On a day when the most religious of the Jews were asking Jesus questions and trying to trick him into saying something they could refute, and after stumping the Sadducees concerning the resurrection of the body another group, the Pharisees, challenged him. A lawyer asked a question, “What is the greatest commandment in the Law?” ³⁷ And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment”. (Matt 22:36-38) How am I to love God? With all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind! (I must pause here to praise God for his lavish grace and mercy that I so desperately need. I fall way short in the loving God department! I’m thankful that Jesus loved Him perfectly for me. This is one of many sins Jesus atoned for by dying for me.) The ultra religious Jews listening to Jesus were surely just as aware of their personal short comings as I am. But Jesus raised the bar even higher. He said,  “³⁹ And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰ On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt 22:39,40) This isn’t a suggestion, it is a “You shall!” Jesus set the bar out of reach for every hearer and everyone who reads His words thousands of years after He said them.

In 1 John 4 about half the chapter is about God’s love for us, and how we are expected to love. The chapter ends this way, “²⁰ If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. ²¹ And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1 John 4:20,21) Bluegrass artist Rhonda Vincent had a hit song based on these verses, “If you don’t love your brother you don’t love God”.

How is your love life? Not with a girl friend or boy friend or spouse, but with God? How about the people at work, your neighbors, your in laws? According to this teaching you and I can measure our love for God by how well we love others.

What is love anyway?

Love isn’t only an emotion, it is much more. In fact the kind of Love the prior verses discuss is not possible unless a person is born from above. The sort of love Jesus taught about is a gift from His own heart. We love him because He first loved us. We didn’t love Him first. No, it is far more than an emotion. You can sit in your favorite chair and have nice warm, fuzzy feelings about someone, but that isn’t love. I suggest that love is very much like faith.

Both love and faith are grace gifts from God to undeserving sinners, you and me. So here is the way I see it.

1. Faith and Love are intellectual. A person must know some facts to have either. The gospel is communicated with words, it is when we hear the good news that “faith comes” (Romans 10:17). You and I were not born with faith it is given. Love is ‘a’ fruit of the Spirit of God, given to those who have been made God’s children through the person and work of Jesus.
2. Faith and love are emotional. Both are supernaturally implanted in us so that we experience joy, sometimes expressed with tears, or some other emotional response. Facts imprinted in our brains touch our emotions. We are emotional creatures. We hear the good news, the facts of the gospel, and our hearts are warmed. It makes us experience joy. But both are more.
3. Faith and love are volitional. To experience faith or love in action we must make a choice to act upon what we know and what we think if possible. At some point I must consciously act. I have decided for Jesus and I say it with my lips, I confess Jesus as my Lord, I not only say it but I show it. In water baptism we retell the gospel and identify with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And, my language, my morals, the sort of people I associate with and want to be with changes. And, my love for other believers, Jesus, and yes, even those I don’t like very much grows and deepens.

Loving God is trying the best you possibly can to do what He says. Loving your neighbor is looking out for his best interests, helping when you can, encouraging when you are able, treating that person as you want others to treat you. I think the way I love those about me is me loving God. I don’t see how loving people and loving God can be separated.

Some of the good gifts God gives to his own are listed in Galatians 5:22 and first on this list is “Love”. 1 Corinthians 13 the love we are given is clearly defined.

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

¹³ So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

In Christ,

Royce Ogle