Love and the Bible – 25th November 2016

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God”(1 John 4:7).

As Christians, where ever we may come across the word ‘Love’ it immediately refers to Jesus Christ because we know Him through the Love that He displays for all of us. The Bible has a great deal to say about love. In fact, the Bible says that “love is of God” and “God is love” as we can learn from 1 John 4:7–8, “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.“ In other words, love is a fundamental characteristic of who God is. Everything God does is impelled and influenced by His love.

There is also a distinct word for the type of love that God displays. In the Greek, this word is agape, and it refers to a benevolent and charitable love that seeks the best for the loved one. This love is represented by God's love for us. It is a non-partial, sacrificial love probably best exemplified by God's provision for our rebellion: "For God so loved (agape) the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." (John 3:16). The gift of God's son as a provision for sin was given to all humans, regardless of who we are. God's love is unconditional.

We can note that the Bible uses several different words for “love” in the Hebrew and Greek, interchanging them depending on context. Some of these words mean “affectionate love”; others indicate “friendship”; and still others, “passionate love.” The Bible gives many examples of love: the caring provision of Boaz for Ruth; the deep friendship of David and Jonathan; the poetic, passionate love of Solomon and the Shulamite; the enduring commitment of Hosea to Gomer; the fatherly love of Paul for Timothy and John for the church; and, of course, the sacrificial, saving love of Christ for the elect.

Agape, the benevolent, selfless love that God shows, is mentioned often in the New Testament, including in the “love chapter,” which is in reference 1 Corinthians 13. There, love’s characteristics are listed: “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” (1 Corinthians 13:4–8). Further in the sane passage we find that it tells us: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13).

The Bible says that God was motivated by love to save the world: “For God so loved the world….” as we read in (John 3:16). God’s love is best seen in the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf as said in 1 John 4:9, “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”. And God’s love does not require us to be “worthy” to receive it; His love is truly benevolent and gracious: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” as we can learn from Romans 5:8.

We can learn again where the Bible says that, since true love is part of God’s nature, God is the source of love. He is the initiator of a loving relationship with us. Any love we have for God is simply a response to His sacrificial (Agape) love for us: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). Our human understanding of love is flawed, weak, and incomplete, but the more we look at Jesus, the better we understand true love.

The Bible says that God’s love for us in Christ has resulted in our being brought into His family: “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason

the world does not know us is that it did not know him.!” (1 John 3:1). Just as the father in the parable showed love to his prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32), so our Heavenly Father receives us with joy when we come to Him in faith. He makes us “accepted in the Beloved” as we can learn from Ephesians 1:6, “ …to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”

We can learn more about how Love is stated in the Bible. It says that we are to love others the way that God loves us. We are to love the family of God as stated in 1 Peter 2:17, “Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor”. We are to love our enemies—that is, we are to actively seek what is best for them and avail it from what you can provide. “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, (Matthew 5:44). Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loves the church as we can learn from Ephesians 5:25, “ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”. As we show benevolent, selfless love, we reflect God’s love to a lost and dying world. “We love because he first loved us. God was not simply reciprocating His love…on the contrary we are required to do so. It is He who initiated it: “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19).

From the bible we can learn where Jesus said: “If you love me, keep my commands” (John 14:15).It also says that that our love for God is related to our obedience of Him: “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3; cf. We serve God out of love for Him. And God’s love for us enables us to obey Him freely, without the burden of guilt or the fear of punishment. We can also learn that “perfect love drives out fear” because fear is related to punishment. The gospels tell us that the one who fears is not made perfect in love. We can learn this from 1 John 4:18 “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”. The dismissal of the fear of condemnation is one of the main functions of God’s love. The person without Christ is under judgment and has plenty to fear as said in John 3:18, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

Therefore when a person is in Christ, the fear of judgment is gone. Part of understanding the love of God is knowing that God’s judgment fell on Jesus at the cross so we can be spared. Jesus described Himself as the Savior: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17). This tells us that the only person who must fear judgment is the one who rejects Jesus Christ.

The Bible says that nothing can separate the believer from the love of God in Christ as we can learn from Romans 8:38–39, “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.” God’s love does not wax and wane; it is not a fickle, emotional sensation. God’s love for sinners is why Christ died on the cross. God’s love for those who trust in Christ is why He holds them in His hand and promises never to let them go as stated in John 10:29, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand”.