The Bible states, “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). Love is one of the foundational principles of the Christian life. In fact, we can say that love is the foundation of Christianity. Without love, nothing else matters. We can give all that we have and in the end it means nothing if our labor does not come directly from the love of God.
Look at Matthew 22:
35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying,
36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"
37 Jesus said to him, " 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
38 "This is the first and great commandment.
39 "And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
40 "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
If we take Jesus’ instruction to heart, living the Christian life is reduced down to two simple commands. Love God, and out of that love flows the love for our neighbor. If Christianity is so simple, why do people often fail to live out their faith? The love of God and human nature are contrary to each other. The Bible teaches that our human flesh is at war with God’s Spirit and His Spirit is at war against our flesh (Galatians 5). Human nature is self seeking, God’s love is self-giving. Human love ends when personal sacrifice with no hope of gain begins.
What is Love
The scripture uses several Greek words to describe love. The word philia means friendship and is often translated as love. God does not command us to show friendship because we naturally desire to have friends. The word ‘love’ that we are commanded to pursue is ‘agapao’, which means to actively care for or the act of loving. The word ‘agape’ is the love of God and means self-giving, sacrificial love.
Knowing the Greek words is not necessary, but understanding the biblical principles are. Only God has true, self-giving, sacrificial love. When we are in Him, His love flows through us and we actively love others. The love of God is in us and then we have a choice to act. Biblical love is an act, not an emotion. When we are loving God and allowing God to love others through us, we may find emotions and find happiness by touching the lives of others. However, the emotional feelings are not what drives love. There will be times when I don’t feel like loving God. There are times when I don’t feel like loving others. In Matthew 5, Jesus commanded, “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you”. We know up front that we will never feel like loving our enemies. The command is to actively love our enemies – not to just tolerate them and not to just try not to hate them. The commandment is ‘agapao’; the act of loving our enemies. To make sure the point is not missed, Jesus clarifies this statement with specific acts of love: bless, do good and pray for those who seek our harm.
The love of God is self-giving and is always active. We then are commanded to abide in God’s love and actively care for those God places before us. We are conduits of God’s love to the world. I am not capable of producing agape love. I am only capable of actively giving God’s agape love to the world around me. God demonstrated His love to us in that while we were sinners and enemies at war with God, we were reconciled by His grace through Jesus Christ. We are then called to realize that our enemies are just as we were and we demonstrate God’s agape love through our act of loving them.
Showing love is not only to our enemies, but anyone whom God places in our path. 1 John 3 says:
17 But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?
If we are not actively loving others, we cannot claim to have the love of God. The love God requires a willful choice to extend ourselves to others. Emotions may or may not play a role. If I don’t feel motivated, I have the God-given power to over-ride those emotions and do what is right. If the love of God abides in me, He will burden my heart to act even when I don’t have the motivation to do so. By my will I choose to love God and by my will I choose to love my neighbor.
Loving God
Let’s now take a deeper look at what it means to love God. The first principle we must understand is that we love God because He first loved us. God demonstrated His love toward us and we respond to Him by faith. When we see how God paid the penalty for our sins, we believe that He died for us and we receive the love of God by faith.
Romans 5:
5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
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.
9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.
10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
11 And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
Once the love of God has been poured out into our hearts, we now have the right and the responsibility to choose to love God. Most Christians struggle because they lack the feelings and think this means they do not love God. People doubt when they don’t have strong emotions or feel warm and bubbly toward God. Many Christians are confused because we sing songs about being ‘happy all the time’ when we don’t feel happy all the time. When everyone thinks that everyone else is warm and bubbly, they put on the happy face and pretend to be the same. It is unfortunate that the church never teaches what is meant by loving God and that we are not on cloud nine every day. The church as a whole never takes people beyond the shallow emotions and into the deeper faith God has invited us to experience. It does not matter if you feel like shouting. Sometimes you may; sometimes you may not. People have different temperaments and different personalities. Some people get excited – some do not. Only the excited Christians are perceived as being spiritual and falsely so.
