LOVE?

How is love best displayed? To what extent it must be held fast? Most importantly, what’s in it for us to do so? I have never fully understood the extent of this word called “love”. It is so lightly used that it appears to have lost its truest and deepest meaning.

As a believer in Christ, I turned to my anchor point, the Bible, which offers a short answer that it claims to sum it all which is God is love. John 3:16 offers an executive summary on how God exhibits His most act of love, by sending His own son, Jesus (who apparently volunteered), to be sacrificed in our place, redeems us from the death penalty we were doomed to because of our sins.

With that pivot point to start with, it only makes sense that the most extensive display of love needs sin to exist. But, why does it have to be so complicated, so sacrificial, so bloody, so horrific? Couldn’t things just be simpler from the beginning, such as no serpent in the Eden, Adam and Eve could just be in union with God until now, because death simply would not have existed due to the absence of sin. The Business As Usual would have been easier, simpler, convenient, no pain, no need of redemption whatsoever. Things would have been perfect from the beginning, Jesus did not have to come and save the world. You and I would still exist without having to hurt one another.

Provided that we agree the beginning of this world is as what the Book of Genesis claims, and it had remained as the paradise it was meant to be, then how would love being most extensively acted out? Where would the crescendo of love be? To this day, I still have this question linger. It does not need an urgent answer anyway, but it does remain as a question to me.