© 1996
Mail Wagon
Love is a word that has been around since the dawn of time. Love has many shapes and forms, and can take on various meanings depending of the context in which it is used. Some can use it in passing fancy, such as “I love ice cream”, others use it in haste upon one glance of an attractive person, such as “I think I’m in love” without ever even meeting the person. There is the love that a father has for his children and the love that a husband has for his wife. Many say that these are different types of love, but I ask, are they really different? Is love for children or a spouse different types of love, or the same love demonstrated in different ways? As a Christian, we have the assurance that God has provided answers for our most basic needs and questions in the Bible. Since love is such a largely and sometimes loosely used term, can we find out from the Bible what love really means and what love about? Most assuredly we can find the answer in the divine work of God.
Before we can continue, we first have to find out what love is. What is the real meaning of love? The Bible tells us exactly what love is in 1 John 4:8,16.
1 John 4:8
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
1 John 4:16
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love
dwelleth in God, and God in him.
Did you get that, God is love! I don’t think you could put it any plainer. Therefore, if we can describe God, we can know what love is in the truest sense of the word. There are plenty of extra-biblical sources for the definition of love, so let’s take a look at some of these first. While we examine these sources, keep in mind the question, does this describe God?
If we look up the word love in Webster’s Dictionary we find the following definitions:
Do these definitions for love describe God and his attributes and nature? I think so. Vine’s Expository Dictionary has this to say about love (agape, #26 Strong’s): “Love expresses the deep and constant “love” and interest of a perfect Being towards entirely unworthy objects, producing and fostering a reverential “love” in them towards the Giver, and a practical “love” towards those who are partakers of the same, and a desire to help others to seek the Giver.” This too, I think you’ll agree, describes God.
Strong’s Concordance shows that there are many words that have been translated into love. However, when we look at love when it applies to God, we see from #157 in the Hebrew, that love (aw- habe’) means to have affection for: love, like, or friend. In the New Testament, love is from the Greek word agape (#26), and means to show affection or benevolence.
If we look at Nelson’s Bible Dictionary, we can see that love described as such; “Love is not only one of God’s attributes; it is also an essential part of His nature.” It goes on further to say that” love conveys God’s will to his children.” Every one of these sources agrees that love describes God’s nature and his will.
For a complete definition, we must also look at love as a verb. Earlier, we saw that the definition of love as a noun was simply “God is love.” The Bible also gives us definitive scripture as to the meaning of the verb love.
1 John 5:3
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.
2 John 1:6
And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard
from the beginning, ye should walk in it.
Again, how could we possible get a clearer definition of love than this. These verses should raise a question in your mind. Namely, do you mean that the simplest meaning of the verb love is to keep God’s commandments? Yes, the action of love is known by the actions that you or I take. Just as importantly, these verses tell us that his commandments shouldn’t be a burden. The common teaching we see today in our churches is that the law was nailed to the cross. I ask you, if you believe that the Bible is the in-errant word of God as I do, what do these passages suggest? Do you think that God nailed love to the cross? This is what you are suggesting, if by definition, the act of love is obedience to God’s laws and commandments. For further study on the subject of the law, I encourage you to read my article “The Harmonious Book.”
With that firmly embedded within our minds, let us proceed to study the scriptures and find out exactly what love is all about and what love encompasses.
As a Christian, I guess the first question we should ask is; should we love? I mean, since God himself is love, why not let him do all the work. Let’s face it, love is not exactly the easiest thing to deal with, it makes people do things sometimes that they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Besides, if God is love in perfection, I couldn’t do any better, so why bother? Well, to answer this question, we need to turn to the Bible. Remember that old, dusty Bible that sits in a drawer that hasn’t been opened in years will answer any important questions that we could ever have. In both the Old and New testaments we can find numerous instances that God has said that we must love. Some of these verses are: Deut. 6:5, 10:12, 11:1, 30:16, Matt. 19:19, 22:37-39, Mark 12:30-31, Luke 6:27, 6:35, 10:27, John 15:17,and James 2:8. Why do I mention so many verses? I want to make it perfectly clear that we are to love God and others as a commandment.
Deuteronomy 6:5
And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
Deuteronomy 10:12
And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all
his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,
Deuteronomy 11:1
Therefore thou shalt love the LORD thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments,
and his commandments, alway.
Deuteronomy 30:16
In that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his
commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the LORD thy
God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it.
Matthew 19:19
Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Matthew 22:37
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind.
Matthew 22:39
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Mark 12:30-31
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and
with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other
commandment greater than these.
Luke 6:27
But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
Luke 6:35
But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be
great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
Luke 10:27
And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
John 15:17
These things I command you, that ye love one another.
