Lovest Thou Me ? 



Jesus did not ask Peter to keep some doctrine or whether he understood and would promise to keep some command; He simply asked: Lovest thou me? I am convinced that through the tunnel of time into eternity the same words echo: Lovest Thou me?

God is not really interested in all the silly things we keep as so important, that we sometimes in hindsight have to shake our heads at ourselves in stunned, amazement that we let a thing that silly upset us. He does not care how much money, popularity or knowledge we have. He does not care if we miss it daily and struggle a lifetime with the same sin. No, He does not. He wants to know if we love Him and if we love one another.

Jesus gave us two commandments, ONLY two. Love God with all that is in you and  love one another as I have loved you . And then He says: if you love me you would obey My commandment. He is talking about loving one another as He loves us. Can we do this? Loving God seems easy if this second part is not attached.

The new testament teaches that if we say that we love God and hate our brother( or sister) that we are liars. - This does not mean that we have to stick around to be abused by some other person's brokenness. Since we all have some form or another of misinformation about the idea of love, let's just look for a minute at the way that He loves.

He left heaven, union with the Father, to empty Himself of all His divine attributes and live on earth as a humble man, a slave, and then allow His body to be abused and tortured to death; carrying in His soul the grief of our sins and twisted-ness, so that we can have the choice to sin or not. How is that for love? While we were His enemies, Christ died. For a good person that will accomplish good things, for our children, we may be willing to do this, but He demonstrated His love to us, in that He allowed this atrocity to be committed against Him, the innocent, while we were dirty, rotten scoundrels. To top it off, we can continue in our sin, if we so choose. ( We will reap the reward, the wages of our sin if that is our choice.) Maybe we would be willing to die for a sinner if he or she will promise to amend their ways... But He did not add any condition to His sacrifice, except that we believe in Him and appropriate His sacrifice to ourselves.

Can we really comprehend such unconditional love? Can we really wrap our hearts and minds around such a Savior?

This Love, this awesomeness, is enough to fill me up to overflow with love, adoration, gratefulness and worship. What do you do with a God like this? He loves me. He loves you. He is love.