June 11th, 2024
Love has been redefined time and time again, in various languages and cultures. Today, love would usually be described as a feeling, an emotion that grows and wanes. We “love” our families and our favorite restaurant. It’s a word with many applications. However, Biblical love carries a much different connotation. The Bible tells us that “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and He never changes, so every aspect of His character always agrees with that truth.
God has always been as loving and merciful as He is holy and just. The sacrifice of Jesus was not an appeasement for an angry God. It was a propitiation for sin to bring us back to the original relationship we were created for. Jesus came to the earth because of God’s love not to allow God to love us again. 1 John 3:16, likely the most memorized verse in Scripture says God so loved the world that He gave Jesus.
Love always produces fruit.
God so loved that He gave. We can’t truly love without there being an outward demonstration of that love. The greatest commandment is to “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and the second is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-38).
You can’t love God without it producing an action. Loving God isn’t a feeling, and we can only love Him because we’ve received His love.
Any love we give is a fruit of the love we’ve received. 1 John 4:7-9 says,
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”
Love isn’t saying just a feeling or a statement. John addressed this in 1 John 3:16-17 saying,
“ By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
How do we love? It’s not in what we say, but what we do.
However, love isn’t only what we give and receive, or it would just be transactional.
I recently asked a small group of children how they know their parents love them (I know all their parents). The first child raised her hand and said, “They tell me all the time. They don’t let me forget.” Another child raised her hand and said, “They take care of me.” One girl raised her hand and told me she knows her parents love her because they take her to Chick Fil A. The answers were varied, but they all mentioned things like having a home, food, clothes, and vacations.
I then asked how they would feel if their parents provided all those things and left them with a list of rules, telling them everything they would need to know to grow up well. They would have all the instructions they’d ever need. They would know how to get to and from school; their food would be delivered; someone would pick them up and take them where they needed to go. They would have everything they needed to grow up, but their parents wouldn’t be there. I asked if they would still know they were loved. The answer was, of course not.
However, that’s the way many people, even Christians, view God. Religion always paints a picture of a distant Father. The Bible becomes a list of rules and we become like children raising ourselves, believing we can do it with all the things God gave us.
That’s not love and that’s not what God is like. The picture of a distant God should be as foolish to us as the idea of a parent leaving their children to raise themselves with a list of rules.
God’s love isn’t just active and generous. It’s intimate. We must know that love to walk in the fullness of it. 1 John 4:16 says,
“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
If we know God’s love, we will abide in Him. It was for that intimacy that Jesus prayed in John 17:22-23. He said,
“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
It is only in oneness with the Father and true knowledge of His love that our love will be fruitful. We can’t love people until we know His love, but when we know His love, we can’t help but love people. Peter learned this when Jesus came to reaffirm him after His resurrection. Peter had denied Jesus three times and had gone back to fishing when Jesus came and asked him three times, “Do you love me?”
Peter responded “Yes, I love you,” and Jesus repeated a command each time:
“Feed my sheep.”
When we love Jesus, we’ll love His people. The outworking of love for God is love for His sheep. 1 John 4:19-20 says,
“ We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
We love because He first loved us. Any love we have for people must come from His love. When we love Him, we will naturally love His people! Real love is active and fruitful. It’s not an emotion and the love of God, the only true love, never changes. Do you know that love? You don’t have a distant Father who’s left you a list of rules so you can figure life out. He is the One who promised to never leave you or forsake you. He’s the best Shepherd and His voice is the one you were created to follow!
God has always been as loving and merciful as He is holy and just. The sacrifice of Jesus was not an appeasement for an angry God. It was a propitiation for sin to bring us back to the original relationship we were created for. Jesus came to the earth because of God’s love not to allow God to love us again. 1 John 3:16, likely the most memorized verse in Scripture says God so loved the world that He gave Jesus.
Love always produces fruit.
God so loved that He gave. We can’t truly love without there being an outward demonstration of that love. The greatest commandment is to “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and the second is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-38).
You can’t love God without it producing an action. Loving God isn’t a feeling, and we can only love Him because we’ve received His love.
Any love we give is a fruit of the love we’ve received. 1 John 4:7-9 says,
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”
Love isn’t saying just a feeling or a statement. John addressed this in 1 John 3:16-17 saying,
“ By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
How do we love? It’s not in what we say, but what we do.
However, love isn’t only what we give and receive, or it would just be transactional.
I recently asked a small group of children how they know their parents love them (I know all their parents). The first child raised her hand and said, “They tell me all the time. They don’t let me forget.” Another child raised her hand and said, “They take care of me.” One girl raised her hand and told me she knows her parents love her because they take her to Chick Fil A. The answers were varied, but they all mentioned things like having a home, food, clothes, and vacations.
I then asked how they would feel if their parents provided all those things and left them with a list of rules, telling them everything they would need to know to grow up well. They would have all the instructions they’d ever need. They would know how to get to and from school; their food would be delivered; someone would pick them up and take them where they needed to go. They would have everything they needed to grow up, but their parents wouldn’t be there. I asked if they would still know they were loved. The answer was, of course not.
However, that’s the way many people, even Christians, view God. Religion always paints a picture of a distant Father. The Bible becomes a list of rules and we become like children raising ourselves, believing we can do it with all the things God gave us.
That’s not love and that’s not what God is like. The picture of a distant God should be as foolish to us as the idea of a parent leaving their children to raise themselves with a list of rules.
God’s love isn’t just active and generous. It’s intimate. We must know that love to walk in the fullness of it. 1 John 4:16 says,
“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
If we know God’s love, we will abide in Him. It was for that intimacy that Jesus prayed in John 17:22-23. He said,
“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
It is only in oneness with the Father and true knowledge of His love that our love will be fruitful. We can’t love people until we know His love, but when we know His love, we can’t help but love people. Peter learned this when Jesus came to reaffirm him after His resurrection. Peter had denied Jesus three times and had gone back to fishing when Jesus came and asked him three times, “Do you love me?”
Peter responded “Yes, I love you,” and Jesus repeated a command each time:
“Feed my sheep.”
When we love Jesus, we’ll love His people. The outworking of love for God is love for His sheep. 1 John 4:19-20 says,
“ We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
We love because He first loved us. Any love we have for people must come from His love. When we love Him, we will naturally love His people! Real love is active and fruitful. It’s not an emotion and the love of God, the only true love, never changes. Do you know that love? You don’t have a distant Father who’s left you a list of rules so you can figure life out. He is the One who promised to never leave you or forsake you. He’s the best Shepherd and His voice is the one you were created to follow!
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