Fleshly Love and Spiritual Love
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August 19, 2012 |
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 "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love." (1 John 4:7-8)
The word "Love" makes us happy and our hearts fluttered just at hearing it. There could be no greater happiness than being able to share love unchangingly with someone during our lives. We heard that some people overcame death, changed their circumstances, and made their lives beautiful with the power of love. Love is an essential requirement for happiness and has great power to change our lives.
1. What is 'fleshly love'?
Even non-believers and evil men love those who are nice to them and are beneficial to them. Their love seems to be true love on the outside, but in the end it is not 'the real thing' and it's not true love. This is because their love is fleshly love—a love that changes over time and disappears in the face of even small problems.
Fleshly love changes over time according to circumstances and conditions. It changes in accordance with advantage and benefit. It gives only when it receives and when things are beneficial. If you want to receive as much as you give to others and feel bad when they don't return it to you, the love is fleshly love.
Most parents raise their children with devotion and efforts, but many of them raise their children for their own benefit or glory. They say, "I am doing this for my children to grow up well" but many of them want to satisfy or boast of themselves through the children. They oppose their children or feel uncomfortable when the children's choice in choosing their occupation or spouse is different from theirs. It proves that their love is conditional love that has a price-tag on their devotion and sacrifice.
What about children's love for their parents? Just as a saying goes, "A protracted illness wears out filial devotion", some children consider their parents troublesome and ignore them when they get old and have diseases. They may rarely call their parents with the excuse they are busy. Their lives are centered on their own children and their lives. They are indifferent about their parents. Moreover, there are some immoral children who hate their parents just because the parents turn down their request of money. Some have even killed their parents.
How about love among friends? Some people are heartbroken due to betrayal of friends that they trusted. Others ask friends to lend them great amounts of money or ask them to stand as a loan surety. If the friends reject their request, they feel betrayed and their relationship sours. If you truly love someone, you wouldn't give the person any kind of hardship. However, fleshly love seeks its own benefit and distances itself if there is no benefit.
2. What is 'spiritual love'?
A dictionary says love is to value someone/something and give everything to him/her/it or to have such a heart. But the love God talks about is a higher level of love than in the dictionary. It is spiritual love. Spiritual love seeks others' benefit, gives joy, hope, and life to them, and never changes forever.
In the Bible David and Jonathan shared this kind of spiritual love. Jonathan was the son of Saul, the first King of Israel. Seeing David defeat Goliath, the champion from the Philistines, with a sling and a stone, Jonathon realized that he was a warrior who had God's Spirit with him. Jonathon was also a troop commander, yet he admired David's braveness, and his heart was burning. From then on, Jonathan loved David as himself. He didn't spare anything for David.
1 Samuel 18:1-4 reads, "Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself …Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt."
Jonathan was the first son of King Saul so he could have succeeded to the throne. But he had no selfish motives or greed, so he didn't cling to the position of a king. He rather tried to save David at the risk of his life when Saul desperately tried to kill David to keep his throne. Jonathan's love for David was unchanging until he died.
When Jonathan died in the battle on Mount Gilboa, David fasted and mourned over his death. After becoming the king, David found Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, and restored to him all the lands of his grandfather, Saul, and took care of him in his palace.
Like their love, those with spiritual love can unchangingly love putting their lives at risk for others even if it means no benefit, and may result in harm to them. Their love is not given to be loved or receive love or benefit in return. Spiritual love sacrifices itself unconditionally and gives everything to others.
3. The unchanging love of God and the Lord for us
Have you ever suffered hardship due to fleshly love that is opposite to spiritual love? When we are distressed and feel lonely because of the changing love, there is the One who can comfort our hearts as our Friend. It is our Lord.
The Lord knows our hearts better than any one because He was ignored and despised by people although he had no sin and blemish at all. He left the heavenly glory behind, came to the earth, and took the way of suffering. By doing so, He become a true Comforter to us and gave us true love through His death on the cross.
I had lived in poverty with many kinds of diseases before I accepted God. Because I was on my sick bed for seven years, all that I had were my sick body and a great quantity of debts that had snowballed. People I trusted and loved left me one by one. I was totally abandoned, ignored, and despised. When I wandered at the doorstep of death hopelessly, God came to me.
After I met God, I was healed of all my diseases and gained new life. I started to lead a new life. God's love was priceless love. It was not I who loved Him first. It was God who loved me and He came to me first and stretched out His hand to me.
Isaiah 49:15-16 clearly shows God's love towards us. "Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me."
At the moment when I was painful remembering that everybody had left me, God held me tight. When I realized His love, tears flowed and didn't stop. Because of the time of pain I experienced, I could feel His love is true more clearly and now I am working faithfully as a pastor to repay His grace, comforting countless souls' hearts and embracing them.
God is love itself. We were all sinners, yet He still sent His only begotten Son to this Earth for us. He prepared the heavenly places along with beautiful things for us and has been waiting for us, feeling like a day is a thousand years. When we open our hearts even a little, we can feel His delicate and abundant love.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
There are two kinds of love: fleshly love that seeks its own benefit and changes over time and spiritual love that seeks others' benefit and rejoices with the truth. I pray in the name of the Lord that by realizing that God's love is not fleshly love but spiritual love, you will share unchanging love with Him eternally.
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