Though shelter, water and food are essential ingredients to the overall health of an individual, love might be the most important item on a list of needs. Loneliness can be much more oppressive than starvation. John Donne summed up the human condition aptly with his statement that, “No man is an island.”
When God formed Adam, the first man was given the opportunity to name all of the animals, which God also had created. Yet God knew that was not enough for Adam, and formed Eve as a helper to share his life. Adam didn’t spend countless hours in Garden of Eden singles’ bars, or lose an abundance of sleep chatting on EdenHarmony.com, looking for the perfect fit. Instead, God supplied Adam’s needs before Adam knew that the needs existed!
As Christians, we serve a God of love. He created us not as playthings or because He was lonely. Instead, He wanted to share His love with us! How sad it is that the majority of God’s creation has no interest in His love. That love involved sending His only Son to die in our places, so that we might have a relationship with the Father. As difficult as it was for God to watch His Son suffer the ignominy of the cross, that event pleased God according to Isaiah 53, for it enabled the bridge of relationship to be constructed between God and man, taking us from bedeviled to beloved.
One of the sweetest words in the Bible is “beloved,” which occurs in the Old Testament 46 times in 39 different verses in the New King James Version, with 27 of those verses coming from the Song of Solomon. Additionally, “beloved” occurs 66 times in 64 different verses in the New Testament. In the New Testament, “beloved” first applies to Jesus at His baptism, when the Father speaks:
And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Matthew 3:17
In Greek, the word is agapetos, which comes from the root agape, designating a perfect love that is much different than sexual or brotherly love. To understand the sacrificial nature of agape is to grasp the willingness of Jesus to give His life for us. Amazingly, the same term that the Father used to describe His love for Jesus also describes His love for all believers:
To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Romans 1:7
Yet it is an oversimplification to even begin to comprehend God’s perfect love. He doesn’t just love us; He is love, according to John. He loves us not because we are so lovable, but because that is His nature. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. It is impossible for God to do anything less than love us completely. When life gets a little bumpy, or stays that way, remember that we serve a God who already has demonstrated how far He will go to love us. That love does not just supply some of our needs, but all of our needs, for just as He did with Adam, God is aware of those needs before we begin to have a clue.
As His beloved, we have the duty to share that same kind of love with those He places in our paths. Just as God loves the unlovable, often the people He wants us to reach are the down-trodden and lonely. Let Him use you to rescue the lonely, as all anyone wants is to “Be-loved!”
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:7-11
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