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Sunday, February 28, 2010

Biblical Love

Please know that I write these things to condemn no one but contrary, to help explain in a more deeply thinking, biblical sense, a thing or two about love. Most people have some sort of love for someone in there life, or are loved by someone else. When a couple is married and become one, there is often times, some sort of phyiscal attraction. This physical attraction is not love. It is a feeling, love is not a feeling. Feelings come and go, but Love endures and bears ALL things. Love has become in this day and age a very "free" word. We often hear it used like: "I love cake," "I love watching TV," or "I love my new shoes." This should not be taking place, when we say these things, we often put some amount of faith into that object, For example: Imagine someone watching TV and they state that they love watching TV. Then, suddenly the TV becomes deffective and shuts off and the person misses his favorite show, we can greatly assume that this person would be quite dissapointed if not angry, and possibly try to blame this unfortunate event on someone else. This is an example of someone putting their faith into an object and being angry and/or dissapointed when that object lets them down. For this reason, we must not make the mistake of saying we love something and putting a certain amount of our faith into that object.
Now, we also must speak of our love for others. The bible tells us to love our neighbor as you love yourself:
Leviticus 19:18 "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your nieghbor as yourself; I am the lord"
This does not mean that we must be physically attracted to everyone because as I explained before, physical attraction is not part of love. We are not Physically attracted to ourselves, we may like the way we look, but that is not the same as a sexual physical attraction.
As a christian, in order to have love for others, we must be sharing the Gospel as the bible tells us too. If we meet someone and they are an athiest, and we say "It is better that I simply respect there ideas and leave them alone about it," this is by no means biblical. Some people may say that this is the most loving way to go about it because we won"t offend them if we dont talk to them about it. This, however, is not the case. In fact, this is most unloving way we can go about this situation. To do something like that is to say "I am going to heaven and they arent, O well," and to say that is, quite bluntly, very arrogant. Furthermore, by saying this, we are not loving this person as we love ourself. We do not want to go to hell and therefore, should wish that no one would go to hell. The bible says:
1st Corinthians 13:4 "Love is patient and kind; Love does not envy or boast; It is not arrogant."
Therefore, if we are too love one another as God's word commands us, we must be speaking to others about Jesus Christ who died for us.
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