Love is the Fulfillment
Love is what started it all. It is from love because God is love.
God created the heavens and earth, the birds and fish, then Adam and Eve to enjoy it all. The unity and love between them was fulfillment because they were with God.
When Moses cried out to God for help in the desert because the people were grumbling, God knew they were missing love. He gave them the Ten Commandments as instructions to follow so they would not forget how to find fulfillment, through love.
Then Jesus restated the Commandments making them easier to remember breaking them into two laws to live by. He said to love God and to love your neighbor. The fulfillment of the law is love.
The Disciples then spread the word and the early Christians lived out the law. Saint Paul said “they will know we are Christians by our love.” He also reminded the Romans in his letters, that “love is the fulfillment of the law.”
It should be easy to fulfill the law if we only have to do one thing, right? Wrong. To love requires us to give of ourselves, to sacrifice and to be vulnerable. Our instinct is to cover ourselves up and protect ourselves just as Adam and Eve did in the Garden after they had sinned. We are born sinners.
Though we are also created in the image and likeness of God. This is not to say we look like God, but that the Spirit of God and God is love. It is also our instinct to love. We are born to love.
In a world without hatred and violence, a child is conceived out of love. It is loved from the moment the parents learn of its existence. Then love grows just as the child grows. This love comes naturally and easily.
We don’t live in a world without hatred and violence, so love gets smeared and smothered. Our sinful nature pulls us towards selfishness so we make choices, not out of love, but because of greed or pleasure. This distorts love.
Distorted love can look like love but there are conditions or expectations attached. It can blind us and cause us to do or say things we don’t mean or don’t want. It can leave us feeling empty, bitter and angry. Distorted love is not love, it is control disguised as love. There is no fulfillment.
God with the Ten Commandments and Jesus with the New Commandments communicated pretty clearly that love is the key to fulfillment. God created us with this desire to love and be loved.
This is the reason people love celebrating their birthdays. It’s one time during the year when others shower them with love. So many people love the holiday season because it fills them with warm memories of the love shared with family and friends. When we feel loved, we feel full.
But because of distorted love, we can find it difficult to love as God intends us to love. It can be hard to love God when we feel he didn’t answer our prayers or when we question why someone we love had to die or blame him for bad thing that happened. We can have a hard time loving someone who has hurt us or betrayed us. It can be difficult to love someone who doesn’t look like us or talk like us or love like us.
God says these obstacles shouldn’t matter. This is why love can be a challenge. Human love has conditions. We define it according to the worlds view, through experience and those experiences are distorted. God’s love is unconditional. It doesn’t see us as we see ourselves. God sees us as love because he sees his Spirit within us.
When we are able to see as God sees, we can learn to love as God loves. We can look at our neighbors and not see them by the worlds standards but love them because they are God. The distorted love disappears and we become open to give of ourselves, to sacrifice and to be vulnerable. This is what is required for us to love as God intends. “We owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” (Romans 13:8)
