Love God, Love Others

Love God, Love Others

Valentine’s day is coming up! The Love ?holiday? - I’m not sure if it’s a holiday or not?

The popular belief about St Valentine is that he was a Catholic priest from Rome in the third century AD.

Emperor Claudius II had banned marriage because he thought married men were bad soldiers. Valentine felt this was unfair, so he broke the rules and arranged marriages in secret.

When Claudius found out, Valentine was thrown in jail and sentenced to death.

There, he fell in love with the jailer's daughter and when he was taken to be killed on 14 February he sent her a love letter signed "from your Valentine".

The Romans had a festival called Lupercalia in the middle of February - officially the start of their springtime.

It's thought that as part of the celebrations, boys drew names of girls from a box. They'd be boyfriend and girlfriend during the festival and sometimes they'd get married.

Later on, the church wanted to turn this festival into a Christian celebration and decided to use it to remember St Valentine too.

Gradually, St Valentine's name started to be used by people to express their feelings to those they loved.

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The Greeks had at least 7 words for different kinds of love:

1. Eros: (arrows?) Love of the body - beauty or physical love

2. Philia: (Philadelphia) Love of the mind - brotherly love, friendship, or confidant

3. Ludus: Playful love - flirtatious or playful love - people having fun together - dancing

4. Pragma: Long-standing love - love that develops over a period of time - staying in love rather than falling in love

5. Agape: Love of the soul - Selfless love - love without expecting anything in return - unconditional - compassionate

6. Philautia: Love of the self - 2 kinds: (unhealthy) narcissistic, and (healthy) if you love yourself then you can love others - also could be better thru synergy

7. Storge: (Stork?) Love parents have for their children - forgiveness, acceptance and sacrifice. You feel secure, comfortable and safe

People come up with all types of love and I’m sure we could come up with other types of love we have observed if we wanted to.

What is love? Noun, verb? Feeling, a thing, an intangible? Well people have argued about what love is for a long time. When people ask, just answer yes and so much more! Good is love!

We see examples in the Bible and we understand love as best we can, but surely love is so much more than the examples and more than we may ever fully know while on Earth! Since God is love, fully understanding love may be as hard as understanding God! Perhaps when we get to heaven we may finally fully understand love.

One thing we do know is that we are to love!

1 John 4:7-21

God’s Love and Others (God is Love) (interlinear Bible says v8 & v9 word is agape)

7 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. 13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.