By Tim Peace

Angie and I got hitched fifteen years ago, on July 7, 2006.

Today (at the time of writing this) is our anniversary.

It’s got me pondering commitment a bit. In fact, we’ve been married for fifteen years, but we became an “item” in March of 2001, so, if my Bible college math is correct, twenty years.

It feels like yesterday, but my lack of hair says it’s been longer.

Anyway, our modern concept of love is so flimsy that we allow ourselves to fall in and out of it, that we use it of both people and pizza, and that we weigh it on a scale of emotional highs and lows.

Viewed this way, it’s easy for love to wane. This, sadly, can lead to an endless search for something that we are often at fault for losing ourselves.

As defined by God, true love isn’t as insignificant as the set of car keys we misplace, causing us to turn everything in our lives upside down to go find it. It’s not that capable of being lost.

And, yet, we treat it like a flavor of the month, and the moment life gets hard, we go looking for a new fix.

As I’ve been thinking about commitment, I also think about the issue of the Galatian Christians to whom Paul writes, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified!” (Ga 3:1)

It’s easy to look at scripture and wag a finger at a first-century church community that is electing to trade their commitment to Jesus alone for another expression of faith or religion. But I think it’s a problem for all people who make commitments.

And our commitment to Jesus alone is no different.

Maybe you’re a fighter, so you trade Jesus alone for the newest fight.

Perhaps you like experiential highs, so you trade Jesus alone for a more enthralling experience.

Maybe you like security, so you trade the Jesus of scripture for the Jesus of the prosperity gospel.

I could go on, but I’ll just get to the point: when we make life about the pursuit of flimsy love rather than the actual, sustaining love of God, flimsy love wanes, and when it does, it can be easy or tempting to sell out, trade-in, or move on to “a new better you.”

Flimsy love ain’t true love.

True love is rooted in God’s commitment to us and our commitment back to him.

Godly love, expressed in human relationships, such as marriage, carries the same not-so-flimsy commitment.

Whatever new thing you think is better than Christ-alone, just know it’ll fail you, and you’ll fail it.

So don’t trade Jesus for something else because you’re really just getting something much, much less.