Love: More than an Emotion

Ho Hum

I believe Tina Turner was correct:

What’s love got to do with it?

What's love got to do, got to do with it What's love but a second hand emotion What's love got to do, got to do with it Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken

She clearly draws a lone between physical attraction and love

Love is something deeper, more meaningful. It may be one expression of Love, but it does not encapsulate love.

WBTU

Much of the Christian writings and self-help books try to address a

complex term - Love

address the expression without understanding its source, nature and purpose

FI

Source

ILLUS: The Five Love Languages - Gary Chapman

He directly ties it to the emotional health of an individual

More psychology than Christian theology

Never mentions Jesus

Could lead to confusion

Linda and I attended a conference early in our marriage

Attended with another couple in our SS class

We have survived 26 years of marriage

They have been divorced for over 20

Why?

It could be because this conference conveyed that the ability to love was ours.

The source of Love was misguided

The _source_ of Love is only found in God through Jesus

Romans 5:5 ESV

5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Allusion to Pentecost - HS being poured out on the early Christians

Love of God

Poured out on us through Jesus Christ and his Son, work of reconciliation, and then applied to us by the HS

John Murray - The Holy Spirit is the “seal of its efficacy and genuineness.”

It is important that we not think that we are the source of love, but know the truth, God is the source of love in our hearts.

Once we understand this we can then see how it is expressed in the Christian life.

Nature

Paul speaks of Love - agape - noun

KJV translates as charity - French “cher” or Latin “carus”

different meaning today - so Love that comes from God

NOT from within our own hearts

Love is something shown to us by God

God is love - God’s nature is love

Makes sense that the source of love would be love itself

1 John 4:8 ESV

8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4:16 ESV

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.

Through Jesus Christ

Moo - Romans Commentary

“Sending his Son to die for people who refused to worship him (the basic connotation of ungodly) reveals the magnitude of God’s love for us.”

Love is something given to us by God

We love because we have received love

It was made effectual by the HS in us

So, that we may express it:

Colossians 3:12–14 ESV

12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Love is something that we _transfer_

“The hearts of believers are regarded as being suffused with the love of God, it controls and captivates their hearts.” - John Murray, Romans

Paul encourages the Galatians to love

Galatians 5:13–14 ESV

13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Illus: Transfer Case

Transfers the energy from the transmission in a 4 wheeled, all wheeled or multi axle vehicle to the axles of the vehicle

Synchronize the rotation difference in each axle

Takes the energy and distributes it as designed to do

What is Love designed to do?

Purpose

Love is something to be practiced

Paul mentions here it is to be practiced

Best thing we can practice is love

Colossians 3:14 ESV

14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

When we do we Glorify God and are sanctified

Opposite of love is apathy - Mike Jones

When we do not practice love we are not glorifying God

Matthew 22:34–40 ESV

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 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. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

When we mimic the nature of God by loving Him and others he is being honored and worshipped

Marriage Counseling

I worked with many couples who I thought had no chance of ever loving one another.

One couple I worked with was in bad shape. They were apathetic toward one another. She was in tears and ready to quit. He was indifferent and fed up.

After two years of helping them practice loving one anther their marriage was salvaged. We used many different tools to help them practice love.

At the end of two years the scene in my office was completely different. They both came in and thanked me for saving their marriage. My response was that it wasn’t me, it wasn’t even them, it was God.

God gets all of the credit for anything good in our lives. He is the source of the love, we can only mimic this love with his help.

The Christians is to show the love of Christ, so that we shine the light of Christ in the world, so that others may be attracted to Him and may come to be a Christian through our actions. And, when this happens we must give all glory to God. A secondary effect of this is our own growth in Love, in being more like Christ.

So What?

We need to understand what love is in order for it to be a part of our life. The Christian is called to love, but if we see it as an emotion that we feel that comes and goes, then we act more like the world, than Jesus Christ.

We must understand that God is the source of love and that it is exhibited through Jesus Christ and is made effectual to us through the HS.

We must understand we are merely instruments of love in the world,

And that we are to do this so that God is glorified, through our witness and through our own spiritual growth

Message

How then do we accomplish this practice of love? How do we avoid being apathetic to God and his work in this world.? How do we avoid being apathetic toward our neighbor.

Prayer, if God is the source we must completely depend on him to teach us.

Practice, we must interact with people in order to learn to love.

Remember the gospel

It is the love of God to believers, a love that suffers no fluctuation or reverse.” - John Murray

Social distancing does not work in practicing love.

Patience, we must realize it is a process that is only completed when Christ returns.