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Someone said aptly “Love makes the world go round”. Is this just a cliché, a dusty ideal, a mommy’s bedtime story? Or is it true? If it is true, it must be true in the end, or so basic, we hardly see it. Politicians and thinkers like Plato have thought out complete systems to govern us. There are also anarchists that reason we should do away with all laws. There has been the feudal system, and Confucianism, or communism, capitalism, socialism. Some Christians argue that capitalism is Christian. But why then did early Christians have everything in common, and that without imposition or force! I think that all these systems would go a long way, if and only if we had true Love, with a capital L. Not sexual love, not even the love of friendship. That also, but in the first place love for God and one’s fellows.

But who will give us true Love? Islam cannot give it. Even Judaism cannot. Yes, as a Christian I must conclude that not even Christendom can give us true love. Christians, myself included, have failed miserably. But yet I keep believing that Christ can and will give us true Love. And he does. The love of a mother for her child, for instance. If we search for it, we will find it. And I keep searching for it. The apostle Paul stated that he did not fight as if beating the air, but he controlled his body and senses. He cherished his body with love for it and led it around in wisdom.

I am not going to advertize any political system here, but the millennial kingdom when Christ, Who is the personification of Love, will restore paradise both in the very natural world and in our hearts and minds. But in the meantime, as citizens, we are stuck with one system or another. Some people try to overthrow them, they become revolutionaries. And still others choose some form of martyrdom. The apostle Paul calls on us in the Bible to obey the government that is above us. And he probably wrote this when the notorious emperor Nero had sway in a sometimes crazy and capricious way. He even admonishes us to honor the king. He also states that the governments that be have been set up by God. Corry ten Boom, a well-known Christian survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, chose Christ as the upper king. She obeyed the Nazi rules, but her faith led her to protect some Jews in her house. She refused to become a killer for Christ and therefore did not choose the path of militant resistance.

Without true Love all political systems will crumble sooner of later. And they have. There have been the Babylonians, the Medes and Persians, the empire of Alexander the Great and his generals, the heyday of the Roman emperor Augustus. And they all ran out of fuel so to speak. But you and me, in our own circles, be they great or small, must carry the banner of Christ’s Love. Only He can truly inspire us. Again, no system or religion can save us. But the Lord Jesus Christ can set us on our way to the heavenly Jerusalem. Repent, believe and cultivate a personal relationship with Christ! Paul: “Godliness is useful for everything, having a promise for our lives now and in the future.”

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Source by Chris Bouter