will to sin, and causes her will to love what is good (1 Jn 4:19). God is good.
With Christ in us, love becomes possible. The reason is that we were void of true love without God. With the power of love (God) operational in us, He gives His new lover the standard. Love God with your whole being. That is what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do. To enter into God’s love is really to have God’s love enter you (2 Cor 5:5).
The tension created by this all-encompassing, all-demanding, all-loving love is our old self. The natural man, and his perverted versions of love, does what he can to resist. The fleshly mind wars with the Spirit now living in him (Rom 7–8). So does the flesh itself. God’s version of love and man’s lusty versions of love battle it out. It is a lifelong battle for the Christian, but it has a way of luring us into everlasting love. We want it. We love it. We want more of it.
The Holy Spirit teaches the Christian love by continually exposing our perversions using the Law. He also shows us the perfect standard of love in the person of Jesus Christ, as revealed in the Bible. Jesus is sometimes depicted as a gentle Shepherd, but sometimes Jesus is depicted as warrior judge (Jer 20:11; Rev 19:11–21). This confuses the new Christian who is initially taught the gentleness and kindness and compassion of Jesus. You mean there is more? Yes, Virginia, there is more to Jesus than you will ever know.
God loves everything about Himself. Every attribute of our Triune God is perfect, and that includes: righteousness, holiness, justice, judgment, and wrath. This version of love is challenging at first because we have the civil war within. The devil continues to operate to deceive and our flesh continues to want sin, but God continues, too. Love never fails (1 Cor 13:8).
Our hope is that when we grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Pet 3:18), His Spirit will show us God’s version of love, which we have learned, is Himself. To love God, or to truly love, is a miracle that only God can accomplish. He is at work, today, in the whole Christian being. Do you want to know what love is? You cannot know love unless true love has invaded your space. Awkward when it first begins, this love becomes more natural to our being as the life of God becomes more familiar to us.
Got Love? Look to Jesus, for there is no love apart from Him.
David Norczyk
Spokane Valley, Washington
March 10, 2022
