1. Little room to grow. Mistakes are ultimate. Potential should be reached immediately.
2. Performance based acceptance. Do good and you are. Do bad and you are.
3. Left to ourselves to scrounge about with hit and miss regarding what is wise and what is foolish in the world.
4. Invitation to distance and superficiality instead of real intimacy
5. Unjustly punished or never rightly or lovingly corrected
We've experienced love in this way. This means we've been mentored to love in these ways. Our attempts at neighbor love are therefore saturated with these assumptions.
But in the mystery of the Trinity (one God, three persons), the Son experienced a very different kind love categories.
1. Though Jesus was the Messiah, He was given room to grow. He was allowed to be 2 before He was expected to be 12, 12 before He held the expectations of being 30. The Father did not rush the carpenter son. Timing mattered. (Luke 2:52)
2. The Father accepted the Son, spoke to the Son of His love and how pleasing the Son is to Him. Identity is based on intrinsic value and covenant. (Luke 3:21-22)
3. The Father taught the Son to discern the Father's voice. The Son was wisely prepared to recognize tempting voices when they came and to act accordingly. (Luke 4:1-13)
4. The Father heard the Son's heart. The Son poured out his Heart to the Father. (Luke 11:1ff; Hebrews 5:7)
5. The Father forsook the Son. (This is unique to Jesus. He bore what a rebellious child must bear when love finally says, "enough, you can have what you want even if it distances us and harms you). Jesus took what we warranted. His substitution (for those who deserve distance and punishment) and sympathy (for those undeservedly treated).
Perhaps Jesus loves his neighbors so well, because He himself in the fullness of his humanity was so loved.
His ways are not our ways.
Thanks be to God!
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