Skip to main content

Rejecting the idea of Reciprocation

1 John 4:19 

“We love because He first loved us” 

I used to be the type of person that only gave people what I received. If someone showed me a lot of love and affection, I would give the same back. Equally, if someone didn’t show me a lot of love and affection, I would give the same back. Do you see how that can become problematic? I placed conditions on the amount of love I showed to people.  

We live in a world where this behaviour seems normal, in some regards logical, but that’s exactly what it is: worldly. Worldly love isn’t associated with Godly love. Worldly love is selfish whereas Godly love is selfless: not prideful or self-associated but fixated on what you can give rather than receive. We are told in scriptures that love is patient, kind, hopeful and never-ending (1 Corinthians 13:4-8) but when we adopt the idea of reciprocation, it’s impossible to fulfil these traits.  

Imagine if God decided to treat us the way we treated people. What if God said, "this person stopped talking to me so I’m never going to give my time to them”, or “this person was rude to me so I'm going to be rude to them”. Even if we break it down to our salvation, if God said, “this person sinned so I’m not going to forgive them”, none of us would be saved. There will be times where we don’t like people, and there will be times where people hurt us, but our love should never wither through that.  

If we look more closely at the verse, “love” first starts from a source, that being God. He is the very essence of love, and the root of all things relating to love. So, if we are to love people, we must follow the example that has already been presented to us. Reciprocation is a worldly view of love, and to reject this idea there are three practical ways: 

  1. 1. Know His Love 

 

How can we follow something without knowing the instructions that have been given to us? By identifying God’s love, we reject the worldly love that has been accustomed in our minds. David describes God’s love as “steadfast” (Psalms 136:1) and in other words this means “fixed” or “unwavering”. God’s love is never changing and so should our love for people. 

 

  1. 2. Receive His Love  

 

Receiving God’s love for you is by accepting Jesus Christ into your life. John 15:13 says “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friend's”. Jesus laid down His life for you, and it is our choice to receive His love for us and accept Him as our Lord and Savior. 

 

  1. 3. Implement His Love 

 

I’m not asking you to die for the next person you see on the street, but our love should be self-sacrificial.  The clearest way to know if we are doing that is to ask ourselves “Am I treating this person the same way God would?”, if we have to think about the answer and negotiate with ourselves, chances are that we aren’t. 

 

The idea of Reciprocation is really hypocrisy wrapped around and decorated with emotions, because we can’t claim to be disciples of Jesus if we don’t demonstrate His same love.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Identity built through Christ

John 1:12    “ Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed his name, he gave the right to become children of God”   Identity is always something I have struggled with. I believed that if I did not act a certain way with certain people I would not be accepted. I built my identity on the perception of others: letting other people's opinion of me dictate my value as a person. One thing I didn’t realise was that my value had already been written , something established long before I was even born. My value: your value, is built through Jesus. And so, we can’t let the opinion of others affect us, whether positive or negative because our identity is not built on the perception of others but of God. We are all seen di fferently by different people , maybe your someone’s brother or sister, a mum or a dad, or something else. The most common association t o our identity is our names. It’s what our friends , teachers and family refer to us by: an associat...
Post a Comment
Read more

Being intentional with Joy

James 1: 2   “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds”   Have you ever not been in a good mood? Have you ever felt like things are just not going your way? If you answered yes to any of those questions, it shows that you are human. Problems occur and things happen that can make us upset, and that is an unfortunate reality we have to face in this world .   For me, one of my resolutions this year is to be more joyful. If I had to make a book about the year of 2024, the title of it would be “ A sequence of difficulties” . In my life, it seemed I was experiencing problem after problem and issue after issue. I couldn’t escape them. The bitter truth is that problems and issues are inevitable, but our attitude towards them isn’t .   At th at time, I was angry at God for allowing all those things to happen to me, but in retrospect I can be grateful to see the work God was doing inside of me, the resilience he was building, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dealing with Fear

2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind”  Fear is a universal emotion we all feel.  It comes in different formats, affects different people differently and is an unavoidable aspect of life.  For me, as I’ve progressed in my relationship with God, fear has been the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with.  Whether it was certain dreams, visions or the enemy trying to play with my mind: they were all spiritual attacks.  You may not deal with spiritual attacks, and maybe your fear is embedded of people’s perception of you.  Maybe you have fear of rejection, or fear of failure, nevertheless we should all identify our fear, but let us not make it our identity.  Don’t hold your fear hostage, set it free by allowing Jesus to use his keys of comfort.  Looking at the verse, once we have given our lives to Jesus and have accepted him as our lord and saviour, w...
Post a Comment
Read more