Solo Love

For some time now, Holy Spirit has been filling my heart and mind with the revelations of God’s irresistible great love. And everything in my life is being turned upside down with the understanding that God loves me. That He really, really, really loves me. I can tell you about it, but for you to truly know what I mean you must experience it. Even now, His love fills my heart and all I can do is smile. I am loved—deeply loved. And I feel His love. I know His love. How great it is to be accepted, to be loved, and to be held in the beloved.

A great passion of my life is to write, and though, I don’t get to spend anywhere near the amount of time writing that I would like I am beginning to do it more and more. My reason for sharing this is because I want to write books. And I feel that this desire within me is right. I feel and I know that I must write. With that said, I say the following.

I want to write a book, essay, something, about the great love of my God and the role that love plays within our lives.

The title that has been coming to me over and over again (for several months) is something along the lines of Solo Love, which is a play on the cry of the protestant reformation “solo fide” (only faith).

I have often felt that what is sometimes lost in the great debate of works vs. faith is love. I am of the opinion that faith outside of love is fake and false, and works done not in love are illegitimate.

1 Corinthians 13:2-3 says it best, “And though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow (works) all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.”

True saving faith cannot grow but in the love of Christ. If we interpret faith as a kind of trust then surely we would all agree that trust is only nurtured in relationship—specifically in a relationship/friendship of love. Our relationship/friendship with God is one that rests on Him having made the first move. That first move was and is always a move of love whereby our faith is given ground upon which to stand. As I see it, true faith must stand upon the love of Christ.

Concerning works, Ephesians 2:10 states, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

Only in Christ do “good works” become a living possibility.

I am convinced that our modern concept of “work” is hugely redefined in the light of God’s love. Love has a way of turning concepts upon their heads. Take for example what happens when a man falls in love with a woman (or vice versa), and because his heart is filled with love, what would normally be a task or difficult becomes easy, even pleasurable.

As originally intended, work was never meant to be a task or painful, (that happened with the fall) but work was meant to be good and something we take pleasure in. And I am convinced that this is what happens in Christ—who becomes our Peace.

Something that I have heard my brother Ryan Couch say is that “lovers will always outwork slaves.” How very true.

In a debate over faith and works I heard it said that “real faith works.” I think that more specifically, “real faith works in love.”

Now, one of the great things about the Love of God is that it is simply not a pretty little metaphysical concept floating around in the world but it is a historical fact. Love incarnated human flesh and dwelt among us. If we want to know what love is, it is found and seen in the life of Christ. Christ is our definition of love. Oh, what great and awesome love.

In Christ the definition for love is taken out of the shadows and embodies a tangible and empirical reality. To define love outside of Christ is to speak in relative terms without any possibility of finding an absolute. Outside of Christ love becomes like the wind whereby its affects are surely felt but its real source and substance are never truly obtained.

When a Christian speaks of love he speaks of a very different kind of love then that of which modern cultures and subsequent religions speak. For the love of which scripture speaks is a love that is defined in Christ, and Christ alone.

Love is the better way because Christ is the best way-the only way.