JYO or JOY

This year I have been thinking quite a bit about the nature of love. It is well known that the Bible uses three Greek words for love: eros, phileo and agape. I think these first two are somewhat natural, they seem hardwired into our human nature.  To love physically, to be stimulated and adore the person in a way described by eros or to feel the concern and caring for another human being on the basis of a shared creation in God's image, as in phileo, are not easy to be sure, because they do require us to think outside of our selfish natures.  But there is something super-human about agape.  Agape is that the self-sacrificing love for someone without any benefit to yourself.  It is the direct opposite of selfishness because it gives up any claim for the self.  It does not care about the nature of the one who is loved.

So where does this kind of love come from?  It certainly cannot come from within us.  Our depraved sin natures are incapable of this kind of love.  I was intrigued by the command in the Matthew's gospel.  Jesus tells us to "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:39)  I realized something remarkable that I hadn't noticed before, which is the implication in those last two words.  If we are to love others, we must first love ourselves.  We usually think of this as the epitome of self-centeredness. But here Jesus tells us that in order to love others, we must find an equal measure of love for ourselves. Now I spent the better part of high school and college hating myself.  To the point when someone said I should just be myself, a said "Why? I fu#*ing hate myself."  So where does this love come from?  How can we move from self-centeredness or self-loathing to and agape love of self?

It certainly comes from nowhere within ourselves.  But look what John tells us in his first letter. "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." (I John 3:16)  It is only when we can understand that God loves us, the real us, the messed up, selfish, sinning, rebellious us.  He loves us when we ignore Him, when we turn away from Him in disgust and when we spit in His face.  He loves us even when we have no idea why to love ourselves and loves us without expecting anything in return.  In all of this we are faced with one inescapable fact: We are worth the love of God. My goodness, the all-powerful, creator and sustainer of the universe God sees me and says "I love you!"  There is something about me that is worthy of God's love and that is something I find almost unbelievable.

It is this that becomes the basis for our love of others.  If God can love even me, then God can love anyone.  I can love anyone because God sees something worthy in them, too.  I know that because He found something worthy in me. 

When we consider the meaning of love, we need to change around that common acronym of  JOY.  We have typically explained it as Jesus-Others-You.  But this is not the way the Bible describes love.  Love begins with God's agape love for me, which leads to my love for myself, which leads to my love for others.  It is only when we pervert love to what it provides me instead of what I do for others, that this sequence, Jesus-You-Others, becomes unbiblical.  I have found true love in God's love for me.  In this I am able to find meaning and worth in myself.  It is only then that I can truly love others.