Today, I went to a funeral. A friend of mine's mother-in-law went to be home with the Lord and today was the memorial service. I had never met this woman before, but after the service I felt as though I did. And what a wonderful woman of God she was.
A friend of hers' was a man that I greatly respect, David, who spoke during the service. He was a professor of mine at Bible College and he is a wise man and has a deep love of God. There was something he said about this woman that spoke volumes to me. He said the reason she was such a cheerful person was that she "knew she was deeply loved by Jesus." That is what gave her great joy. She experienced the unending and abounding love poured down from above on her. This caused her to return that love back to her Savior and to all those around her.
This is such a simple, yet profound thing.
As I am preparing for this weekend's services, this celebration of a life well lived brings me to think about the Love of Christ. And to John 3:16:
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."
And to Isaiah 53:5:
"But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
This causes me to raise a question: What is it about Christ's love (agape) as opposed to the other types of love, namely brotherly love (phileo) or romantic love (eros), that can save the whole world and bring peace to a lost soul?
I saw a couple movies recently. One of my favorites is The Fifth Element (Sci-Fi). In it, the antagonist is literally "pure evil". It consumes everything in its path and it threatens to consume Earth. The protagonist is another alien in the form of a beautiful woman. She is the key to stopping evil from winning. In the process of the movie, Bruce Willis' character falls in love with the perfect woman. Long story short (it's still a great movie), Love, the love between two people, is enough to stop the evil force and even to completely destroy it.
So, can romantic love (eros) save the world from evil and bring peace to all? Hmmm...
.JPG)