Show Love (part 1)

"we scream love, love, love, but don't know what the word means"
- Corban

What is love from the christian perspective?

When it comes to christianity, people tend to twist and bend the idea of love into all sorts of ways to fit their agenda.

People will even go so far as to say its christian love to not just condone, but to celebrate what the bible calls sin.

What does God have to say about love?

What is it? How do we show it?

I thought it would be beneficial if we spent some time meditating on this.

The first thing we need to understand is that God is love.

1 John 4:8 (ESV)  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

From this understanding, we have to say, that to have the kind of love that the bible talks about, is to have God.

For God is the love that we ought to have.

Unbelievers are quick to point out that God doesn't act in a very loving way plenty of times throughout the bible, so how can we claim that God us love.

The issue is that their definition of love is different from the one declared in the bible.

Since God is love, He is the standard by which we identify what is and isn't love, or loving.

With that said, does God describe Himself in a way that helps us to understand what love is?

There is a place in scripture where God declares Himself to moses.

Here's what He said about Himself.

Exodus 34:6-7 (ESV)  The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

God, who is love, states that the standard for the kind of love that He deals with, not only has mercy and grace, but also has anger.

He forgives the iniquity, transgression, and sin of some, but won't clear the guilty of others.

Even visiting the iniquity upon ones lineage.

Thats the kind of love that God is, and the kind of love that God shows.

This is why He protects and helps some and brings the utter destruction upon others.

So the love He is and shows is not one that can be demanded of Him.

He has no obligation to extend His love. This is why He begins His proclamation by saying He's merciful and gracious.

Mercy is the witholding of the just punishment or consequence that one rightly deserves.

Grace is the giving of favor that is undeserved.

Those two things, by definition, can't be demanded. They can only be asked for, with the decision to do so being left up to the one who is being petitioned.

This makes the love that God is, and has, one that is freely given.

This is why those who've been recipients of God's love, rejoice, are thankful, and seek to love Him back.