Who started it?

From: Ben Kelley
Subject: Who started it?

Love is a word that has been the subject of countless movies, books, plays, magazine articles, debates, discourses, etc., but, very few have ever truly grasped the dimensions covered by these 4 little letters. Paul even hints we cannot, without God's granting us His Spirit power to even begin to. He writes: That he (God) would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, (Ephesians 3:16-19 (KJV) His love passeth (surpasses) knowledge. Man has mangled and murdered the meaning, creating various words or descriptors to differentiate various "types" of what we call love. I don't intend to add another lengthy treatment of the subject to what's already available, but I would like to call your attention to just one aspect of it, an aspect that has great importance. What I'm asking you to consider about real love is, "who started it?"

When we think about a love relationship, there is always a "selfish" slant on the part of the person beginning it. When we love, it's always to satisfy a desire on our part. We see a person who has physical, mental, or character attributes that please us, or satisfy some ambition we have, and make moves towards acquiring a closer relationship to them. It makes us "feel good," or takes away an emptiness in us. How many of us would willingly and knowingly desire, seek out, and instigate a love relationship that would cost us all that is near and dear to us, tearing apart all we have enjoyed up to that point in life!!?? No one "in their right mind" would do such a thing, yet that is exactly what our Perfect, All-knowing, All-seeing God and Father has done. HE had enjoyed complete and total fellowship with His Son and Spirit, along with the adoration and praise of all the heavenly host. HE knew, before creating the first man, Adam, that he and each one of us would rebel against Him. HE knew that rebellion would require and allow death and destruction to enter into His wonderful work. HE knew we would steal, kill, lie, and cheat in our efforts to live "our way." All this is true, yet, HE started it! HE took the steps necessary for us to be able to enter into relationship with Him; HE started loving us while we were His enemies, But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8 (KJV) Sin made us repugnant to Him, yet HE willingly came after us, desiring to make us His own beloved ones. We did not start loving Him, HE started loving us. We gain everything through that love relationship; He gave up everything so we could. We need to forget the idea that God got some great deal in us. HE had to forsake His beloved Son, subjecting Him to the most unimaginable suffering, so we could partake of that Son's relationship with the Father and become joint receivers of His glorious inheritance for all eternity (Romans 8:17). If you will excuse my phrasing, it seems like God definitely got the "short end of the stick" out of all this, yet, knowing that would be the case, HE started it!