James 2:8
If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well:
In retrospect, it is commanded by God to not only love him, but our neighbors and our enemies. Everybody in the entire world falls under one of these three categories, so let’s start loving! Don’t get me wrong, I know first hand that it is extremely difficult to love my enemies, but when I look at this from another perspective, I can see that if we were like minded with God, it wouldn’t be so terribly difficult. Besides, if I were to enter a debate with the almighty, something tells me I’d lose.
Now that we know what love is, and that we are commanded to love, the next questions that need addressed are these: 1) How can I tell if I or another person loves or has love? 2) What are the personal attributes and traits that a person will reflect in their life if they have love? 3) What actions will a person exhibit when they have love? To answer these questions, we must turn again to the Bible. Isn’t this book great! It provides me with everything I need. Let’s look at some of the verses that answer these questions.
John 10:17
Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.
John 15:13
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
These verses suggest that a loving person should be willing to give up their life to follow God or for God’s will and purpose.
John 14:21
He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be
loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
John 14:23
Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him,
and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
John 15:10
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments,
and abide in his love.
1 John 2:5
But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.
1 John 5:2-3
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.
2 John 1:6
And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard
from the beginning, ye should walk in it.
All of these verses emphatically tell us that keeping God’s word and commandments displays our love for God Yahweh and his son Yahshua. Again, I have to emphasize that the commandments were not nailed to the cross, or these verses would have no substance. Why would God expect us to keep something that he has taken away?
Romans 13:8-10
Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false
witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this
saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
These verses have been twisted over the years to support the notion that the commandments are nailed to the cross. In light of the many verses we have studied thus far, we can see something inherently wrong with this interpretation, as God can not contradict himself. These verses along with those in Matthew are used to say that Christ fulfilled the law, and therefore we are not held accountable for the commandments within the Bible. What most fail to realize is this, the word fulfill would have been more clearly translated, to make complete, as in our understanding not in the finality thereof.
Looking at these verses with this new understanding, we can understand that if one love one another, the sins listed in these verses would not be committed. It makes perfect sense that if you love someone, you would not kill them, steal from them, lie to them, or desire such things as they have, wouldn’t it? Therefore, by exhibiting love, we avoid all those sins that are revealed to us by the law, and thus fulfilling or keeping the law and its commandments that were given by God. It is really quite simple to understand if we are willing to take the thick blinders from our eyes.
1 John 4:7
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth
God.
As we are commanded by God, we should also love one another for the sake of love and our constant striving to be more and more like him.
John 14:28
Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice,
because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.
James 1:12
Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which
the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
From these verses, we see that we are to be constantly rejoicing and therefore happy and content with the things that we have, no matter what temptations or tribulations that may come our way, knowing that Christ has promised that he will return to us someday.
Psalms 97:10
Ye that love the LORD, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of
the wicked.
Finally, we can see that those who love God, hate evil. This does not mean that you should hate a particular person, but that you should hate the evil actions that a person exhibits, for we are love our enemies and those that hate us as we see in Matthew 5:44.
Matthew 5:44
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray
for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
So far in our little study, we’ve covered what love is, whether or not we should love, and the personality and actions that one should express, if they have love for God and love for others. If I stopped right now and asked you, do you love God as God wishes to be loved? If you were to stand in the presence of Yahweh himself and he would ask you, do you truly love me, what would you answer? Based on what the Bible says that love is and how proof of love should be expressed, all of us, that means you and me, would truthfully have to say NO! I know this is somewhat of a shock for some, and humbling for the rest, but the point is this, we all are completely at the mercy of God when it comes to our salvation. We are saved only by the grace of God, and can not ever, for an instance, think that we can earn it.
Some may have a question in their heads right now, and this may be it. Is love all or nothing, or can you love a little? If you don’t express love every moment of your life, does that mean you hate God? The Bible gives us answers to these questions, and I will answer them in this manner. In Luke 7:47, we find that Christ is talking to some about a sinful woman that is expressing her affection towards the Savior.
Luke 7:47
Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is
forgiven, the same loveth little.
From this passage, we can be assured that we are indeed capable of loving in degrees. Of course, God wants us to love him and others always, and this is no excuse for not loving, but this can give us some relief in knowing that it not all or nothing. I think that this passage describes us as a whole and not at one moment in time. I believe that in any one moment, we are either expressing love or hate. When we consider our lives in total, I hope that we all have shown at least a little love. To further add to this understanding, let’s look at Matthew 6:24.
