The Problem with Love
Just in case you haven’t looked at a calendar, Valentine’s Day is fast approaching. (Husbands, get yourselves to the local flower and candy shops!) Typically if you desire to express love, this would be the obligatory time of the year to do so. Hopefully your heart is in it, but even if not, it is still recommended that you make some kind of attempt at romantic gestures. Flowers, cards, or chocolates of some kind are the typical way we tend to express this love. If one is on the receiving end of such gifts, one would conclude there is some kind of love in the sender’s heart for us. Just like our outward actions can express an inward love, our lack of outward actions might also express a lack of inward love.
This was one of the problems the Apostle Paul faced when he wrote: “You are not restrained by us, but you are restrained by your own affections” (2 Corinthians 6:12). In the book of 2 Corinthians, Paul had to deal with relational problems he had with the church at Corinth. They questioned the legitimacy of his ministry and began to treat Paul and his mission with distrust and suspicion. Paul explains that the problem was not with him but with them. The root problem was not their behavior but their heart. Paul uses a strange expression and says their affections (i.e. their hearts) had been “restrained.” Another way to say it was that their heart had narrowed, and thus their love for Paul and for the mission had grown cold.
What we love has a profound effect on all other areas of our lives. We have a love problem in the church today. We love the wrong things. Christians love the world. We love ourselves. We love fame and social media glory. We love riches and all the latest things we can buy. We love feeling good. We love feeling fulfilled and happy. We love this world.
Worldly love restrains us from love of God and love of others. We end up on mission to fulfill our own desires rather than on God’s mission of loving people to Jesus. What’s the solution? The solution is to open our hearts back to the Lord, remember our first love, and return to doing the things we did at first (Revelation 2:4).