Do you not know
that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have
received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore
honor God with your body. (
Genuine
love is never free. Genuine love always comes at a cost. In order to genuinely
love another person, you have to give up some of your independence. You have to
begin thinking more about what pleases the other person than about what pleases
you. As Paul says in Philippians 2:3-4, Do nothing out of selfish ambition
or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each
of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of
others. Genuine love is always a sacrificial act. It is giving yourself to another
person.
Jesus
set the standard for what genuine love is. He commanded us to love one another as
He has loved us. How did Jesus show His love for us? He laid down His life. My
command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one
than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:12-13)
Genuine love always comes at a cost.
What
people really mean when they talk about “free love” is free sex. They want to
have sex without the responsibilities of a genuine loving relationship. But
free sex is not free either. God designed sex to be experienced in an intimate relationship
with one person within the bounds of marriage. When it is experienced in this
context, it fosters true intimacy and connects two people together in a spiritual
union that goes beyond the physical act. As the Bible states in Genesis 2:24, For
this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,
and they will become one flesh.
Casual
sex comes at a high price that most people realize too late. It short circuits
true intimacy. It scars a person’s heart and makes them more callus to others.
Other people become objects to be used rather than persons to share life with.
Sex becomes an addiction to the momentary thrill that quickly fades. Each
episode requires something more to acquire the same thrill. Soon sex becomes
stale and rote and devoid of any meaning. Casual sex damages future relationships,
making it harder to enter into a true covenant marriage. Casual sex is not
free, it comes at a cost.
The only
truly free love is the love of God. This is love: not that we loved God, but
that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1
John 4:10) God’s love is free to all who will receive it. There is nothing we
can do to earn God’s love. There is nothing we can do to deserve God’s love.
God’s love is unconditional and free. For God so loved the world that he
gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but
have eternal life. (John 3:16)
Although
God’s love is totally free, it will cost us everything to embrace God’s love.
To experience God’s love requires a total abandonment to Him. We must give Him
all of us and in return He will give us all of Himself. Jesus said, “If
anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily
and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever
loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole
world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” (Luke 9:23-25)
The
concept of “free love” has become a political slogan. It is the carrot at the
end of the stick to blindly lead people into more self-centered living. Certain
politicians have loudly asserted that no one has the right to tell others who
they can and cannot love. I would agree with that statement to a degree. In
fact, Jesus challenges us to love all people. But what these politicians really
mean is that there are not moral boundaries to who a person can have sex with.
That is a different matter altogether. The kind of free love that they are
promoting is undercutting the very fabric of our society. That kind of free
love is not free. It comes with a hefty price tag.
Genuine
love is costly, but it is worth more than we will ever fully know. It was
genuine love that sent Jesus to the cross. It is that kind of sacrificial love
that will ultimately fulfill all of our desires.
Romans 5:6-8
You see, at
just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone
might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
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