How many times have we heard preachers say that if you don’t feel like shouting you must be dead spiritually. Some people are like myself and are not shouters. The non-shouters are often more reflective and get lost in their focus on God during worship. If a reflective person tries to be a shouter, they would not be worshipping God but would be focused on what others are doing. Don’t waste time struggling to meet someone’s expectation on worship. The time is far better spent worshiping God within the personality He has given you by His design.
Even very godly men say that you must be willing to do things a certain way in order to worship. Recently I was in a service with a worship leader I admire and respect. However, I can’t agree with his statement that if someone doesn’t raise their hands, they were letting fear hinder worship. God has created each person with unique personalities and characters. The problem is that many people think that because God deals with them in a certain way that becomes the measurement of how God deals with everyone. The scripture is the only unshakable standard. God will always be consistent with His word but will also meet us on our level and deal with us uniquely according to how He has made us. If you feel like raising your hands to worship, you should worship this way even if it is not the way those around you think is proper. If you are reflective and get lost in worship but find that hand-raising is a distraction and it takes away from worship, don’t worry about raising your hands. Worship is a time of actively demonstrating our love to God, standing in His holy presence, and praising His name. It is a time between you and God alone. We meet as a body to worship but we focus on Him as individuals.
I bring all this up for one simple point: your emotional level in worship does not reflect your love for God. There are people who jump, shout and raise their hands, yet they do not have any true concept of loving God. There are people who jump, shout, and raise their hands that are truly expressing their love for God. There are people who sit quietly and never experience true worship and do not know anything about what it means to love God. Also, there are people who sit quietly and are experiencing deep worship and expressing to God their deep love for Him. The outward expression in worship does not reveal the inward love for God.
Expressing Love Toward God
Our lifestyle does reveal our love for God, but our emotions do not. Even though feelings are often generated by loving God, they are not the evidence of loving God. The Bible has given us very clear evidence for loving God. Jesus made it very simple when He said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments”. How many times have we heard people say, “I love God” and then justify living a life that is completely contrary to Him? Look at 1 John 2:
2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.
3 Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.
4 He who says, "I know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
5 But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.
6 He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.
The Bible pulls no punches here. If someone says they know God and reject His commandments, the Bible says that person is a liar. However, the person who keeps God’s word has the love of God perfected in them. The true measurement for loving God is our obedience to His word. This is why the Bible says that all the commands of God and all the prophets of God hang on loving God and loving our neighbor. If we love God, we will imitate His character. The commandments of God are direct reflections of the character of God. The commandments of God are only a burden if we don’t love God. To try to keep God’s law by our own efforts is futile and to try keeping God’s commandments without loving God leads to complete frustration.
To grasp this concept all we need to do is look at the rest of life. If we want to develop a talent that we have, it must first be a passion. A football or baseball player spends hours practicing and developing the skills they need to perform. A piano or guitar player practices for hours to learn how to play. If someone has no interest in music, it becomes torment to practice learning a musical instrument. If someone does not like sports, it would be torment to practice each day. People who are successful work hard but they are pursuing what they love. The same is true in the Christian life. We are pursuing God because we love Him and we keep His commandments because they shape our character so that we become like Him. We are seeking to become what we want to become. Obedience must be out of a love for God or we will fail.
Look at 1 John 5:
1 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him.
2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments.
3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.
The love of God is keeping His commandments and we keep His commandments because we love God. Are the commandments of God a burden? If they are, you may be pursuing religion but you are not in the love of God. His commands are a delight when our desire is to know God. You may not feel emotional, but you can know that you love God. We know we love God because we express our love for God by knowing His word and keeping His commandments.