Matthew 6:24
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the
one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
From this, we can see that in any given moment of time, we are either expressing love for God or expressing our hatred of him. As I said earlier, this doesn’t mean that you hate God in totality, but it does mean that there is no middle ground when it comes to love and hate, for you either you are expressing love, or you are expressing hate at any given instance in time. In the next section, I think we need to take a look at identifying those that do not express love. I do this for two reasons; 1) we need to identify those that may need some assistance or instruction in the words of the Bible, and 2) we need to know what characteristics that we should avoid in our own walks toward the righteousness of Christ. Let us look first at a passage from Ezekiel.
Ezekiel 33:30-31
Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls and in the doors
of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what
is the word that cometh forth from the LORD.
And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy
words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their
covetousness.
From these passages, we can see that those that do whatsoever they will, even though they may speak the truth from their mouths, are not expressing love. Everybody has come across these types before, and most of us have exhibited these characteristics ourselves. This goes back to the old saying, “practice what you preach.” By our actions and not our mouths, do we express our love towards God and man, for God knows the heart and by this he measures our love. We should remind others as well as ourselves these truths.
John 3:19
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light,
because their deeds were evil.
This verse tells us quite simply and directly that those who do evil deeds love darkness and not the light. This verse is very revealing when used in conjunction with other verses. From John, we can see that Christ himself is the light and from Acts, that Satan’s ways are the darkness, therefore not loving the light bears much significance in our lives.
John 8:12
Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk
in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
John 9:5
As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
Acts 26:18
To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that
they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in
me.
In John 14, verse 24, we are once again confronted with the reality that not doing what God has commanded us to do, is like telling God that we do not love him.
John 14:24
He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's
which sent me.
Now looking at 1 John 2:15, we come across a phrase that needs some explaining, the phrase “love the world.”
1 John 2:15
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the
Father is not in him.
This may confuse some in to thinking that we are not to appreciate or admire the world that God has created, which is not the case. In context to our expression of love, we know that not loving the world means to not covet that which is in the world to the extent that it takes our focus and attention from the one from which it was created . Loving the world is a choice that is made between God’s will or our lust for our own desires that are in the world. With this in mind, we know that those who care for the things in the world more than the admiration of Yahweh, are expressing their rejection of him and his ways in favor of his own desires.
1 John 4:20
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he
hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
This verse gives us a little insight into the logic and thinking of God. From his standpoint, it is easier to believe that which you can see. In fact, this is how the whole idea of evolution got started, because of man’s lack of ability to see God. Most of us will agree that seeing is believing for the most part. So from this verse, we can see that it is easier to love someone you can physically see and touch than it is to love someone you can’t see and that if you can’t demonstrate love for those we can see, how could we possibly love someone we can’t see.
We should now all be able to explain to someone what love is, and how to express our love. We also have learned what to look for in others to distinguish those that love God and those who don’t. We have learned that the actions by which we live have a great impact on the way that God perceives our true intentions. Yahweh has given us commandments and laws that instruct us as to the ways that he wishes us to live. If we would just follow the ten commandments, we would be doing good. These commandments are an expression of God's nature and his will for our lives. In 2 Timothy 3:16, we see that the scriptures, which includes the laws and commandments were given as a guide to us for living righteously. We must remember that at the time of this writing, all of scripture was composed of the Old Testament. We should not be so hasty in thinking that a God who is eternal and unchanging would nullify his own words or contradict himself.
2 Timothy 3:16
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness:
In the next part of this study, I would like to express some incentives for loving God and man in the most perfect way we can. God’s love should be incentive enough for us to live righteously, but in addition to that, we are promised by him, who doesn’t break his promises, certain things if we only love him like he wants to be loved by us.
Exodus 20:5-6
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate
me;
And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Deuteronomy 7:9-10
Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy
with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations;
And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him,
he will repay him to his face.
From the above verses, we can be rest assured that those who love God, will be shown mercy in times of tribulation and backsliding.
Deuteronomy 11:13-15
And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this
day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,
That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou
mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil.
And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full.
If we show our love to God by obeying his commandments, we will never go hungry for lack of food or water. Symbolically, we know from scripture, that rain is a symbol of the Holy Spirit that lives within us. These verses also mean that we will be comforted by the Holy Spirit, when we are in despair and need comfort.
Deuteronomy 11:22,24-25
For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I command you, to do them, to love the LORD
your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto him;
Then will the LORD drive out all these nations from before you, and ye shall possess greater nations and
mightier than yourselves.
Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon,
from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.
There shall no man be able to stand before you: for the LORD your God shall lay the fear of you and the
dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath said unto you.
Galatians 3:18
And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
With love, we know that we will share in the inheritance that was promised to Abraham. We also know that we will not have to fear anyone and that no one can defeat us.
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Mail Wagon