The New Commandment
Pastor Brandon Andrews Sr
Love is • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 3 viewsThe Church is identified by the world, by it's love which was a commandment of Jesus and fruit of it's connection to Christ and God
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The Church of Love
The Church of Love
RECAP IDENTITY CRISIS AND HOW LOVE AND THE CHURCH COEXIST!
How much can you love someone? How much can someone love you? What are the rules of engagement concerning love? These are familiar questions surrounding a very sensitive and often times vague and misunderstood concept.
Love is to some just an answer to a chemical response that takes place internally, when one engages with someone they are pleased with. It is a mentally stimulation or a high, if you will because you are now encountering someone you have some semblance of relationship with. Greek writers often referred to this as phileos love. “Phileos” defines relational love between 2 people, it is the root word used in naming the Greek City of “Philadelphia. This kind of love is pretty much likened or found in a covenant since, it’s person to person, and truly is based on both parties doing their part. Another interpretation to this love is Eros, love which is used more sensually or in the sense of favor. To Love this way indicates a special reason for someone to receive a set of behavior from an individual. This is the kind of love that arises when we see someone we are attracted to and they catch our visible or mental attention.
The limitation however of these two types of love interpretations are the conditions that need to be met in order to maintain their connection. I can only “love” someone I am in relationship with or someone that stimulates me visibly because of their looks. The moment all of my conditions are not met, there is no love or any more love to be given. These types of love, complicate friendships, and leave doors open for “growing apart, they leave open the possibilities of misunderstandings and introduce lust into places they don’t belong. Marriages end when one spouses no longer is contractually fulfilling or even when one spouse is no longer physically attracted to the other. There is no hope in this kind of love.
A hopeful kind of love, or a love filled with hope has it’s name as well. Agapaō-to love; it involves a deep level of affection and intimacy. This love comes and operates much differently than the other 2. When this translation is used, it highlights often times a parental love or a child love to their own parents, it’s used to describe many connections often between the natural and the divine. It is this type of love that the church is called to use and execute as we walk in submission, knowledge and connection to God through Jesus. It’s a distinguished love, one that is obvious and unmistakable and has a purposes that mutually benefits ALL parties at all times.
I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples: if you have love for one another.”
Just as the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you; remain in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.
And He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.”
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.