Part 5: Counterfeit Love — The World’s Way

Because “God is love”, love is as deep and as mysterious as God Himself. We can plumb the depths of love but will never touch bottom. I think that is why Paul prays for the Ephesians

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have the power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3: 17-19 NIV).

I have looked deeper into love than ever before and the main truth I have learned is that love surpasses knowledge and knowledge will never comprehend the full scope of love. If I am to go deeper, it must be through the Spirit — “We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us . . . We have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2: 12, 16 NIV). I have learned one other thing – the deeper I dig into love, the more I realize that love is the heart, the center, the root of everything God says, does, teaches, and expects – everything in my walk with Christ can be expressed in terms of love. Not only is God love, but also God manifests His love for us – His agape love – in the life and death of Jesus on the cross. Think about this:

“But God shows and clearly proves His own love for us by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, died for us” (Romans 5: 8 AMP).

But dig a bit deeper and see what that death on the cross means for you and me, for Jesus, and for God:

“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5: 21 NKJV).

I also like the Message translation of verses 20 and 21:

“We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ Himself now. Become friends with God; He’s already friends with you. How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on Him who never did anything wrong so we could be put right with God” (2 Corinthians 5: 20, 21 TM).

But God’s love for us, His people, goes even deeper than that. Paul tells us that God calls us His children; we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8: 17). And more:

“And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2: 6 NIV).

Truly, His love for us is deep, wide, high, and long – as mysterious as it is wonderful.

So you see, at the root of our salvation, which includes our life with Him in the Kingdom of God, is God’s great, unfathomable love for us, His children – and we are all His children, although not all will be saved. Not only did Christ die on the cross because of God’s love for us, but in His death, which was agony enough, all of our sins became His sins – they were put on Him even though He knew no sin in His own life. And all of His righteousness became our righteousness. I became like Jesus and He became like me; I am connected to the Father through Jesus and the cross in the same way He was connected to the Father; Jesus was separated from the Father in the same way I was separated. What mercy. What grace. What love!!

And how are we to represent Christ? By loving God, each other, and the world the way Christ loves us. Jesus told us the greatest commandment is to:

“Love (agapao) the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength . . . and the second, like it, is this: You shall love (agapao) your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12: 30, 31 NKJV).

If these are the greatest commandments, then the greatest sins are not to love (agapao) God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and not to love (agapao) your neighbor, or yourself. Everything can be traced back to love. But not ‘love’ as the world sees love, but as God sees love and is love. God’s love is very different from the world’s love.

The world says in popular songs “All we need is love” and “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. That’s the only thing there’s just too little of”. The world says, “Love is love. What’s the big deal? I love you, you love me, and we all love each other. It’s all the same. As long as we aren’t mean or hurt each other your love is as good as my love”. From Christ’s perspective, this is not true. As I said in a previous post, God is love; but not all love is God.

Why did I title this post “Counterfeit Love”? Because almost everyone in the world loves someone, knows about love, has had their heart broken by love, and reads, thinks and dreams about love. Love is fought over, sought after, cried over, killed for, and dreamed about more than any other human emotion. And I believe that much of this love is counterfeit.

“To counterfeit means to imitate something. A counterfeit thing is designed with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated thing” (Wikipedia).

A counterfeit thing has the form of the thing, but is vastly inferior to the original – in this case, God’s love versus the world’s love.

The world’s love is a self-love, and therefore, in God’s eyes, a counterfeit love. It is a needy and a needless love. It is a love that has no need of God—it is man-centered and man-generated. It has no power to spiritually transform, and it usually leads to death when the other is used up. And it is the love most of us read about, see in the movies, and unfortunately live with all of our lives. It is not the love God instructs us to have toward Him, others, and ourselves. We, that is Christians, are not to love like the world, and we are not to love the world like others around us do. Sadly (and this might to weak a word), I believe religion, at least in America, practices too much counterfeit love and not enough agape love, especially in these turbulent times. Christianity has a lot of enemies. Do they know us by our agapao?

I am not now talking about the human agape love I wrote about in the previous post. This is a selfless love, but still one that has the form of God’s love but without the power. Since I wrote that post I thought of another example of human agape love – the love that one soldier in combat has for another in the same squad or company. In America we like to think that soldiers fight and die for the love of their country. In fact, they fight and die for the human agape love they have for the man next to them. That is why a soldier will throw himself on a grenade— killing himself to save the lives of the other soldiers in the foxhole. God might be in this, but He does not have to be. Believers and nonbelievers have the capacity to love this way. That is not the type of love I am calling counterfeit love.

Counterfeit love is the type of love (really a no-love, but I’ll call it love for the sake of simplicity) expressed when a man says to another person (either a woman or another man) “I love you” and really means, “you are the person who fulfills all of my wants, needs, and desires”. This type of love is often what we mean when we use the phrase “love at first sight”. There can be giving in this love, but it is first and foremost a taking. The needs that this type of love fulfills are for acceptance, wholeness, security, power, connection, pleasure, prestige, and more. It is not a giving love, it is a demanding love.

It is a contract-type of love, which is, as I wrote above, a no-love. A contract is the exchange and passing of property or possessions – not just my physical possessions, but my emotional and spiritual possessions as well. The unspoken contract (or in some cases, an actual contract) in this type of love between two people is “If you do this for me (meet my needs, wants, and desires), then I will do this for you (meet your needs, wants, and desires)”. The problem with this ‘if-then’ love is that when one person feels the other has broken the contract, the deal is off. In other words “I don’t love you anymore”. If a man marries a beautiful woman because she fulfills all of his sexual fantasies, but in 5 years she gains 50 pounds, then the deal is off. If a woman marries a man because his law degree guarantees he will be able to provide the security she has always dreamed of, but he becomes unemployed for more than a year, then the deal if off. You broke the contract, so I am free to move on.

