ABOUT LOVE

 

EXPERIENCE OF LOVE: I felt left out from Christianity because I never had a peak experience. I always believed in love, but real love seemed beyond my reach. God was more to me a strict governor than He was a Father to me.

 

LOVE IS HARD WORK: The hardest work ever assigned is what? Making a marriage work? Following the strict rules of God? Or how about exercising… exercising? Yes, exercising!

 

WHAT LOVE IS:

The first incidence of love is when Abraham was to take his son, Isaac, to Mount Moriah to sacrifice him by fire. That was father/son love.  

 

That type of love pertains to all the different types of love of which eroticism, friendship, familial, and appetite are included.

 

THE NOTION OF LOVE:

The Chaldeans perhaps provided the best definition — “to produce fruit.” Indeed, Isaac was the fruit that God produced. Isaac, his son was a type of Jesus, and he was as if he was the fruit produced by Abraham.)

 

If you read closely, since Sarah was barren and Abraham laughably impotent. Isaac was the son of God but to Abraham, Isaac was his own son that he would be required to sacrifice.

 

Abraham was about to do so; why? Because he loved God so much. How was he to demonstrate love? By sacrificing the fruit of his bosom. (Note that may apply to Paradise as in the bosom of Abraham; Luke 16).

 

Love was hard work for Abraham, to the extent that Abraham was in such agony, that God provided a substitute to alleviate the emotional pain of Abrahm.

 

ENTANGLEMENT: (Born again)

“Entanglement” includes the production of fruit just as love does. The fruit (entanglement) is a likeness without regard to time nor distance. Real love is there regardless of those two things. True love does not wane even in death.

 

Abraham’s love for God was some manner of spiritual “entanglement.” Isaac was the son of God and so was Abraham. They both were entangled with God because Abraham was the son of God and so was Isaac.

 

Abraham had previously been named Abram. God did a good work in him, and he became a new person.  The “entanglement” is that both Abraham and Isaac were entangled with God.  

 

“Love” is an entanglement with anything; whatever it may be. Indeed, the loss of a child reveals just how entangled the fruit of the womb makes us. Entanglement is not what we do but the action of God in us.

 

Isaac was God doing good work in Sarah to produce “fruit” for Abraham.

 

LOVE IS NOT EMOTIONAL:

Abraham got emotional about God because of the grace of God but the exercise of love was the action. Abraham revealed “tough love” because he was ready and willing to sacrifice His only remaining son.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about “cheap grace.”

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate…

In my words from that quote is that cheap grace is accepting the sacrifice of God of His “Son” with ingratitude. The “ingratitude” is failure to love God for taking our sins onto the Cross. Christ did a good work in us Christians, but so many fail to demonstrate appreciation.  

 

Works, or discipline, are not payment to God for His due, but gratitude for His good work.

 

LOVE IS ACTION:

Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

 

Jesus did not say, If you love me cry alligator tears or feel thumping in your chest!

 

LOVE IS GOODWILL:

GOOD THOUGHTS

 

He said to do things… keep my commandments. Therefore, doing the will of God is operationalizing love. Keeping His commandments is not doing things!

 

COMMANDMENTS:

Commandments are the will of God.

 

Abraham and the Hebrews were chosen (entangled) with God, “Because Abraham obeyed My Voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws” (Gen 26:5).

 

Abraham demonstrated his love for God. What had God done for him? Saved him from the fire in Nimrod’s furnace by making him incorruptible (Book of Jasher). Abram put his faith in action. He withstood the holocaust of the fiery furnace.

 

Would you walk into the fire for God? Someday you may have to make that decision.

The fire for Abram was a test of love. He said he had faith, but did he? He performed for God the hard thing to do. Abram walked into the fiery furnace to “save” God, but it was God who saved him! That was love.

 

THE WILL OF GOD:

It is obvious, but you probably missed it — the Old Testament is “The Last Will and Testament” of God to divide His Estate. Knowing that so many were excluded from His will, the New Testament is the “codicil” — a supplement to the Old Will of God.

 

The Bible is the Will of God and those who love Him by doing His Will are rightful heirs and in the family of God. The “Estate” is in the realm of heaven and there He has prepared a place for us out of love.

 

God loves us even though we are no longer in His Image. He loves us because He entangled our kind with Himself in the beginning, so without regard to distance or time, God remains entangled with us in a bond of love because even though we are evil, he wants us back. That is true love, and the prodigal son a good example of that.

 

Love is ignoring what we were but how we are. The only time that matters is where we stand with God the moment we die. Love is God’s readiness to forger all the evil that we have done in exchange for

 

LOVE IS NOT FLEETING BUT THE NOW:

Love is ignoring what we were but how we are. The only time that matters is where we stand with God the moment we die. Love is God’s readiness to forger all the evil that we have done in exchange for trust at the last moment. Hence, NOW is always the always the day of salvation (2 Cor 6:2).

 

None of the things prior to death will save us; it is whether we are entangled with God before we breath the last breath. That is because of this: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

 

Love is that God ignores our behaviors and focuses only on our entanglement and love for Him. His love for us is grace — undue merit. Our love for Him is because He has grace for us.

 

God operationalized His love for us in that he died so that we would never perish. The crucifixion was the love of God in action. He actually died for us whereas all we need to do is to crucify the desires of our fleshes: “They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Gal 5:24).

 

“Born again” is essentially showing love of God by crucifying our wicked flesh to demonstrate our love for Him. Will it hurt? It is hard work, but it is merely a change of heart. Those who crucify the hardness of the heart belong to God. Cheap grace will not suffice; we must give to God our flesh, as if it is not even there. If you have not, then perhaps you have no love.