There is No Control in Love (In other words, "Sovereignty is More Like the Pathos of a Slaughtered Lamb than the Omnipotence of a Totalitarian Emperor")

Following up on the topic of true love being uncontrolling (see There is No Fear/Control in Love), I will touch this week on where we can see this kind of love most clearly in operation.

As a starter, I'd like to suggest three places we can see this at work. The three places that come to mind are in the stories that Jesus told, in the life that Jesus lived, and in the death that Jesus died.

First, the stories Jesus told. Perhaps the most famous of His stories, the story of the lost son (Luke 15), displays uncontrolling love most clearly. The father in the story had points of control over the situation through which he could have controlled both sons, thereby gaining a contrived desired result. After all, as long as the father was alive, everything technically belonged to him and he could have used that as a means of controlling the behavior of his sons, strong-arming them into being how he wanted them to be. This story has no hint of attempts at control on the part of the father; he loved them with pure unadulterated love.

Second, the life Jesus lived. Time after time we see Him relating with people in a non-controlling way. Statements made by Jesus in the gospel of John sum up the way He lived His life: "The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing...I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me." (John 5:19,30) Obviously, Jesus lived His life of love without trying to make things go the way He thought they should. He lived trusting His Father; in other words, His life was one of loving trust without fear and control. 

And third, the death Jesus died. His death by crucifixion meant that He was literally immobilized, rendered incapable of doing or controlling anything; it climaxed a life lived free from controlling people and situations. The cross is the ultimate expression of the words of the apostle John, "There is no fear/control in love..." The non-controlling love of God is seen in living color in the death of Jesus. In Jesus we see in clearest terms what God's love is like - no fear, no control, no coercion nor manipulating, fully self-giving for the sake of the other. The cross shows the voluntary helplessness of the Creator to do anything to control creation; it was a voluntary helplessness because He understood that His creation can only respond freely to freely given love.

Morgan Guyton says: "...many Christians like me are wondering if God’s sovereignty looks more like the pathos of a slaughtered lamb than the omnipotence of a totalitarian emperor." 

Next week I'll write about some implications of this kind of love.