There is another facet of this counterfeit love that drives the lovers deeper into bondage and pain. In counterfeit love I usually do not feel free to show you who I really am. I must hide my pain, my hurt, my shame and guilt, and what appear to me to be imperfections and inadequacies. If you see me as I really am you may say, “The deal is off. You are not the person I agreed to marry”. Or, what if my interests change? What if what I want out of life has evolved from the day I got married? “Sorry, that was not the contract”. We live in fear and hiding because, unlike agape love which is not dependent on the others behavior or performance, counterfeit love is very much dependent on who you are and what you do. And this is not just the case with those we ‘love’; it is also how we see the world around us. We live in this giant contract where, without really knowing what we have agreed to, we say to the world “if I live a certain way or be a certain person, then I expect to be treated with _____ (fill in the blank – respect, gratitude, honor, kindness, etc). The counterfeit love of the world is worship of self; agape love is rooted in worship of God. In other words, the world’s no-love is idolatry. And all idolatry is slavery.

Contract love—the counterfeit love—is not a type of love you find in the New Testament. The New Testament love is a covenant love. A covenant is the exchange of persons. A contract says, “this is now yours”; while the covenant says “I am now yours” (Malcolm Smith, ‘The Power of the Blood Covenant’, pg. 252). Agape love is covenant love. It is not dependent on the other’s behavior, attitude, or performance. It is based on the intrinsic value I see in them, not the value I see in them for me. I don’t find my value in them; I find my value in knowing how valuable I am to God, and then releasing that value and acceptance—really His value and acceptance—into their lives unconditionally. And this is how God loves us. God’s covenant with us, sealed with the blood of Jesus is irrevocable, unbreakable, and eternal. Because of this covenant, when we repent and believe and enter into the Kingdom of God we live within the sphere of His activity and our hearts become His dwelling place – and all of this because of His love (agapao) for us.

“And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1John 4: 16 NKJV).

God’s love is very different from the world’s. God’s love is selfless, not selfish; giving, not taking; outward directed, not inward directed; free, not conditional; valuing, not dehumanizing; powerful, not powerless; full and not empty; life and not death. God’s love leads us higher and higher. The world’s love plunges us ultimately into despair and death. God’s love sets us free; the world’s love enslaves us. When Jesus told us to deny ourselves, take up our crosses daily, and follow Him (Luke 9: 23) He was speaking about love. Not the world’s love, but His agapao love, which requires that I give up the right to myself. That is the beginning and end of love. I stop trying to find my value in my efforts, and myself, and I rest in the certainty that my heavenly Father, who is good, values me.

As Christian men and women we are called to love this way. It is the Way and it is not possible to travel on this Way without the indwelling Holy Spirit, because when I love like this, although imperfectly, it is not me that loves, it is God loving through me. The indwelling Holy Spirit is a Kingdom gift—if I am not ‘in Christ’—living in the Kingdom of God—I cannot love with God’s agape love. So, no Kingdom life, no indwelling Holy Spirit; no indwelling Holy Spirit, no powerful, transforming love; no powerful love, no restoration of the world, because for the most part God is doing that through us—that is what it means to release the Kingdom of God into the Kingdom of the world. Everything in God’s plan, in God’s word, and in God’s heart comes back to love. Love is the root from which everything in life springs, or to use another metaphor “love is the tip of the spear”.

I can love the people in my life, even my enemies with agape love, because He first loved me. That brings us back to the cross. Where does my value come from? It comes from Him who told me in unmistakable actions—“I love you. You are valuable and worthy to Me”. As I repent and believe — as Jesus commanded me and helps me to live out — I enter into the Father’s love, a love that does not hold back, is not self-serving, and a love that does not count my behavior against me but requires that I live repentantly. God’s love tells me that I am His adopted son. That is the new covenant. It is not an if-then; it is a ‘because-therefore’. I cannot earn His love. All I need to do is receive it!

Finally, there is good news for those of us who find ourselves practicing this counterfeit love. We can repent and invite Jesus to enter into this no-love. When He does, counterfeit, contract love can morph into agape love, because His love has power to transform lives and relationships. None of us is stuck. When we cry out “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me” He usually shows up. Then our no-love—our life in bondage—can be transformed into ‘yes in Christ’—our life of freedom.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 3: 1 NIV).

I believe Paul is writing about love in our life—bondage in the world’s counterfeit love versus freedom in God’s agape love – received and given. We have a choice. Love is the ultimate indicator of the Kingdom life. How we love tells the world who we are. How we love determines who we will become. Like Moses said, it is a matter of life and death. God’s love flowing from us releases the Kingdom of God; counterfeit love releases the kingdom of self.

I will wrap up this post with a quote for an excellent book by D.A. Carson titled ‘The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God”.

“In brief, God loves the world, and Christians had better not . . . God’s love for the world is commendable because it manifests itself in awesome self-sacrifice; our love for the world is repulsive when it lusts for evil participation. God’s love for the world is praiseworthy because it brings the transforming Gospel to it; our love for the world is ugly because we seek to be conformed to the world. God’s love for the world issues in certain individuals being called out from the world and into the fellowship of Christ’s followers; our love for the world is sickening where we wish to be absorbed into the world . . . But clearly we are to love the world in the sense that we are to go into every part of it and bring the glorious Gospel to every creature. In this sense we imitate, in our small ways, the praiseworthy love of God for the world” (pgs. 79, 80).

In my first post on love I wrote that there are two types of love mentioned in the New Testament—agape love and philos love. In the final post in this series I turn to philos love. It might not be what you think it is.

Grace and peace,

John