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.”
WE SEE IT AGAIN IN JOHN - 8 1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
That’s love, Unconditional, unselfish, undeserved, and quite honestly misunderstood more often than not.
John 4 again re-enforces what Gods love is with the woman at the Well. Jesus reveals that he knows that she has had 5 husbands, and the man she is not with she isn’t even married too.
But because she is willing to change and turn the controls of her life over to Him, he is more than willing to forgive her.
THAT KEY WORD - UNCONDITIONAL – Perhaps it would help with a practical picture of what that means. Something we could relate to in our own life, and hopefully in how we treat others.
I COR. 13:4-8
• Love is patient, - God is not willing that any should perish
• love is kind. -
• It does not envy,
• it does not boast,
• it is not proud. Humility in Christ throughout His life
• 5 It does not dishonor others, - Don’t build his greatness by showing our failures
• it is not self-seeking, - So loved HE GAVE
• it is not easily angered, - Thankful here, very thankful.
• it keeps no record of wrongs. – As far as the east is from the west
• 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. – True in our lives
• 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
• 8 Love never fails – We fail often but Gods love never fails.
I would dare say most every one of us has had what we called love, fail.
• Relationships that ended, ended badly, abuses in those relationships, friendships that came unglued. People we trusted who let us down. Dads or moms who walked away on us, either physically, or emotionally.
Why? Because those relationships were based on either Eros, or Phileo love, not Agape, not Gods love. His love never fails.
With God it doesn’t matter what you have done, how far you have fallen, how often you have fallen. If you get up and try again, if you call on Him to help you, he will be there.
It doesn’t even matter if you have run away from Him in the past - Psalm 139: 7-10
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
I ran from God for years, so did many of you.
Some ran from God after they ran to Him. Peter dropped the ball, but it didn’t deter Jesus.
Believe me there are probably more reasons today for people to not understand what it is to feel loved than ever before. Or to experience something that is labeled love but isn’t love at all.
Matthew 24:12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold,
II Timothy 3 3 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
Do you remember the definition of Agape love in I Cor 13?
Most of what we just read flies in direct opposition to what God says is His love.
1. Some of you have been victims of this, some may have even been perpetrators of it.
2. And it doesn’t feel good, and it leaves you feeling empty, uncertain, loaded down with guilt.
3. Often it leaves you feeling like God hates you, nothing could be further from the truth.
And that’s exactly why God sent Jesus, He loves us to much to leave us there.
Perhaps Paul said it best in his prayer for those who followed Christ in the city of Ephesus
Ephesian 3: 14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Paul said I’m praying for you before God, that out of all that He has He will strengthen you in your inner man or in your spirit.
( Prov. 17:22 says a crushed or broken spirit dries up the bones.) Takes the life out of you.)
He says why he prays that way - so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
Paul knows that a person who is crushed, trampled down, discouraged and feeling unloved isn’t likely to be feeling Gods love, but that if they can only trust, have faith in who the Lord is, that they can not only endure what they are going through but can literally prosper.
But a key part of Paul’s prayer came in the next verse - And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Rooted and established in love - Not Eros, not phileo, but Agape love, Gods love
Unconditional, unselfish, undeserved, but given to us none the less..
You can’t be rooted in that love – if you don’t truthfully understand Gods love for you.
In the 60’s a singer song writer named Gary Paxton worked or had his hand in hit singles Alley Oop or Monster Mash, also producing country or rock bands like Paul Revere and The Raiders.
He went through girlfriends and friends like a gambler goes through money.
After his struggle with alcohol and the suicide of a friend, Gary S. Paxton, when he had looked in every other place for love gave his life to Christ after walking into a church stoned.
Time after time went searching for peace in some void
I was trying to blame All my troubles on this old world
Surface relationships Used me til I was done in And all the while someone was waiting
To free me from sin
He was there all the time He was there all the time Waiting patiently in line He was there all the time
Paul says his prayer is for us to know - How wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
I will conclude with these vs. from Romans 8
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
• The devil will lie and tell you God doesn’t love you
• You may not love yourself and that will hinder but it cant stop Gods love
• Others may have failed you but He never will
• But you have to accept that
