Look for Love

Many people today look for love, they think. But all too often, they do not seek love, but something emotional that makes them feel good about themselves. Without the hope of self-affirmation or self-esteem, their quest for love stops cold. Their hearts grow cold. What started out so wonderfully now causes bitterness and hatred. What they are really looking for is justification, and they are not getting it. Now, let’s see, how many people say they are looking for justification? Not many. But many are speaking of the necessity for self-esteem. Perhaps the promotion of self-esteem is relatively new, but isn’t it just some word juggling going on? Isn’t modern self-esteem the same as ancient self-justification? 

Who would admit that love could be reduced to self-justification? That would seem rather shallow. Actually, it could be shown this is precisely what the modern concept of love is built upon. Self-esteem. Self-justification. Self-love. Self-gratification. Admittedly, many of the proponents of the “new” love are candid about their self-gratification. Fornicators and adulterers are of course into this kind of shallow love. If the love between two bodies doesn’t result in gratification, what good is it? They pretend to be interested in the other person, but the interest falls off rapidly once the gratification is gone. If asked about their degenerate lifestyle, they will justify themselves and say that they love others

We can easily question their love. It is self-gratification. But the more sinister love is one that is surrounded with religious airs and pretends to be holy. But this love too is often based on self-justification and self-gratification.  Those who practice this love feel a certain superiority over the unlearned laymen (they are so humble). They speak at length on the subject of love and do a lot of smiling and sighing. This is so attractive that it brings in lots of people looking for love (when they get caught in an act of immorality, we can just chalk it up to the risks they take in their loving ministry). To be fair, a person could be very wicked and practice a love that for all appearances is not self-centered. However, once again, if no justification or gratification takes place, then that love is short-lived.  .

Love, on the other hand, is long-lived. It is able to survive on its own, so to speak. It does not need to be affirmed, because what would be doing the affirming? Only something higher or mightier could affirm love, and there is nothing. “God is love,” John says in the Bible. If we recognize this, then we should be able to see a corollary. We are not God: therefore we are not loving. The continuing sin of the human race is to feel that they can love the way God loves.  Or that even if they don’t, their love is counted as real love because they “tried.”  But actually, their love is self-serving no matter what, and it is therefore wicked. This is very hard for a “loving” person to see.

However, their love can be proved. It can be tested. For instance, does this loving person need to be affirmed that they love, or if not, they go into a sulk or become vindictive, etc.? Does this loving person not profit from their love, especially in gratifying some earthly desire? What is an earthly desire? We speak of nurturing, of security, of trust, and other such nice-sounding words. These are earthly desires. They center in large part around the love of money. Money buys security. We trust in money. Money is a defense against many wants.  Nurturing can be boiled down to giving someone the support they need. We speak of psychological means to accomplish the nurturing. Emotional support. Attention. Etc. It still comes back to: can I show this person a good time?  Will they give me one back in turn? 

This is immaturity. Today’s love is infantile.  It is self-serving, self-gratifying, self-justifying. It causes people to be very defensive. They must jealously protect their heart from attack on their self-esteem. They must build up their self-esteem. Because of the effort, many today have become experts in esteem and expert at evasion. They speak of trust, but they plan their own benefit. They boldly bark love, but they run off like a scared puppy when the big dog bites them.

In the midst of this dog-eat-dog self-justification, there exists independently a real love. This real love justifies.  It justifies the party who trusts in the real love. The party has no need to have self-esteem, self-justification, etc.  What’s more, the party has no need to have self-condemnation, either. It can be shown that those who justify themselves are just as good at condemning themselves, whether in secret or in group therapy. People don’t go to therapy because they feel self-justified; they go because they are self-condemned. The swing between self-justification and self-condemnation causes severe mood swings (or worse). It keeps the soul ever at the mercy of their own reasoning, which in turn serves at the desire of the bodily functions.

Souls that refuse to mature are condemned souls. No matter that they condemn themselves; they are still condemned.  Will they refuse the help that the true love offers? They will keep refusing as long as they are self-deceived in their self-love. Are children condemned because they are not mature? No, but adults are. It is no good to point to others who have no opportunity to mature, in order to justify one’s own refusal of mature love. The real love is mature. It is ancient. It is eternal. Those who mock it will receive the penalty for not embracing it.  Those who pretend to have the true love will of the true love receive punishment. 

There is no fear in the true love, because fear involves punishment. Once the true love is embraced, the punishment is over. But there is a cost. The cost is throwing away the self-love, seeing it as an evil thing. Most people cannot do this and never will. They will go to their graves deceiving themselves that they have practiced love, no matter how immoral, how selfish, how treacherous, how deceiving, how filthy their actions in this life were. They will receive the very punishment they denied or called unjust. They were never justified, never loved.  They are twice condemned.

Beloved, it does not have to be this way with you. You can call out to the true love, God. He is real. You don’t have to imagine him to be a certain way, or come to him a certain way of your own doing. The danger of coming to God on your own terms is that you are assuming many things that are not true. You may think of God as a large, but feeble-brained old man. Or you imagine a Force that sort of binds everything together. You may go for a hippie in sandals. You may think he is the earth or the sun, or both, or a very large collection of celestial and terrestrial objects. What god hasn’t man carved from his bent imagination? But God is none of those things.

That’s where the cost comes in. You must investigate the claims of the God who made everything and yet is himself not the things he created. If you can imagine God, it is not He. Even your imagination is a creation of sorts. In order to gain truth, are you ready to toss self-love? How about self-esteem? Self-justification? Self-actualization? God does not want you to toss your reasoning ability, but your reasoning may be under the influence of things outside your control. Are you willing to ask God to show you the error of your ways? If you think you can figure this all out yourself, you are deceived. There are many things you cannot know unless God allows them. You may not like this idea, but that is the very essence of your problem. You think that you have certain “God-given inalienable rights.” This is not the way God works. He works with the soul that is humble. The proud he resists.

God has not made the task of casting away your self-confidence a hard one. It is relatively easy, compared to the task of carrying around self-justification and self-condemnation. Of course, the value of doing so cannot be compared with the payment. In order to place your confidence in God, in order to let him justify you, you must cash in your self-confidence. You lose all your self-esteem, your self-interests and your self-justification. You lose your ability to make your own decisions based on your own benefit. You lose your self-life. But in their place, you receive the end of your confidence in God, that is, salvation, eternal life, your very soul. You are redeemed from the vicious cycle of self-justification, self-seeking love and self-condemnation. You are redeemed from the condemnation of God himself. His love redeems. By casting your confidence on him, he redeems you.

God has not made this hard. He has transferred the whole burden upon one man. This one man embodies all of the worse that is in us and he deals with it once and for all. He dies in our place. But that is not all. This man also embodies God himself. God loves this man. His name is Jesus. God calls Jesus his Son. God raised his Son from the dead after he died. The grave could not hold him. Love is more powerful than death. God loves his Son and did not permit his body to stay in the grave. 

Jesus did not die because he sinned. He died because he is love. Love lays down his life for his brother. He died because you sinned. He is willing to call you his brother, if you are willing to call him Lord. But can you figure this out? If you are getting any of this, you will see that you must call upon the Name of the Lord in order for him to help you. You must call upon the Name of Jesus Christ.

God bless you as you seek his truth and his love.

- Chris Simonson

We encourage you to email the author to prove or disprove, from the Scriptures, the intent, meaning, purpose or doctrine of this piece. email Chris