“Nothing you can make that can’t be made
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It’s easy.
All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love.
Love is all you need.”
“All You Need is Love” – written by Lennon/McCartney
Love is all you need. If everyone would just love one another, we would live in a much better world. Man’s love for one another is the answer to our problems. Really? Would humanity be able to pull itself out of the sinful rut it’s stuck in if we all just loved one another more? Well, Jesus seemed to cover love quite a bit in his teaching. After all, it was out of His love for us that Jesus died on the cross. But I’m absolutely sure it wasn’t because of the same kind of love that the Beatles sang about.
Love has solved the world’s problem of sin. God’s love, that is. Check out what Ephesians 2:4-5 says:
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.”
According to the Bible, God’s love is indeed what we need. It is because of His love that we have hope for eternal life through Jesus Christ. Man on his own can’t provide the love that he needs for fulfillment, much less obtain the hope of eternal life by his own works. God has created a spiritual longing in every persons’ heart, and he is the only one who can truly satisfy it.
There are two things that need to be pointed out in reference to this discussion. The first point was already covered in the above paragraphs: the only love that can provide ultimate satisfaction to the spiritual longing in every human beings’ heart is God’s love. The second point concerns our responsibility to search out and understand the meaning conveyed by the song. It’s not mature in any respect for Christians to simply ignore the messages they hear. They need to seek out the messages conveyed in songs, movies, art, etc., understand what those messages are saying, and decide whether they line up with what God says is true. 2 Corinthians 10:5 provides direction:
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
We’ve got to realize that no message is neutral. Every message that is presented has an agenda, and it is every Christians’ responsibility to identify, understand, and compare these agendas to the standards Christ has established. There are no excuses for inactivity. It is our duty to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ”, and to do so without being captured ourselves.
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
