- “walk in love (Eph. 5:2)”
- “love one another (John 15:12)”
- [for women] “love our husbands and our children (Titus 2:4)”
- “love our neighbor[s] (Matt. 22:39)”
- “love our enemies (Luke 6:27)”
Let us also not forget that God Himself
is love (1 John 4:8).
After recognizing how important love is to God, we can look at
five basic principles from scripture that illustrate and help us understand Christian love. And after that, some highlights from the rest of the chapter. (All quotes, unless otherwise noted, are by Elizabeth George.)
1. Love is an act of the will.
- “It’s hard to love under difficult circumstances, yet that’s exactly where most of life is lived, isn’t it?”
- “[Love] is…a feeling of the mind as much as of the heart; it concerns the will as much as the emotions. It describes the deliberate effort—which we can make only with the help of God…” (William Barclay).
- “Christian love, you see, is an act of the will which ‘needs to be directly cultivated.”
2. Love is action—not just words.
- “Love has work to do, and love does that work—love takes action—even when doing so requires strenuous effort. Our actions—backing up our words—are the
proof [emphasis mine] of our love.”
- “Where has God placed you to show forth love by your actions?”
- “To whom can you demonstrate love ‘in the day-by-day, mundane circumstances of life’?”
3. Love reaches out to the unlovely.
It is so easy to love those who are gracious, kind, sweet…etc. I know I personally have a hard time loving those who are unappreciative, rude, and downright stinky! But I was struck by a reference Mrs. George made to Matthew 5:43-46. If even non-believers can love the lovely/lovable, what makes
me any different from
them? Following this command to love the unlovely requires the application of principles one and two. First I must
will to love this person. But to will is not enough; I must take it one step further and manifest my will in action. It really puts thing into perspective to remember that “God’s love is never deserved—it simply is. And that’s the kind of love you and I are to extend to one another.”
- “Thank God that when the Spirit is at work in our lives, He enables us to do what Jesus commands us to do [in Luke 6:35].”
- “To recognize that there is someone I do not love is to say to God, ‘I do not love You enough to love that person.” Jerry Bridges. –ouch!
4. We need God to help us love.
- “Christ calls us to love our enemies by allowing God to love them through us when we can’t do it on our own.”
- “[Love] means that no matter what a man may do to us by way of insult or injury or humiliation we will never seek anything else but his highest good…never…seek anything but the best even for those who seek the worst for us.” William Barclay
- “Those who are hardest to love are the ones who need it most.”
5. Love expects nothing in return.
- “The love the Bible tells us to extend…is
not self-seeking…It’s only intent is to love as Jesus loved while praying for others to respond to God’s message of love through us.”
- * - * -* - * - * - * -
Defining Love- “As the five principles of biblical love clearly reveal, love
is the sacrifice of self.”
- “He will help us and show us where we tend to be selfish and where He’d like us to love more sacrificially.”
Living Out Love
- “It helps me as a Christian…who loves God and yearns for a closer walk with Him to see my call to live out love as an assignment from God to love anyone and everyone He chooses to place in my path.”
- “We may not necessarily
feel like loving [others], but when you and I allow God to fill us up with
His life-giving love, we can then carry
His love to others and pour it out into their lives. The love is not ours—it’s God’s. But when we present our empty selves to the
Source of love, and are filled by
Him, then we are able to share
His love with thirsty people.”
- “At times, the love God fills me with in the morning seems bountiful and unlimited, and I can share His love until the sun goes down. But then come those days—those
hard days!—when I seem to be beating a path back to God minute after minute. Maybe the task is harder, maybe the heart of the person I’m trying to love is harder, maybe my own heart is harder, or maybe I’m not spending enough time with Him to receive what I need to share—I don’t know. I do know, though, that only as I keep turning to God can I keep loving the people He places in my path.”
I would like to close with an assignment:
Pick the person God has placed in your life who is most difficult to love and put these principles of love into action.
When I first read this assignment, I thought “Oh no, please not that. I don’t
want to love that person.” But as I have been slowly—and painfully—fighting against Self, and seeking to do what Christ has called me to, I have started to see very small changes in my own heart attitudes.
I am still far from loving as I ought. But I know this is what God has called me to—commanded actually—and I know He’ll give me grace as I seek to honor Him in obedience.
“By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us.” 1 John 3:16a
“And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour.” Eph 5:2
“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” Phil. 1:9
