Reflection of God's Love

Soumya Prabhakar Joel - Bangalore, India

1. What is Love?

According to book of Galatians - The fruit of the Spirit is Love [Galatians 5: 22]

What is fruit?

Can we say it is the produce of the seed? Which means - as the seed, so the fruit?

Cool! Now, I’ve never seen an Apple tree produce an Orange fruit - why do you think it’s so?

Simply because it is against nature’s law. If so, who is the commander of this law?

I say God Himself: He spoke to the earth and the earth yielded.

Do you ask me where is this law written? In the Book of God’s constitution.

Reference: Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so.” [Genesis 1:11]

Inference: If Love is the fruit of the Spirit and fruit is the produce of the seed then, ‘Only LOVE can produce love ‘

2. Who is Love?

As we saw in the previous inference, if only LOVE can produce love, then who is this LOVE?

According to the below reference, ‘God is Love’, which means only God can produce Love.

Reference: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” [1 John 4:7, 8]

Inference: I infer from this, God is the seed of this fruit and the fruit of this seed called ‘LOVE’.

So, the fruit has the seed and out of the seed grows the tree which produces the fruit. Only when the seed falls to the ground and dies will it sprout out and grow a tree which produces fruit. The tree, fruit and the seed is so much into each other and definitely reminds me of the essence of our Triune God (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit).

3. How does Love work in actual?

Scientifically, Love is our default nature and our natural response [Dr. Caroline Leaf who is a Cognitive neuroscientist and a Communication Pathologist beautifully proves and explains in Quantum Physics terms - you may want to watch her show called ‘Dr.Leaf show.’]

I happen to discover that Love is our very default nature and our very natural response. Here I present both Biblical and natural perspectives of LOVE.

Do you know that we actually require NO ONE to teach us Love? Ask me why? Just so - because we are a part of it by birth, since conception.

Looking into the Biblical perspective:

The Bible says, God created man in His own image.

Reference: “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them.” [Genesis 1:27]

Side Note: I personally believe in this truth because I am convinced that creation couldn’t have created itself. There’s got to be someone Sovereign who has no end existed to initiate the creation and to put the produce process in place. With this I encourage each one of you to discover the truth’s that your deep is wanting to know and don’t give-up until you are totally satisfied

Alright, coming back to our context – We have seen that God is Love and we have seen that God created us in His own image. So, basically we have inherited love by default and that is the reason I believe that even without anyone teaching us, we love!

Looking at the natural perspective:

To demonstrate how naturally Love works, I happened to interview a father and a 5 year old daughter. I asked the daughter below questions and her responses were as follows and I ensured they both weren’t looking at each other - so be assured that there was no prompting.

·       Question: Do you love your dada?

Daughter’s Response: Yes

·       Question: Do you know if Dada loves you?

Daughter’s Response: Yes

·       Question: How do you know that Dada loves you?

Daughter’s Response: She was just silent with a smile - like she just knew it!

·       Question: Has dada ever said to you that he is your dad and that you should love him?

Daughter’s Response: No

I then asked the same set of questions to the father with respect to his daughter and it so happened that the responses were just the same. The reason I chose to interview such a small girl is because only when we grow up we get customized and learn or attempt to live away from our default nature.

It is evident from this demonstration that Love attracts love and Love produces love. I believe this is why everyone in this world are so much attracted or longing for Love. And though we get highly customized and interrupt our default nature, we would still get attracted to Love because that is the core of who we are. But when we realize and get back to our default nature and when we choose to operate from our default nature we would not only benefit other but ourselves too. I am convinced that love can never attract hatred, it can never produce hatred.

4. What happens when Love meets love?

So, when we are fully aware of our default nature (Love) and when we happen to meet anybody who also have this realization – there is automatically a great excitement! Because, God in you is greeting God in the other person. This is exactly what happened with Elizabeth and Mary.

Reference: “An angel of the Lord visited Zacharias (husband of Elizabeth) and spoke to him about the birth of their son (John the Baptist). While the angel was giving the news and instructions, the angel mentioned that their son will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb.” [Luke 1:15]

Now as you read along the passage [Luke 1: 39 to 45], we see that Mary with Jesus in her womb comes to meet Elizabeth. And Elizabeth says that the baby leaped in her womb for joy on hearing the greeting.

I believe this is what has happened here: GOD who is LOVE in Jesus, through Mary, met the LOVE in Holy Spirit who was in John the Baptist through Elizabeth. LOVE met LOVE and hence there was joy, excitement!

5. What do we do with Love?

It becomes really important to us to consciously choose Love with our own freewill. Because when we choose Love, we actually choose God and that we choose to reflect God to the world we live in and to live a fruitful life. Love is a choice you make with your conscious free will. No one can ever force Love on you and you cannot force it on yourself too (if its being forced, it cannot be love), neither will God force it on you. You’ve got to make a conscious decision with your own free will.

Reference: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life.” [Deuteronomy 30:19]

Reflection & Conclusion:

With all of this truth discovered, John 3:16 means to me like this:

Love (God the Father) sent Love (God the son) - so Love came down to earth: Why?

• To restore love (us, who are made in God’s image) back to LOVE (GOD)

• And until the end of our time here on earth we have Love (God the Holy Spirit) to help us stay connected if only we choose to.

Today, the world needs Love. We are the reflection of God’s Love and God is Love. So, ‘Choose God - Choose Love’!