Friday, November 28, 2014

Hesed Love

Hesed love is a determination to do someone good, no matter what, to be faithful to a covenant regardless of its impact on you.  It wills to love when every fiber in your body screams run.  This determination to love is at the heart of Jesus's relationship with his Father, and at the heart of ours as well.  Not surprisingly, Jesus says: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mark 8:34). 
Paul the apostle says that this death of self united him with Jesus's death: "For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.  So death is at work in us, but life in you" (2 Cor. 4:11-12).  That is the essence of Calvary love.
--Paul Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships, chapter 3