MUSINGS ON LOVE AND LOVING (3)

 
"Love means never having to say you're sorry" is a catchphrase based on a line from the Erich Segal’s novel Love Story and was popularized by its 1970 film adaptation starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal.[1]
 
I respectfully beg to differ.
 
I believe that genuine love means that you may or have to say that you are sorry to another person, if, hurt or wrong, has been caused by you to the other, perceived or otherwise. In so doing, there is an acknowledgement and clarity on your part as to the import of the ‘thing’ that you have done, or, not done, and its affect and effect to love and loving union and communion with another. Saying sorry, in love, is all about nurturing and growing in love and loving.
 
Life is all about loving living.
 
Without love, even if I know all the languages of men and spiritual beings, I am just empty noise of resounding gongs and clanging cymbals. Even if I can foretell the future, understand and fathom all mysteries and knowledge, have the ability to perform the miraculous, yet, have not love, my life remains one of emptiness, without lasting value, purpose, meaning and significance.[2]
 
Love gives meaning, significance, purpose, substance and authenticity to and for our existence: for God is love. God chose us to belong to Christ before the world was created. He chose us to be holy and without blame in his eyes.[3] In love, He predestined and lovingly planned for us to be adopted as His own children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the kind intention and good pleasure of His will.[4] Triune God freely gave us this Triune grace because of and through the Only Begotten Son, Who is loved[5], and is love.
 
I perceive that:
1. Creation essentially and fundamentally came into being out of love for Eternal Son to become a human being, not that Eternal Son had to become human because one human sinned or all humans have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
 
2. Whether or not humanity sinned, the desire and will of Triune God[6], conceived in eternity, was for Eternal Son to become a human, a created being, made in the image of God. All things were created through Son and for Son. This was Father’s will, pleasure and desire in eternity.[7] Therefore, Paul could say to the Athenians:
“In Him we live and move and have our being,”[8] so that we, as Peter wrote, may, “participate in the divine nature.”[9]
 
3. As such, Son is the only Way, Truth and Life whereby we can participate in and experience the Triune Divine Nature of love and loving.[10] Only in and through the Incarnate Son are we able to know God as Eternal Father, even as only the Father knows the Son and must reveal Him.[11]
 
Concerning this, I find the following words attributed to Jesus in his prayer, recorded in John 17, to be descriptively instructive:
“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.[12]


[1] Wikipedia - Love means never having to say you're sorry

[2] 1 Corinthians 13. My paraphrase with help from

[3] Ephesians 1:4 NIRV

[4] Ephesians 1:4(c), 5 Amplified Version.

[5] Ephesians 1:6 NIRV  See also John17:24

[6] Colossians 1:16 “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.”

[7] Revelations 4:11

[8] Acts 17:28

[9] 2 Peter 1:4 NIV.  Read with 2 Corinthians 1:20 “for it is he who is the “Yes” to all of God's promises. This is why through Jesus Christ our “Amen” is said to the glory of God.” Good News Translation.

[10] 2 Peter 1:4

[11] Matthew 11:2 “No one knows the Son except the Father and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” NIV
See also John 6:44(a) ““No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them,”

[12] John 17:22-24 NIV in particular 23(b) and 24(b) italics mine.

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