Love Complete

Love Complete

       “My dear people, since God has loved us so much, we too should love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but as long as we love one another God will live in us, and his love will be complete in us.” (1John 4:11-12)

       John first tells us the obvious - that God is not obvious.  Then he tells us what is not obvious - that God is made known to us, made real, in our small acts of love.  Since God is Love, he is made real in our world when his Spirit, living within us through faith, manifests the Invisible God through our acts of kindness.

       In this simple Truth lies a momentous Promise: If we submit to Love’s Way, God will come to live in our hearts.  And not only will he be made present within us, but his love within us will be made complete.  This sense of Completion is an act of God, as Completion is extraordinary to us, outside of our nature, for our nature is defined by Incompleteness.

       This Completion of Love, which we are promised, comes not as a result of any small act of love on our part.  Rather, it emanates from The Greatest Act Of Love –the eternally present action of the Cross –the moment when our Lord uttered that Saving Word, “It is finished.”  (John 19:30)

       Our Father’s Sacrificial Gift of Love became Complete as his beloved Son’s last Breath was released upon the world –Love Complete, now eternally present to all who give themselves to Love.  

       To give ourselves in Love, we must die to self.  To love as our Lord loved us, we must die as He died.  We must submit to the Cross.  Only when we offer him our arms in Surrender, and allow him to plant them onto his Cross, will we know Love Complete.  “…as long as we love one another God will live in us, and his love will be complete in us.”