In other words, the biblical image of flowing love is a river that flows from the heart of God into your heart, and then from your heart into the hearts of others. In this way, everyone who meets you experiences that deep, clean-flowing, pure, beautiful love that brings life and joy into relationships. God’s plan was for this to have a domino effect which creates a never-ending flow of love among humanity.

Yet, think with me for just a moment about what would happen to that river if the banks disappeared. When you think of a river you may not think of its banks, but the banks not only define the river, they also confine it and direct it. Without the banks as boundaries, the water would flow all over. What was deep and pure and clean suddenly becomes ill-defined and often destructive. It eventually begins to stagnate, to be polluted, and before you know it, you do not have a clean, fresh-flowing river, but a swamp. If you enjoy unpleasant things like snakes and mosquitoes, there you are. What God wants is clean and fresh-flowing love bringing life and joy, but what we get without boundaries is something that stinks.

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What is my point? It is that according to the Bible there are no boundaries as to who we love. But there are very definite, God ordained boundaries as to how we love. If we lose those boundaries, love begins to disintegrate and relationships begin to go to pieces.

We have had some high profile situations in which the boundaries ordained by God have been assaulted recently. You can think of instances, I’m sure. At the 2004 Super Bowl we saw a boundary crossed during the half-time show. The up side was that it was encouraging to see that our nation could still get outraged about something. We are usually so passive and permissive. I don’t know about you, but I was delighted that we could still get upset and experience righteous indignation when a boundary was crossed at the end of that show.

But, what struck me was that God’s boundaries were being crossed throughout that half-time show. For instance, why do we allow public disrespect for the flag of our nation? We would be hopping mad if some other country cut holes in it or stomped it into the ground, yet that is what happened. An even more disturbing issue that is all too common in our culture is the way we treat each other as men and women. What are God’s boundaries for the way men and women are to treat each other? There are many references in the Bible, but one is articulated in Romans 12:10: “Outdo one another in showing honor.”

If you saw that Super Bowl half-time show and if you kept up with the storyline being developed, you experienced what Time Magazine called “choreographed sexual assault.” It modeled a relationship between men and women where men brutalized women and women enjoyed it. That is definitely not in God’s plan. But you can see this same thing daily if somebody in your house watches MTV or a variety of other shows. It is the primary storyline for an alarming number of popular music videos and for events like the wrestling shows that are packing stadiums around the country today. We have to acknowledge that in our nation and by our passiveness, we allow a boundary set down by God to be crossed on a regular basis.