Misunderstanding of Christian Love

Intro

Hello everyone, I’m very glad to have this opportunity to preach the word today.

I’m Philip Miller, I attend Harding University in Arkansas and I major in Psychology and Theological Studies. It’s what I’m passionate about, and I plan to go a step further from Harding and go to doctorate school in order to be a professional psychologist. I hope that when I get to that point I can incorporate my theological knowledge with my work.

I wanted to intern here because I already have spent a lot of time with members of this congregation at Yosemite Bible Camp, and I knew I’d enjoy spending time with you all.

I feel so blessed to have this chance to develop my skills as a minister, and I feel so loved by all of you. When I’m here I feel the love of the Lord with each and every one of you.

I hear about love all the time in the current culture, and I have to say I find myself disagreeing very often about what love actually is with those in my circles, even with my fellow Christians.

Love is very often misunderstood. Scripture about love is misinterpreted and the result of that is a tainted love unrepresentative of Christ our Lord.

I hear things very often like “love is love,” In order to justify things that aren't loving. People use the concept of love to remain complacent with sin.

Understanding love is the baseline for everything else we do as Christians. It is paramount in our mission. That is why it is so important to understand it correctly. Without proper love, nothing else happens, that is why it is our greatest command.

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Our Greatest Command

Matthew 22:34-40

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 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 first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

This is a lot of people’s favorite verse, and for good reason. What I’d like to do is break it down a little bit.

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The context for this verse is a scene very familiar in the Gospels. The Pharisees and Sadducees are testing Christ. It’s made very clear that that don’t like him. All day he’s been with this crowd of people, and the chief priests are asking him all of these questions, trying to make him slip up so that they can downplay his authority.

When a lawyer asks this question to Jesus. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” When the term lawyer is used, it is to mean an expert in the Jewish law. Someone who has done extensive study on the commandments.

This lawyer was most likely expecting Jesus to answer with the first of the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no other gods before me.”

But Jesus very often takes things to the highest level. Instead of condemning adultery, Jesus says lust is adultery of the heart. Instead of saying you shall not steal, Christ says if someone takes your coat, give him your shirt also.

In the same way, Jesus is saying don’t just put God first, devote your entire heart soul and mind to him.

Bible is always intentional with wording, nothing should be overlooked. I think the original Greek can help us with understanding exactly what Jesus is saying.

Greek has many different terms for Love that all can mean different things. The word that’s used here and that’s most often used when talking about the Love of God is agape, which is a deep love, most often involving faithfulness, commitment, and sacrifice. It’s the devotional love God gives us that we’re called to give to the whole world.

So there are three different people or beings we are called to love, I’m gonna go in reverse order so that we can see how our love should rank.

The last person we’re called to love is ourselves. Verse 39 says we should love our neighbor as ourself.

Because it’s last doesn’t mean it’s not important for use to do. Loving yourself is still crucial, and for some, it’s the hardest thing to do, and that’s for two reasons.

The first is feeling worthless. Being a psychology major, I encounter people with feelings of worthlessness all the time. When I ask them why they feel this way, they give all sorts of reasons, but they all boil down to lack of accomplishment, lack of love felt from others, and

How NOT to love yourself

-Mention self-gratification culture

Love your neighbor

How NOT to love your neighbor

-Mention the “who is my neighbor” verse

Love and compassion

-Your enemies are your neighbors

-This misunderstandings of compassion

-com + pati

-σπλαγχνίζομαι (splagchnizomai) 

Now the first part of the verse says three things. Love with all your heart, Love with all your soul. Love with all your mind.

The Greek word used for heart is kardia, which literally means heart, but was more often used to mean your inner-self, your focus, or your feelings.

The Greek word used for mind is nous. it’s pretty similar to how you use the word mind today, your understanding, intellect, or thoughts

So far, the words we’ve looked at make for a pretty standard commandment: “Love God (meaning commit yourself faithfully to the point of sacrifice) with the entirety of your thoughts and feelings.”

Not bad, but Jesus, being awesome, adds what in my opinion changes the entire verse into something way more beautiful.

The word for soul is psycho, which in Greek means life. Not as in the duration of your life, as in your life-force. Christ is telling us to take the thing within us the drives us to live, and orient it towards God.

Living is not passive, it’s not something that just happens to us. It’s an activity that we constantly take part in. But when we treat it like a passive thing, following wherever the wind blows, that is dangerous for us.

We are called to love God with our entire life.

When we sleep, do it for God

When we eat , do it for God

When we care for our bodies through exercise, or when we care for our minds through study, do it for God.

When life has you low. Very low, and you feel like you cannot do it anymore, remember who you are living for.

You are not your own.

Why is love so important?