The Need for Love
Why do you have a need for love? Is Love a fundamental human need?
How is your marriage affected by your need for love, and how does your understanding of love impact the quality of your relationship?
These questions are at the heart of YOUR marriage, and your view of love might be more skewed and misguided than you want to admit.
This article will:
- Offer a profoundly biblical understanding of love.
- Challenge the shallow concepts of marriage.
- Encourage a deeper value for this complex God-given emotion.
Love is a very complex and uniquely human emotion.
It is reported that when psychology was a growing field of study that there were many unethical studies done in many different countries.
“In the United States, in 1944, an experiment was conducted on 20 newborn infants to determine whether people could thrive alone on basic physical needs without affection.
Twenty newborn infants were volunteered and housed in a special facility where they had caregivers who would go in to feed them, bathe them and change their diapers, but they would do nothing else.
The caregivers had been instructed not to look at or touch the babies more than what was necessary, never communicating with them.
All their physical needs were attended to scrupulously and the environment was kept sterile, so none of the babies would become ill.
The experiment was halted after only four months, by which time, at least half of the babies had died. At least two more died even after being rescued and brought into a more naturing environment.
There was no physiological cause for the babies’ deaths; they were all physically very healthy. It was a tragic time of psychological studies in many places in the world.
The conclusion was that love is a vital need in humans. These same results have been recorded in orphanages all around the world. That is because one of the greatest primary human needs is love.
But why? – Why is love such an incredible need and where did love come from?
Love is actually a complex human emotion and is not found with that depth in the animal kingdom at all. While there are some simplistic emotions observed in animals scientists have not found any evidence of any emotion as complex as LOVE in the animal kingdom.
So why is it that HUMANS are the only ones that have such a complex emotion, and where did it come from. Without a doubt, it’s because humans are made in the image of God, and have a living eternal soul.
The Bible tells us in – 1 John 4:7–10 “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
So the elusive source of the complex emotion called LOVE is actually God.
As we consider one of the most famous and well know Bible verses we cannot help to be confronted with Love.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
You see, there is a very common but controversial question, and it’s a hard but very valid one, that is asked by many sincere people.
The question is – “If God is so good, and He is such a loving God, then we does he allow such pain, and abuse, and suffering, and tragedy in this world? Why doesn’t he put a stop to it?”
(Well he has in the past – in the Genesis flood, and He will again in the future – with fire.)
But let’s consider for a moment the premise of that controversial question. In order to comprehend the depth of God’s love, we have to first understand the sinful condition of mankind.
But that is hard to think about, so brace yourself for the next few minutes.
Because you see, mankind is not basically good, mankind is evil and cruel, and wicked. The premise that mankind is good is biblically wrong, and historically inaccurate.
There has been a relentless march for greed, and lust for power, and thirst for blood and revenge, by men from Herod, Caligula in Rome, Polpot in Cambodia, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mugabe, to Idi Amin, and I could go on and on.
Literally, billions of people have been murdered by brutal dictators.
War has plagued mankind since our earliest history and has violently shed more blood, caused more tears and wreaked more havoc on mankind than we can even imagine.
From the legends of ancient combat to the modern war on terror, the brutality has been unending, has spanned across every continent, and caused human despair and misery to the farthest corners of the Earth.
If you add to that the cruelest forms of abuse the thievery and drunkenness and immorality that abounds in our homes and even grows in our culture today.
The sickest and worst among them mock God, desecrate the Bible, and defile themselves.
The list of the terrible grievances of mankind from slavery, racial genocide, and gas chambers, to
the horrible psychological experiments on infants that we learned about earlier.
The sterile abortion clinics that kill unborn babies by the millions each year, and throw them in the trash, are far worse than the human sacrifices to the false gods of Baal, and Molech in the Old Testament.
The sin and moral depravity from our Homes to the Halls of Congress, are too many to count and growing every day.
The Bible tells us in – Isaiah 64:6 “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”
We read in – Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”
Now that we have honestly considered that depravity of man, why should God love mankind?
Why should a Holy God do anything at all to show mercy or forgiveness to such a morally depraved world? As people, we are not basically good, left to ourselves we pursue the lowest and most base form of existence, because of our sin. You are no exception.
What if John 3:16 was not true? What if God Did Not Love the World?
Without His love, there would be no hope at all. We would just be a watery planet spinning through space without hope.
The purpose of your existence would be nothing but pure survival. Every death would be the end of hope and every grave a place of despair. It would be a world where prayers are nothing more than useless cries from desperate sinners.
If God did not love the world, then he would not love you. If that was so, your ability to understand or express love at all would be virtually impossible.
- That LOVE that you feel, that makes you treasure and value your husband or wife, is a gift from God in a cruel and sinful world.
- That LOVE that causes you to cherish your children and family, is a gift from God in a cruel and sinful world.
- That LOVE that makes you despise the tragic effects of sin in this cruel and wicked world, is actually a gift from God because God is LOVE.
The greatest demonstration of God’s love was at the cross. Yet, because of our sin, rather than thanking Him for showing us love despite our terrible sinfulness, people so often blame God for not stopping it…. but that day is coming.
What if God Did Not Give His Son?
God’s love would be frustrated without the cross. Because love gives.
If Jesus the sinless lamb of God had not made that perfect sacrifice, paying the price for all those who would believe in Him by faith, then we would still remain unredeemable.
God’s love would be frustrated by the hopeless trajectory of mankind running headlong into their sin day after day, with no way out, and no hope of escaping Hell.
However, because God is love, he could not do anything but give. Because he does love us!
God did give His Son! Because of God’s great love, he did give us a way out. In his infinite mercy and unconditional love, he made a way of escape for all of us.
Through the cross, Jesus paid the price for our forgiveness. God did give His Son, and apart from that, there would be no salvation!
John 3:16 says, “… that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
- Suppose God ….had offered salvation only to the rich.
- Suppose God… had offered salvation only to the educated.
- Suppose God…only offered salvation to royalty and aristocrats.
If that is what God had done, then the rest of us would live a life of vanity and would all pay the eternal price for our own sin against God.
But God DOES LOVE the world, and God DID give his Son on the Cross, and God DOES extend the offer of salvation to “whosoever” believes in Christ.
“….whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
It says in – 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
God DOES love the world, and he doesn’t desire for anyone to die in their sin, that is not His will for anyone. Because God is love.
“….whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
The key here is the word “believe”, which requires faith.
In our sin many people criticize faith, and reject the idea of faith, calling it blind and unscientific and misleading. Yet, it is the only thing that is acceptable to God for our salvation.
But, what if God did not accept faith.
Mankind would become religious slaves in an effort to overcome their own immorality. There would be a never-ending effort to rise above the moral depravity of man. Yet it would all fail because mankind can never achieve their own atonement.
But, God not only encourages faith, he invented it, and he loves it, and he requires it as the only way of salvation.
Love, Christ, and YOUR marriage….
God IS Love – and John 3:16 is True!
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Whatever LOVE that you have for anyone is a gift from God in a world that is lost in the depravity of sin!
The LOVE that you have in YOUR MARRIAGE, and in YOUR FAMILY, is an expression of God’s nature and His love for you, in a cruel and morally depraved world.
That complex emotion called LOVE was put there by God Himself, to direct you back to Him.
Ephesians 5:25–33 “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. 28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: 30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. 31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. 32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.”
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