Reflections from Scott @ http://www.foolishblog.comA long while back, I posted a reflection on arranged marriage contrasted with “love at first sight” and how, for some (including yours truly), salvation can feel a lot like an arranged marriage. The point I got around to making went something like this:
We want our relationship with God to be like the ones we see in the chick-flicks. When the kind of relationship He wants is the kind where you lay down your life not because we loved Him but because “He first loved us.”
I bring that up because the Demand #5 that Piper brings us is Jesus’ command to love Him and the way Piper addresses the demand made me question some of the thinking that motivated that post. Back then (and frequently since), I was trying to reconcile the lack of emotion I feel towards Christ by thinking that maybe I should just be obedient and then someday emotions may be a by-product. What I was doing was making a dichotomy within “love” between the actions of love and the feelings of love. I think what I said then has value, yet after reading this chapter by Piper I wonder how much it is appropriate to speak of love in those terms (especially surrounding our love for Christ which He demands).
Speaking to this, Piper writes,
Jesus’ demand that we love him may involve more than deep feelings of admiration for his attributes and enjoyment of his fellowship and attraction to his presence and affection for his kinship, but it does not involve less.
So I was right to say that a love that is only emotional is not reflective of true love, yet I certainly was assuming that love could involve less then deep feelings. Continuing to develop this thought, Piper references John 14:15 where Jesus says “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” and explains,
[That verse] does not separate deeds from love, but it does distinguish them. First we love him. Then because of this - overflowing from this - we do what he says. Love is not synonymous with commandment keeping; it is the root of it.
This makes a lot of sense to me; that there is a connection between deeds and feelings within love but that does not mean they are the same thing. In the past I believe I have been guilty of attempting to elicit true love for Christ out of my heart from being as obedient as possible. Piper’s writings here (and the failures of my attempts at an obedience that produces true love) are helping me to realize that perhaps my salvation is not very much like the arranged marriage I had once illustrated it to be. Yes, faith in Christ and love for Him has been a part of my consciousness for as long as I can remember. But no, that does not mean that my faith is merely something I have accepted that was forced on me.
What it comes down to is essentially the question, “Who or what is the source of my love for Christ? Him and His infinite worth or my obedience?” The Devil wants nothing more then to distract me from my love for Christ by getting me to focus on myself and what I can do to better myself (even if my goal for betterment is to love Christ more). The Devil wins when I start attempting to work to earn spiritual growth. And I believe that I fall into those traps when I start disparaging love for Christ in favor of obedience to Him. Love is to be the root of my commandment keeping, not the other way around. When those lines begin to be blurred, I begin to lose sight of the Cross and become burdened by a full view of nothing but myself and my inadequacies.
I close with the words of Elizabeth Prentiss:
Once earthly joy I craved, sought peace and rest;
Now Thee alone I seek, give what is best.
This all my prayer shall be: More love, O Christ to Thee;
More love to Thee, more love to Thee!
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