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.
Isn’t it amazing that Salvation comes from God’s love for us?
John 3:16
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 eternal life.
I wonder if it’s possible to be saved without having love? In my mind, surely you have to love God back for His gracious gift and appreciate His sacrifice for sin to be saved. It’s almost as if rejection of His salvation is rejection of His love?
We are to love both God first and also those around us.
Mark 12:30,31 (Love God, Love others)
30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
So what can we do to earn God’s love? Well, we can't earn God's love. He loved us before we were saved when we were sinners. Even now if you tell a lie or do something bad and no matter what you do, God still loves you! Weird huh? Sure, there will be consequences, if you do bad things, but you will never be out of His love.
Romans 5:6-8 (God loved while we were sinners)
6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
We are incomplete people without love. We need to be loved and we need to share love. What would you be without love?
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (Love chapter)
Love Is Indispensable
1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Since love is a spiritual gift maybe that’s why our physical bodies can’t really understand love fully?
God’s love is powerful and it keeps us. Security of the believer appears to be a form of love from God!
Romans 8:38-39 (Nothing can separate us from the Love of God)
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.
John 13:34,35 Love one another
A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so also you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”
On the flip side, for those who are lost, what love they have and know will vanish as it’s very doubtful there’s any true love where they are going.
If you love those around you, show that love by sharing the good news of salvation (Gospel) and share how God so loved the world (John 3:16).