Loving Others
Our love for God is expressed by loving those around us – especially other Christians. Jesus said, “by this all will know you are My disciples, if you have love for one another”. If God is in us and we are abiding in Him, we must love our brothers and sisters in Christ. God does not give us a choice and this is also the evidence that He is in our lives. Look at 1 John 4:
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
…
13 By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.
14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.
15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
…
19 We love Him because He first loved us.
20 If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
21 And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
God has said that if you say that you love Him but hate your brother, you are a liar, and if you have the love of God within you, you will love your brother in Christ. We have already seen that we are commanded to love our enemies, now God makes it clear that we also must express our love toward our fellow Christians. This passage above is filled with treasure. First we see the love of God express toward us and we believe it. This faith in Christ is the point of salvation. We confess Jesus Christ as Lord by faith and God gives us His Spirit. God is love and His Spirit within us is the love we express toward others through obedience to God. God’s agape love is within us by His Spirit and we express that love (agapao) by a willful act of obedience. Unless God’s Spirit dwells within us, we cannot have true love. The evidence of our relationship with God is our expression of love toward others. Those who refuse to love others and claim to know God is living are lie. They may believe they are in God, but He has given us a point of reference where we can examine our lives and see if we are truly walking with Him. If you cannot forgive and love, you are not walking with God. If you can’t love your brother who you can see with your eyes, then you have not seen the love of God expressed toward you. Human nature is selfish, but through obedience we express the selfless love of God.
How do we express God’s love toward others? Forgiveness is vital. If God forgave every sin I have ever committed and ever will commit, how can I justify holding a grudge against a wrong done to me? We express love through encouragement and building up each other. We express agapao by meeting a need that God has given us the power meet. We express love by comforting each other and teaching each other. Sharing the gospel with someone is an act of love. Even rebuke can be an act of love if it is done with the right heart.
If someone is living contrary to God’s will, it is our responsibility to lead them toward godliness. Often times this first requires bridge-building. It rarely does good to whack someone over the head with the ‘stick of truth’. This does not mean that you cannot be confrontational, but if you do not have a relationship with someone, they will not be receptive of criticism even if it is in love. If we have neglected God’s call to be involved in each others lives, what gives us the right to jump in the middle when we see something wrong? When the time for confrontation arises, our attitude must be an attitude of reconciliation and not condemnation. It is one thing to say, “You are wrong”, but quite another to say, “Look at what God has said is right”. Spiritual maturity and growth comes when the focus shifts from me to Christ. If we seek to reconcile someone to Christ, we must get the focus off the love of sin and onto the Savior.
Some go as far as to say that if we love, we cannot judge someone’s actions as sinful. This is unscriptural and if we think about it, it also lacks common sense. If someone is driving down a road in a fog and you know the bridge is out, which shows more love: to smile, wave, and say, “God will deal with them”; or to run to them to tell them that the road leads to destruction? The road of life has many such detours. The roads are decorated with signs that promise fulfillment and pleasure, but the end of the road is a pit. We are watchmen that point out the false promises and point to the true promises of God. We can’t stop someone from desiring the pitfall, but we can make it clear that the right path follows and imitates Christ.
Sometimes there will be disputes with fellow Christians and these disagreements can be destructive or constructive. We do not have to agree to love someone. There are many examples in scripture where disagreements were resolved constructively. Even the most mature Christian can get off course or lose focus on Jesus Christ. This is especially true in ministry. There is a fine line between serving Christ and serving the ministry. When the vision of serving God has been lost or those in ministry are divided, it creates tension. People disagree and conflicts usually arise, but if both sides follow God’s plan, reconciliation is always at the end of the conflict.
Agapao love is to give God’s agape love to another. We forgive, love and meet the needs of others. Look at 1 John 3:
17 But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?
18 My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
19 And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.
20 For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.
21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.
22 And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.
23 And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.
Love is not words, but actions based on truth. When we abide in the truth of God’s word and act out His love in our lives toward others, we will have the confidence that we are in the truth and will be confident before Him. As we go, remember the words of 1 Corinthians 13:13
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
