In conversation with a young friend today, I was struck at a deeper level with the scandalous love of God! The Spirit through the apostle Paul says that "love never fails". Because we are heavily results-oriented, we assume this means that if we love people, we will see results to our loving them.
But self-giving love by its very nature is and acts independent of the recipient's response. It simply is, and nothing changes it. It is this love that never fails. So what does it mean that love never fails when there is no apparent response or result from genuine love? How can we know that love never fails?
The cross of Jesus is the most powerful example of both the "failure" and the "success" of loving; there we see what appears to be utter failure on God's part, the end and death of all that was wonderful and beautiful in the man Jesus. In this selfless outpouring of love, God appears to have utterly failed to win the love of humans, and Jesus' loving life on earth appears to not have gained much at all in terms of visible results.
As Jesus was, so are we in this world; God doesn't ask us to be "successful" in terms of being able to measure the fruit of love operating through us. In fact, I increasingly believe that the less energy I put into trying to figure out if my life "counts", and the more energy I put into receiving God's scandalous, unconditional love for me and then pouring that same love out on others without insisting on measuring its effectiveness, the more fruit there will be, because love never fails.
This love infuriates and confounds the evil one and his kind, because the world, the flesh and the devil absolutely cannot conceive of love that simply is, with no ulterior motive. It was that love of God in Christ Jesus that disarmed the powers completely; it is still that kind of love today that disarms the powers.
In his book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis shows Screwtape infuriated at God and saying: "...we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy (God); He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created and always gives back to them with His right hand what He has taken away with His left...He really loves the human vermin and really desires their freedom and continued existence...(but) that of course, is an impossibility... All His talk about Love must be a disguise for something else...The reason one comes to talk as if He really had this impossible Love is our utter failure to find out that real motive. What does He stand to make out of them?...We know that He cannot really love: nobody can: it doesn't make sense..."
I John 4:8 "...God is love..."
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