Let's Talk About Love, # 1

LET’S TALK ABOUT LOVE, PART 1

Warsaw Christian Church, Richard M. Bowman, Pastor

Text:1 John 4:8-12

¶ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No-one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

There is almost universal agreement on the importance of love. Everyone seems to agree, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.” If love would only prevail in the world, an earthly paradise would result. Since there is such universal agreement concerning the importance of love, one wonders why we don’t see more of it. We sing about it; we write books about it; we all want to see more of it, so what is the problem?

One possible explanation is that many do not understand what love is or its source. There are many ideas about the nature of love. As Christians, we want to know how God defines love. What does the Bible say about love? So today, we begin a quest that will take several weeks to complete. Our goal is to look closely and carefully at love as God defines it.

Part of our problem is seen in the fact that the English language has but one word used for different kinds of love. We love God; we love our family; we love our friends; we love our dog; we love ice cream, etc. Clearly, the word “love” has different meanings in these expressions. I hope we mean something deeper when we say, “I love Jesus” than when we say, “I love ice cream.” I am sure you have heard before that the Greek language of the New Testament uses several different words for “love.”

When the Greeks spoke of love in the sense of feelings for friends, they normally used the word “phileo.” Our words “Philadelphia” and philanthropist” are based on this Greek word. When the Greeks spoke of the strong physical attraction between a man and a woman, they used the word “eros.” Our word “erotic” derives from the Greek term. When the New Testament writers spoke of the love of God, they used the word “agape.” As Christians, this is the love we are to manifest toward others. In all there are 8 words in the Greek language translated as “love.”

Our focus in this series will be on that highest form of love, agape. It is the love characteristic of God and is to be characteristic of Christian people. We are all familiar with the statement in 1 John 4:16, “God is love.” The term used is “agape.” We learn in this brief statement that love is central to the divine nature. God has other attributes besides love, but love is His chief attribute. God is a being whose love embraces the entire human race. That is expressed in the oft-quoted words in John 3:16, “God so loved the world . . .” But what does “agape/love” mean? For now, I will suggest that this divine love can be understood as “goodwill.” We can count on the fact that God’s goodwill covers us no matter who we are or what we have done. When Jesus was born, we read that He came to bring peace on earth and goodwill toward men (Luke 2:14).

Some jump too quickly to the conclusion; therefore, hell cannot be real. There can be no such thing as the wrath of God. Such thoughts are seen as conflicting with God’s universal goodwill. If we allow the Scriptures to guide our thinking, we learn that divine wrath is also an attribute of God. But how can God’s love and goodwill be compatible with divine wrath? Let’s look at a human example. A human judge may be a man of goodwill, yet he will sentence a criminal to death because the law requires it. He has no personal animosity toward the criminal. He would prefer to act with kindness, yet he will pronounce the sentence of death.

Isaiah spoke of God’s wrath as his “strange work.” He wrote these words about God’s wrath being poured out upon His own people, Israel. “The LORD will rise up as he did at Mount Perazim, he will rouse himself as in the Valley of Gibeon—to do his work, his strange work, and perform his task, his alien task” (Isa 28:21). The idea seems to be that judgment does not bring pleasure to God. It is necessary, yet it is “strange” to Him. God delights in showing mercy, grace, and kindness, while His anger and wrath are described as His “strange work.”