Human Love vs Christ's Love
“It came about that he (Samson), loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah… she said to him, ‘How can you say, I love you when your heart is not with me? You had deceived me these three times and have not told me where your great strength is.’” Judges 16: 4, 15
Samson and Delilah had a strange kind of love. He wasn’t being honest with her, she was betraying him. Samson, despite knowing Delilah was betraying him, was blinded by ‘love’. To say the least, the relationship was complicated. No doubt there was passion, emotions and a form of loyalty- yet their love was very ‘human’, very natural and it was bound to fail. Someone was always going to get hurt.
In Ephesians 3:18-19, the Apostle Paul prays, that we “may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,”
We use the term ‘love’ so loosely. We ‘love’ our hair cut or our car. We love a particular football team or a piece of clothing. In essence, we say we love something because of the way it makes us feel. It’s nice to feel good. It’s nice to feel appreciated. But that kind of love is natural and selfish. It loves, to get something in return. When we stop getting a return on our love, we stop loving.
The love of Christ is different from natural human love. The expression ‘the love of Christ’ means love that comes from Christ or Christ’s kind of love. The love of Christ, God’s love for us, has a different quality than natural love. The Bible says we can ‘know the love of Christ, that surpasses knowledge’. In other words, the love that Christ has for us is beyond our normal or natural experience of love. It ‘surpasses’ anything we have experienced or known about love. The Greek word for ‘surpass’ is ‘hyperballo’- it means to be thrown further than anything can be thrown.
If you were at a game of baseball and all the very best batters were hitting base runs, or the occasional ball was smashed into the grandstand. Now and then, on a rare occasion, a batter would hit a ball into the grandstand. That would be an amazing hit. But what if a batter hit a ball that went over the outfield, over the fence, over the first tier of seating, over the second and third tiers, over the roof and finally flew out of sight way over the car park. The commentators lost sight of it, even with their binoculars, as it headed into the clouds! That is the type of hit that surpasses any other type of hit. That is a ‘hyperballo’ hit. God’s will for us, is that we would know the love of Christ which is ‘hyperballo’ any kind of love we have ever known.
Natural love is conditional on our ability to love, and the feedback we get from the object of our love. When people fall in love with each other, they imagine the other person meeting their emotional and physical needs. Eventually, when we discover that the other person is human, we can have a crisis of love.
God doesn’t have emotional hang-ups. He isn’t needy. His love for us is a knowing love. His love is poured out to meet our needs- not His. The Bible says, ‘while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us’ (Romans 5:8). He knew our worst before he chose to love us. Before He sent Christ to die for our sins, He knew our failings and He knew the times we would reject Him.
If you have been hurt by someone close to you- it wasn’t the love of God that hurt you. If your earthly father or mother failed you, or your friend or partner hurt you; it was because they weren’t able to give you the love you needed. They were acting out of their love deficit, out of natural love.
God’s love has never stormed out in a rage. God’s love has never lashed out with fists or hurtful words. God’s love has never been to the divorce court. God’s love has never been unfaithful. Even when we are unfaithful to Him, He is still faithful to us (2 Timothy 2:13). God’s prayer for us is that we would know His love, love that surpasses all knowledge.
