Gods Love Vs Mans

The love of God – seems those 4 words shouldn’t really be too difficult to understand.

But the truth is more often than not they are, and more so today than in generation that came before us.

Why is that?

Well 1st off God’s love in any of our lives, or in any generation for that matter is difficult to understand because it is foreign to us apart from God; it’s foreign to our own thinking.

And why is that? Well that’s not as hard to understand when we realize there are multiple means for the word love.

In the Greek, which is what the New Testament was mostly recorded in there are 3 separate words that define love.

Eros – For lack of better words, a phisical gratification, the obvious being in sexual things. But the same would be true for cravings of food, drugs etc.

1. Far too often the word I love you or let’s make love really means lets have sex.

2. It’s in that context that so many women lose both their virginity, dignity, and their trust.

3. Its selfish, self-serving. Short lived, and not really love at all.

The second word is Phileo- from which the word Philadelphia is derived, and its speaks of brotherly love, or mutual enjoyment or compatibility, such as you may see in a close friendship aka a bff, or between a male and a female who enjoy each other’s company and doing things together.

1. It’s conditional in that neither over turns the apple cart and makes it no longer pleasant.

2. Both Eros & Phileo love are attainable pretty much by anyone.

But the 3rd use of the word Love – Is one that we cannot even approach or understand, apart from knowing God personally, knowing Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

AGAPE LOVE - Unconditional, unselfish, undeserved, and quite honestly miss understood more often than not.

It is in fact GODS LOVE - It’s the love spoken of in John 3:16

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have ever lasting life.

Unconditional, unselfish, undeserved, and quite honestly miss understood more often than not.

So perhaps you say why is it undeserved – That one isn’t hard to answer Romans 3:23 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Some have answered - Well I’m a good person - Rom 3:10 As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one;

Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron - Have you ever taking anything that wasn’t yours, told a lie, had an impure thought. Stealing, lying, adulterer.

But that’s where Gods Love is so different than ours -

Romans 5:7-8 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

• God didn’t wait for us to clean up, he died for us at our very worst.

What other person would walk past those who seemed to have it all together and look for the one who was broken, in bondage, abused, trampled down, and seemingly hopeless. Only God.

Who among us when we were looking for a spouse sought out the most rejected, despised, defiled partner? None of us.

And yet we read this in Luke 19- 19 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”