These are my notes from when I prepare for my weekly Bible study. The theme is “Desiring God”, John Piper’s book, which argues that if we are serious happiness-seekers we will pursue God more than anything, because everything else cannot compare. Every week we look at a different topic (e.g. love, sin, truth…) and try to see differences between the way our culture sees it, we see it, and the way God sees it. It’s important to get God’s opinion on everything and realize if we are viewing something like “love” in a less than godly way.
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT LOVE?
Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. (Proverbs 10:12)
Look at 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient, kind, it does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude, it does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice in evil, rejoice in truth, love bears all things, it never ends.
How do we use the word on a daily basis?
“I love crepes” (I say that quite often). “I love that show,” is different from “I love you, mom.”
Love is a good thing, we love to love.
Who do I love the most?
How do I love them? How could I love them better?
Love is built on time. One reason I am closer to my parents than casual acquaintances is the amount of time we’ve spent together. If you love someone you crave to spend more time with them.
Do you only love people who are similar to you or who you easily connect with?
There is more to love than connection or emotion. Love is also an action – I can take in a man off the street, feed him, clothe him; and maybe I have nothing in common with him, but I still love him by feeding him and clothing him.
According to “Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible” love in the Old Testament is “the basic character of the relationship between persons, a relationship with the qualities of devotion, loyalty, intimate knowledge, and responsibility. It is not simply an emotion but is the total quality of relationship.”
One aspect of love is that you delight in the person. It is also about respect and responsibility.
Read 1 John 4:
1) Love is from God. (verse 7)
2) To be born of God and to know God is revealed in love, that is, it manifests itself in love is a sign of being born of God (verse 7).
3) God is love. People who don’t love don’t know God. (verse 8)
4) God’s love culminates and climaxes, reaches its greatest point in the sending of Jesus to earth and His death, burial and resurrection for us that we might be saved (verse 9).
5) God loved us first (verses 10, 19) through Jesus.
6) If God loves us, we should love each other (verse 11). Love should fill us and spill over to all peoples.
7) Although God can’t be seen, He is in us if we love. (verse 12)
8) Perfect love casts out fear. (verse 18)
9) You cannot love God if you hate your brother (verse 20). Also look at 1 John 3:15: “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that c no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”
10) If you love God you keep His commandments – especially those to love your neighbor as yourself.
CULTURAL LIES AND MYTHS ABOUT LOVE
1) Love is about me and serving my needs.
2) Love can arrive and go very quickly (the Romeo effect).
3) Love is about physical appearance and attraction. This is confusing love with lust. Once again, Romeo “loves” many women. He loves Juliet at first sight. We love the idea of “love at first sight” but consider what it really is: it means you love their appearance, not their person (you don’t know their person yet). For someone who lives by this kind of love it only moves from person to person, one can never satisfy, and each time it is “love”.
4) Love always feels good (and gives me what I want). As a kid I asked my parents for certain things and sometimes the answer was “No.” Do they love me? Yes. Maybe they can see that what I think is good for me is actually bad (or unnecessary).
5) Love works by rules. A lot of things people usually gripe about in romantic relationships is that certain “rules” of love aren’t followed. That is, “I say ‘I love you’, three times and you only say it once!” There’s no rules for love. Love lives outside of rules and not in them.
6) The best kind of love is romantic love. This is what romantic poetry is all about. The greatest pleasures the earth has to offer is in romantic relationships. God’s love is bigger.
7) Physical acts of love equal real love. Not true! Paul says, “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). Even if you perform the act of giving your life for someone else without actually loving them, then you haven’t loved! Love is more than action (but also not less than it).
Is love only emotional? Only practical? Is it always both?
DIFFERENT TYPES OF LOVE (IN THE BIBLE):
1) Human love (sexual, familial, friendship, and society)
2) Divine love
a) In Himself (between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit)
b) For us
c) Us for Him
Human love does not compare with the love of God. Our love between each other is mangled by sin, hate, jealousy, etc. We are never wholly faithful to someone. Looking to God we are never wholly faithful to Him but He is always faithful. He ahs never sinned against anyone.
WAYS IN WHICH GOD LOVES US
1) He created us (“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb” Psalm 139:13).
2) He sustains us, providing food for us every day. Every blessing is a gift from Him. “Every good and perfect gift is from above” (James 1:17). He blesses us day in and day out, continuing to bring the sun and life and the seasons. You could look at creation and spend forever listing the things God does daily for us. Right now I’m breathing – I don’t know how I can, but I know God has given me the breath of life.
3) Friends, family, spouses. These too are gifts from God and ways in which He loves us. I can see God’s love in my mother’s care when I’m sick. We are built to be in relationship and our relationships are supposed to be defined by love.
4) Jesus Christ. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
“For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” (1 John 4:9)
5) The Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6). We realize who God is and His love for us by the Spirit: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5). The Spirit “helps us in our weakness.” (Romans 8:26)
6) “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
ASPECTS OF GOD’S LOVE
1) It "endures forever”. (Psalm 136)
2) Nothing can separate us from it. “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37-39)
3) He loves whom He chooses (Romans 9), that is, we are not more special than anybody else, God just decided to love us.
4) Complete joy! Knowing God is to love God, to love God is to be full of joy.
5) This list is too short, there are many more qualities of God’s love. Read 1 Corinthians 13 and realize that God does all the things listed in there.
We will love better if we first love God, and God defines love.
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