By Aaron Igleheart
As we celebrate Valentine’s Day, there is no doubt that love is on the minds of many. Everywhere we turn, shades of pinks and reds with hearts abound. While Cupid, chocolates, and roses might be the images most often connected with thoughts of love, there is a more excellent reflection of love in God’s Word. God’s love and the love He calls us to have toward others goes beyond the 14th of February.
Lesson 1: God is the Ultimate Source of Love
We have often heard it said that “God Is love.” One of the most often quoted verses from scripture is John 3:16 (ESV) “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” God rescued us from our sins and provided us the gift of life eternally with Him. Let’s think about what that really means in terms of love.
This can be boiled down to a few key concepts. First, God the Father has obviously loved the Son. He was pleased with His Son at His baptism. He crowned His Son with an inheritance of the nations and gave Him the name above all names. (Ps 2, Php 2:5-11). Then, the Son, in His humanity, shows us what it means to live in God-abiding and perfect humanity. Perfect humanity seeks to do the will of God. The Father sends the Son into the world to save sinners, and He certainly accomplishes this (1 Tim 1:15, Jn 3:16, 1 Jn 2:1-2, Rom 3:19-26). Thirdly, the Son demonstrates obedience and love in His ministry to the lost and His disciples through His compassionate grace and care for their needs. His ultimate act of love (through obedience) would be His dying for His friends so that we would be reconciled and justified (Col 1:15-20, Rom 4:25). Jesus paid the ultimate price for us (our sin) by His death on the cross, and through His resurrection we have a hope eternal.
Lesson 2: God Commands Us to Love One Another
Just as the Father loved Christ, so Christ has loved His disciples. Christ tells them to remain in His love. If the disciples keep His commandments, they will remain in this love, His love, just as Christ has also kept His Father’s commandments, and He remains/abides in His Father’s love. This is in keeping with what Jesus demonstrated in His true friendship for His disciples! Jesus provided them and us with a demonstration of biblical love.
Jesus said in John 15:9–15 (ESV) “ 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”
Truly, there is no greater love than someone who lays down His life for His friends! If you abide in Him and keep His Word that He has spoken to you, then you are His friend. This is especially significant for our relationship with God because Christ is our means of imputed righteousness and grace before the eternal God so that we are restored to what we had lost in Eden. Our friend, Jesus Christ, did this, and John emphasizes that if you truly abide in Him, yes, you will keep His commandments, which means obedience. This is how you demonstrate your love and commitment as He has in His love for you. If you keep the commandments of Jesus, then you abide in His love, and you follow the model of Jesus where He too has abided in the love of His Father and kept His commandments.
This love and commandment is characterized by sacrifice. The world and its desires are passing away, but the one who does the will of God remains forever. Set your eyes on Heaven and love one another! He has taught and demonstrated what it means to love one another as true friends sacrificially! It is the model of the gospel, and it needs to be lived out if you are in Christ and of God!
You cannot abide in the love of Jesus if you do not actually want to love and care in the same manner that He has. Does your heart close against God? If it is closed against God, then one can argue that it is closed against your brother because it is closed against God. Likewise, one who does not love does not really know God.
Consider 1 John 4:7–12 (NET 2nd ed.) “7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God. 8 The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him. 10 In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us.”
This should give us pause to reflect on our relationship with God, our love for God, and our love for others.
Lesson 3: We Must Abide in God to Truly Love One Another
Our genuineness in godly love for one another characterizes our very relationship with God because it speaks to the reality that we have been born again and fathered by God. In contrast, those who do not have this love for others testify to the reality that they indeed do not know God because God is love.
Without God, there is no definition of what true and biblical love means. Love is characterized by sacrificial living for the well-being of others in the name of the gospel so that those who receive this love may come to know the richness and glory of Christ. And this is what we have come to know through the faithful disciples who, in their God-abiding love, loved us with the love that is only revealed from Christ and comes from Christ so that we may share in the same love that they possess and have fullness of joy as well.
Let’s face it: it’s not always easy! Only through God’s given and sent Spirit can we truly abide in God because, as Jesus said and promised, those who are truly His followers receive the Helper, the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God enables us to abide in Jesus and the Father so that we live this love outward to our fellow brethren in the body of Christ. Again, it must be said that this kind of love is not of the world, and the world does not know what we speak of because the god of this age blinds them.
We speak of this love from God the Son, The Eternal One, who condescended and took on our flesh. He remained what He was and became what He was not in taking on our form. The God-man, Jesus Christ, revealed these things so that we may participate in the overflowing and abundant joy only found in God Himself, and this God, indeed, is Christ our LORD.
God has given us the same love that always existed in eternity past within The Triune Godhead and has given it to us so that we may share in it and be called children of God through Christ. This love is defined by the life and ministry of Jesus and His all-satisfying work on the cross and in His resurrection. These great and mighty works before the Father were pleasing to Him so that we have gained the right to be called children of God, and this is a gift to the people of God that is unfading and will never pass away.
Do we understand that having true love for others is only possible if our love flows from God in the love He has loved us with? Or do we conflate His love in an ugly mixture with our own self-exalting appearance of love? The heart of these questions is whether we truly want to see the gospel multiplied unto our fellow man who does not know what we know when it comes to knowing Jesus as Savior and Lord. If we long to see His love demonstrated in our actions, then we have the mindset that He has, which is the reality that we long to see the ministry of reconciliation and restoration carried out.
Jesus is our advocate before the Father and has cleansed us from all sin because He became an all-satisfying propitiation before the Father so that we may be reconciled to participate in eternal fellowship and friendship with Himself. This reality ought to drive us to be full of love and compassion for those who do not know Jesus.
We need to pray frequently and often to be saturated in these truths; otherwise, we will go astray and lose the focus and picture of the mission to glorify the Lord in this ministry. If we truly love another in His love which He has given unto us, then we abide in Him and He in us, and we know this to be true by the given Spirt of God
1 John 4:15–16 (ESV)
15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
In summary, as John says in 1 John 4:9-10, the love we know is this: God has sent His one and only Son into the world so that we may have eternal life through Him. John makes a considerable point that should humble us to realize our utter dependence on God and should fill us with gratitude for the love we have received from Him. He says in obtaining this love in ourselves, it is not because we have loved God, but rather that He has loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice we needed for our sins to be paid for. Our hearts and souls have been reconciled and are now aided by the Holy Spirit to love and obey the commands of God. The Father and Jesus have surely made a home within us by giving us their Holy Spirit. We abide in Him, and He in us!
Praise God that we can count ourselves loved and blessed to receive such marvelous spiritual blessings in being called children of God through Jesus and His perfect work!