True Love
Dr. John K. Mathew
Pala is an important commercial and educational center in Kottayam district, Kerala, India. A few days ago a young man killed his fiancee on the college campus for jilting him. The gruesome and disgustingly horrendous act of slitting her throat and causing immediate death unnerved the campus and the community. Nine similar incidents took place in Kerala in the past three years.
Such incidents naturally pose the question, "WHY?" to which everyone tries to answer. As David Jeremiah says, for many people " Love is a feeling you feel when you feel that what you feel is a feeling you never felt before". In the postmodern/ post-truth/ post-church era, there is no value for the sacrifice love demands. The world's concept of love is self-centered and self-satisfying which provides no room for sacrifice.
The Bible has much to say about love. The story of the Bible is the story of God's unconditional and relentless love for mankind. Christians are taught by God to love one another. God, the Father taught us to love by sending his Son and the Son taught us to love by giving His life and by commanding us to love each other. The Holy Spirit teaches us to love one another by pouring out God's love in our hearts. True love is not a matter of getting it is all about giving. Amy Carmichael said, 'you can give without loving, but you can't love without giving.'
At the time when Luther was having the Bible printed in Germany, pieces of the printer's work happened to fall carelessly on the floor of the shop. One day the printer's daughter picked up a piece of paper on which she found the words "God so loved the world that He gave". What followed had not yet been printed. Up to this time, she had been taught that God was to be feared. The thought that 'God so loved the world that He gave ..' was a new idea of God to her, and it made life seem joyous. Her mother asked her the cause of her happiness. Putting her hand into her pocket she handed out the crumpled piece of paper. Her mother read it and said: " God so loved the world that He gave". What was it that He gave? The child was perplexed for a moment and then said: "I do not know what it was that He gave, but if He loved us well enough to give us anything, we need not be afraid of Him". The rest of that Bible verse is that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
In 1 Corinthians 13, the apostle Paul gives us a clear definition of Love. True love is not a matter of getting; it's all about giving. Certainly, true love is not killing. True love is dying.!
