1 Peter 1
14 As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance:
15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation;
With all the news surrounding the death of Anna Nicole Smith, I must admit I had mixed emotions. Part of me said she was laying in the bed she had made, another part felt sorry for her. Anna spent her life seeking money, fame and love from that fame. She got her money but died with only a few friends and those friends are now fighting over her money. I didn't really follow her life, but it would be hard not to know some of her life story. As I heard some of the reports about her, I had a sense of pity for her. She wanted to be a love goddess, but kept company with people who would only abuse her. In fact, going by the little I know about Anna, I would say she not only did not find love, but also did not know what love was.
When we fall in love, we are often drawn to do things in order to gain the fancy of another. At times this is in hopes to start a relationship, and other times it is a token to restore a relationship. Having been in the doghouse a few times, I happen to believe that the age proven gifts are the best. Flowers, things that smells pretty, and chocolate. You just cannot go wrong with a good box of dark chocolates. To my wife, if that box of chocolate has in its name, "Rocky Road" this would count as a home run. Another bit of wisdom I can pass on is one should never buy a practical gift to show your love. As things would have it, a new vacuum cleaner, though needed, just does not say I love you as I once thought it would.
Love is just one of many emotions that we as humans have. What is an emotion? Emotions are thoughts of an experience we have had. Without experience we have no emotion. Toddlers will play in the street, for they have not had the experience to know the fear of dying from a car hitting them. I love basketball, for I have experienced the game by playing basketball. We all have things that we love and all are based on experience.
Emotions change for we have many experiences. We can love a donut house for years, but if we start getting bad donuts that love will change. Most of our love is based on what we get in return from that love. If we give Rocky Road ice cream as a gift, the love we may hope to get in return is "out of the dog house".
Some would have us think that God is love and that about sums it up. Accordingly, we need only to sing, "I love you Lord", hold hands, make daisy chains and smile. For after all, life is good, and God loves us. Is this what we find in the Bible? Is God love and love only?
Other theologians tell us that there is no feeling in God. Bruch, a German theologian, says we must exclude any idea of God with emotion. (Eigenschafter, page 240).
Bruch..
For God cannot be the subject of passivity in any form. If God experienced complacency in intelligent beings, He would depend on them.
I understand the concerns of Bruch, for we do not have a God who reigns by emotion. God is not One to fall in and out of love, based on what He gets in return from us. Yet to deny God emotion when it is clear throughout the Bible that God expresses emotion is like removing a key nature of God. A God with no emotion would be to reduce God to a force of knowledge and power and nothing else.
To do a study of the love of God we must start with this statement: "God is love" (1 John 4:8). It is not simply that God "loves," but God is Love itself. Love is not merely one of His attributes, but His very nature. To know this means, if it were not for God, we would not know of love.
To reduce God's love to a sticker that says, "Smile God Loves You", is to cheapen God's love to a level of a friendly handshake. God's love today is regarded in a state of weakness, or as a goodwill token, like a pat on a back when you are having a bad day. I would say that the God of the Bible is not this small.
God's love is eternal.
If God Himself is eternal, and God is love, it follows that God's love does not start at some point, but rather always was. This is a biblical truth that removes the idea of a weak love of God. God is not waiting to love His own after they believe on Him. God's love was always there and not just a reaction from our love.
Jeremiah 31:3
"I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee."
Ephesians 1:4,5
"According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him. In love having predestinated us."
This truth does not stop here. Being that God's love is eternal, I can freely say, God's love toward me had no beginning, and it can have no ending! Since it is true that "from everlasting to everlasting" He is God, and since God is "love," then it is equally true that "from everlasting to everlasting" He loves His people.
The love of God is not subjective.
What can we do, to win God's love? Can we give more money to the church? Can we walk more little old ladies across the street? In order to draw love toward us, we try to get the attention of the one, by doing a good deed or giving a gift. But the love of God is free from influence and is not caused by us. Therefore, there is nothing I can do to make God love me more then He does now. The only reason God loves anyone is found in His own sovereign will to love.
Deut. 7
7The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:
2 Timothy 1
9 Who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,
1 John 4:19
19 We love Him, because He first loved us"
God does not love His sheep because we love Him, but He loved us before we were born having done nothing wrong or right. I am not loved by God because I am good. I am loved by God even though I'm not good. What was in me to attract the heart of God? Absolutely nothing.
Gods is sovereign in love.
Just as God is in control of all things, God is full control of His love. In order to love us God does not need our love. His love is sovereign. He loved us according to the good pleasure of His will, His own sovereign determination. This means that God's love is always first. In fact the love that is in us is not ours but God's.
1 John 4:10
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
One theological system called Arminianism makes God's love second. God loves all men, according to the Arminian, but He cannot save unless man loves Him. This would place control in the hands of man, as God waited for man to love Him back. God's love according to this does not sovereignly produce man's love, but is dependent, bound and limited by man, and is only a response to man's love. That is the opposite of the Bible's clear teaching of God's love and grace.
God's love does not change.
How quickly we see human love change from love to hate. To man, if the love we give out is not returned, it is easy to change. God's love is not like this. God's love is unchanging just as He is unchanging.
James 1:17
17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
1 Corinthians 13:8
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
God's love is holy.
God's love is not regulated on an impulse of emotion but rather by principle of His nature. This principle is that God is a holy God. One verse quoted above, comes from the love chapter 1 Corinthians 13, read at many weddings. But many overlook what is said in verse 6
1 Corinthians 13:6
6 (Love) Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
God's love has nothing to do with sin. God's love is found only in truth. Salvation is salvation from our sins. Salvation is not just a ticket out of Hell. We are sinners that have no hope other then to be saved from our sins. God has emotions other then love. Our holy God hates sin and will judge us in our sins.
Hebrews 12
5And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
6For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
Going by the above arguments describing God's love, it is fair to say, that many understate the love of God giving the sinner a false sense that God is okay with his sins. God is in fact love, but God is much more than a big teddy bear that hugs us. God's love is pure, holy and will never fail. God's love is based on His will and covenant that He made with His people. Not understanding God's love will distort the way in which we apply or look for love in our own life.
Human relationships fail today, for they are based on emotions that change and not on a covenant of commitment. Mankind has exchanged love for lust, in hope to find happiness. Parties, money, sex, drugs and anything that feels good have replaced wholeness found in God's love. Happiness is not found in our lust, but is found only in a God that is love. We can learn from God and not base love only on feelings.
With love given only from above we will find, understand and know true love.