LOVE - human and divene

Human and Divine - LOVE

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LOVE—HUMAN and DIVINE

1 John 4:10 — 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

"All you need is love...love is all you need." The Beatles sang this interminably. "What the world needs now, is love, sweet love," sang Burt Bacharach in close harmony. "Love makes the world go round" is proverbial. And the value of love is ancient: Vergil rhapsodized that "Omnia vincit Amor "-- love conquers all; -- but she probably expressed a more carnal version of love than St. Augustine's famous dictum: "Love and do what you will." "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," said Christ (Mat 19 :19). St. John states: "God is love."(1 John 4 :8).

R. F. Horton, a well-known British preacher, in his Autobiography records a pathetic fragment of a conversation which took place between himself and his young sister Anne just before her passing in September 1873. “She was in her sixteenth year,” he writes, “and had been my closest and dearest companion through our childhood. It almost broke my heart when she said on her deathbed: ‘Of course, I know you loved Nell best, but I always loved you best.’ ”

Will there, do you think, ever come a day when the Lord Jesus will say something like that to you and me? “Of course, I know you loved someone or something else best, but I always loved you best.”

Love—human and divine—what a difference there is between them!

Notice some of the contrasts.

1. Human love is temporal; divine love is eternal.

It is wonderful how far human love at its finest will go. “In one of his books W. R. Maltby tells of an incident he had himself observed,” says John Short. “It concerns a workingman in the north of England who married a girl in the village where he lived. Soon she fell into dissolute ways and ruined the home he had set up. His friends urged him to seek relief by way of divorce, but he steadily refused. He had married her ‘for better, for worse,’ and as a Christian man who had loved her, married her, and loved her still for what she once was, he meant to see it through. Things went from bad to worse, and in the end she died unreclaimed, ‘his hands spread over her in pity and in love.’ ”

Nevertheless human love, even in its noblest manifestations, is but temporal.

Divine love is eternal. “To be loved by God,” declares John A. Duke, “is to be loved forever. God does not give His love to anyone that death should ever defeat Him; else death, then, would be greater than God.”

Romans 8:35-39

Romans 8:35–39 ESV

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

2. Human love is fractional; divine love is total.

Writing in his Don Juan on the subject of human love, Lord Byron, who in this regard is surely entitled to be looked upon as an expert, declares:

Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, ’Tis woman’s whole existence.

But there is only One of whom it is true that love is His whole existence, and that is God. The mightiest epigram in the language assures us that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Only His love is total, not fractional.

3. Human love is often merely sentimental; divine love is practical.

Sentimentality is the bane of religion. So much professed love of God and man is mere empty patter, mushy sentiment, finding no practical expression whatever. It is against this that the apostle James inveighs: (2:5–16).

James 2:14–16 ESV

14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

4. Human love is conditional; divine love is unconditional.

Man loves the lovable because he needs to find a worthy or desirable object on which to lavish his affection;

God loves because it is His nature so to do. His love is not dependent for its expression on any qualities in its object, any more than the sun shines only on that which is beautiful.

It shines to make things beautiful. So with the love of God.

1 John 3:16–18 ESV

16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

This Month we will be practicing this love.

Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology The New Testament

The New Testament. The intertestamental literature and the New Testament continue to speak about God as the compassionate one. God’s compassion is demonstrated in his Son’s ministry for and among his people (Matt. 9:36; Mark 6:34). The messianic compassion is extended to the helpless crowds (Matt. 9:36), the sickly masses (Matt. 14:14), the hungry people (Mark 8:2), and the blind men (Matt. 20:34). The waiting father (Luke 15:20) is filled with compassion when he sees his wayward son returning—just as God has compassion on us and accepts us when we repent and return to him.

Believers learn about compassion through example and exhortation. Imitating God and/or Christ has led many to lives of exemplary compassion. The Scriptures also exhort believers to make compassion an integral aspect of their lives (Zech. 7:9; Col. 3:12). Compassion needs to be nurtured and practiced or even this basic love response can grow dull and cold.