Man’s love towards
When it comes to love, we must always learn it from God. This is because not only is He love or being the source of love (1 John 4:7), but He also loves and demands that man should love Him (Matthew 22:37) and their fellow men (Mark 12:31).
For a man to be able to love fellow man, he must look at how God exercises His love. How does He do His loving? The answer is simple – He looks at Himself and loves man because of who and what He is. His love directed towards the person is based on Himself, not the object or the one He is loving.
In other words, whatever energy that influences God to love is from within himself, not outside of Himself as if He is influenced by something about the person He is loving, no! His love for man is not based on something specific about man with some attractions. No integrity, fame, influence, wealth of men attract God.
Man’s love towards God
In contrast, man’s love for God must not be based on who and what man is, rather, it must be based on who and what God is since man has no integrity or strength of his own to love God in the same way God loves him.
We must love God because of what He does for us. So there is something about God that attracts us, but there is nothing about us that attracts God. For Example, God’s love for man attracted us. In 1 John 4:19, we read that “we love Him because He first love us”.
Knowing or having the knowledge that God loves you becomes an influence or great great motivation. If you are certain that someone loves you, it some how causes (influences) you to love the person too. So we love God because of what He has done for us – He loved us first.
So we are influenced by those things that we know God has done for us. They make us love Him. We have no energy within ourselves to love God apart from something about God causing us to love him.
Man’s love towards man
Then comes the love of man towards his fellow human being. Again, since man has no energy within himself to love another imperfect being, he must learn from how God does His loving. And how God does His loving is that, He loves base on the strength from His own self or within Himself.
This means that before we can love other human beings without depending on something about themselves to influence or attract us first, we must learn from God. And to learn from God and how He does His loving, we must first get connected to Him.
This way of God able to love people without being influenced by what they have or doing can only be part of us by His grace plan; He is the one to impart to us. The process starts as one believes in Jesus Christ, then the word of God comes in to start imparting the saved person with the same energy of God through the Word.
All human beings (except Christ) loves their fellow human being (wife, husband, mother, father, boss, Friend,etc) because of who and what they are. There is something about people that we love which cause or influences us to love them, be it beauty, fame, kindness, respect, wealth, good character, etc. This is not a strength at all or something to be proud of, it is a human weakness.
In conclusion, the love of God and the love of man are not the same; the former does not look up to man for His strength in loving, but the latter depends on God either for what He (God) has done or Knows can do. Love is not a gift, it is an attitude that requires constant dependence on the source ( God).
Cyprian Antwi Awuah 