Truly Lovable

December 20, 2013

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.   Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

“This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.  If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

“God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.  This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.  There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

“We love because he first loved us.”

[1 John 4:7-19]

God is Love.  Not only does God enable me to love, but He alone makes me lovable.  Yes, I said it.  I am lovable.  This is a concept I have struggled with for a long time in my various relationships: family, friends, and God.  I will be the FIRST person to admit that I am NOT perfect.  I have probably more than my fair share of issues, insecurities, and sins.  I’m guessing you’ve heard “I’m my own worst critic”?  Well, few are more critical of themselves than I am of myself.  So being aware of these things in myself, it is easy for me to doubt that I am lovable.  And the past four months have been especially challenging in this sense.  I have been stripped of almost everything I know that brings me comfort—things that make me feel lovable without much effort.  So I was missing that feeling of being loved, which made me doubt whether it could really be true, that I am lovable.

As I journaled about this, I knew I needed to root myself in what the Bible says.  As I looked up verses about love, I came across these verses from 1 John, ones I had read numerous times before.  But it brought a whole new set of meanings for me:

1) Love comes from God alone.  Other people can only love me, but only when they have love from God.  And really, when I am loved by other people, it is coming from God.  But even when I don’t feel it from other people, it doesn’t mean that I am not loved.  It just means I may not be EXPERIENCING His love in that way, enabling me to experience Him in a new way.

2) God’s love for me is UNCONDITIONAL.  This is a REALLY hard concept for me.  How can He love me, when I do all these crappy things?  How is that possible?!  I just don’t understand it, but that is part of what makes it so amazing, as well as distinguishes His love from human love.  And as it says later in the passage, I need to rely on the love of the LORD, not the love of others.  His is the only that is fully trustworthy.

3) Regardless of whether I feel loved by others, I need to love them as best as I can.  It’s plain and simple.  Some days I’m better at this than others, but it is something I need to be constantly reminding myself of. 

4) Fear is all about punishment.  This was the most significant thing I took from that passage.  When I think about the things I have been fearing lately—that I’m not loved or that I’m not lovable—it is me fearing the punishment of not having true community, not FEELING love, being alone physically and emotionally.  These things are punishment for my extroverted, outgoing, people-oriented personality.  But I have no need to fear these things, not just because I am loved, but because I have God’s PERFECT love.  The FACT that he loves me with an unconditional love should give me ultimate comfort and freedom from fear. 

All of this does not take away my imperfections, my issues, or my insecurities.  But it does change my attitude towards those things.  I am lovable; not on my own accord, but, while I was still a sinner, God loved me (Romans 5:8).  He sent His Son so that I could be seen as lovable in the eyes of the One who matters.