“I love you to the moon and back!” This is what our girls say to Ana and I when we tuck them into bed at night. It’s our way of saying, “I love you a lot.” It’s not accompanied by doubt in need of a promise. Our girls do not respond, “Do you promise that you love me?” To promise that you love someone does not expand the sentiment, it restricts it. Those words fall flat. To think that my girls would require one of me means that I have not given my love freely and unconditionally.
“Will you love __________ with all your heart? To have and to hold, through sickness and health, till death do you part?”
Sound familiar? These vows would be familiar to anyone who has been to a traditional Christian wedding. There is nothing wrong with making a commitment to love your spouse. It is even ok to make oaths, and pledges. They are used to convey devotion and honor. But they can go wrong when you think that in order for someone to believe you, you have to up the ante.
Love does not overpromise it over delivers. Love gives more than what is required and does the unexcepted. Love gives the shirt off your back and walks the extra mile.
Love rejoices with the truth. The weight of a person’s love is not found in the weight of their words. It is not by what they choose to swear. Even people who are sworn under oath with their right hand placed on a Bible, lie.
“I love you to the moon and back,” needs nothing more when love is both seen and heard. My family doesn’t need me to place my hand on a Bible to prove it, but they do require that I act upon it to believe it.
For someone to question your word may put your integrity in question. If your words need more weight then there may be a disconnect between what you say and what you do.
The weight of a person’s love is evidenced in the direction of their love. When we walk in the direction of the love of Jesus then we choose to love anyone in whose path we cross.
This means that love is not a discriminator of persons. I am to love my brother and my adversary – even the person who chooses not to love me back.
Our perfection is in our direction. To “be perfect, therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48) is in the context of love. Through Christ’s love, we give grace to all just as God gives grace to the just and unjust. That’s God being “extra.”
Love my not require oaths to be genuine and “extra” but it does require that we go further than the minimum effort. Loving those who love me is basic and incomplete and doesn’t require any faith or spiritual transformation. But loving everyone who God loves. That’s perfection.
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Jovan preaches for the Littleton Church of Christ near Denver, Colorado. Visit here to listen to sermons preached at the Littleton Church.