Love Is God's Answer For Relationships

Love Always Makes A Good Topic

We experience love, we need love, we give love, we receive love, we live love, we want love, we want to feel love, and we want to feel love for another.

Tomorrow is our annual celebration of love that we call Valentine’s Day. An excuse to have more chocolate and a reminder that our spouses love to get flowers.

But if our only idea of what love is comes from Valentine’s Day or greeting cards, we are going to get it wrong.

Too many people have experienced love as abusive, love as greedy, love that is spoken but not active.

That is how God experiences love from us so much of the time— and before we met Jesus, wow, did we ever abuse the love of God, get greedy about the love of God, and say we love God when nothing about the way we behave shows it.

Why is Love So Misunderstood?

Love is based in relationship, and the kind of relationship defines what kind of love we are talking about.

What, you mean there are different kinds of loves? ABSOLUTELY!

I want to give you a chance to give yourself a checkup on how your practice of love fits in with the kinds of love you are practicing now, and how your love stacks up to God’s standards of faithful love.

God shows us His Faithful Covenant Love all the time. It is outlined in the Old Testament. It’s a love that never fails, because God is faithful. And it’s love that keeps its promises, because God is a covenant-keeping God.

Today, I’m not looking at the Old Testament, but the famous “Love Chapter” of 1 Corinthians 13 .

Bobbi and I have celebrated 50 years of faithfully loving one another according to our promises. Simeon and Georgie Green, many of you know, celebrated their 50th anniversary Richard and Mary Lopez, hearing members that do Sidewalk Sunday School in El Monte, just shared thier 55th wedding anniversary. They were wed on January 28, 1967. Their story is a story of faithful covenant love lived out, according to their vows of marriage, through all the ups and downs that long-term marriages endure. They were able to celebrate the milestone because their marriage has included not only a faithful love, but also the enjoyment of one another, loyalty given to the relationship and preference for one another.

Faithful, enjoyable, loyal, preferential are words that can be used to describe in part the words of the original New Testament Greek that are behind our English word “love”.

In the beginning, there was love.

But of course. God is Love

And God wants a good relationship with us.

The three great commands are these:

From Matthew 22:36-40,

Love God With All You Are

Love Your Neighbor Like Yourself

And then Jesus tells his disciples in the upper room, in John 13:34-35 “34 “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.””

Love One Another As Christ Loves You

Which is a command that John tells us is important when he is writing to the church decades after Jesus said that. We find it in . . .

1 John 4:7-8

1 John 4:7–8 CSB

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

We love one another because that love comes from God.

We love because in Christ we are Born Again of God.

We love because we know God

And God is Love.

You can’t call yourself a Christian and not have love for one another. It Just doesn’t work.

How We Love Is Important

All of those loves are somewhat different. Let me explain, starting from the act of conception.

Eros: The craving love

Although eros love or epithymia love might get us together, it won’t keep us together, for it will always see the greener grass in the neighbor’s yard. It’s a cause of unfaithfulness. And this kind of mis-balanced understanding of love will make the dumb-struck teen think they cannot live without their girlfriend if they are separated. It’s results are stalking, suicide, and even murder to keep the other from loving someone else. Lust and Erotic desire only cares about itself.

And this kind of selfish love is also at the heart of most of our vanity. It cares about itself more than it cares about any other person.

Agape: The giving love

This is the love that God shows to us. It is totally opposite of erotic or lust-driven love. It is love that, by example and definition, cares more for the one that is loved than it cares for itself. Giving love is a fully mature love that can be totally mutual and satisfying. It is not reserved for God alone, but God is the best exemplar of it. He created mankind for relationship with himself, knowing ahead of time what it would cost him.

A giving love. And Jesus loved us to the end, and his journey to the cross was a journey of agape love. As he sacrifices himself for our good, he says, “Father, forgive them.” Love that gives without limit.

Agapeo: The cherishing love

It is very closely related to the agape love that comes from God.

Agapao comes from the same root, and is love that is on purpose and really cares for the other, no matter what.

It is full of good wishes, prizing the one who is loves, with measured affection of esteem, and unbounded delight.

This love is willing to give time and energy and resources and favor to the one loved.

It is agapao love that Jesus tells us to have when he says, “love your neighbor as yourself.” Hold them in high esteem, with goodwill and care for them.

Love in 1 Corinthians 13:

This great ‘love chapter’ of the Bible is important for us because it shows us that we need to develop the kind of love that God shows us. Love in 1 Corinthians 13 is agape love.

This is about what agape love is and what does not fit the definition.

The illustration that Paul gives of love directly follows what we shared a few weeks ago about the Body of Christ, where every part is needed and valued. Paul said each one should desire the greater gifts that God has for them.

I said that those gifts that are greatest are the gifts that God has designed just for you, not a gift you don’t have but you want. So the first few verses explain why just wanting a spiritual gift won’t cut the mustard.

When God’s Gifts Seem Greater Than Love

1 Corinthians 13:1-3a Easy to Read Version

1 I may speak in different languages, whether human or even of angels. But if I don’t have love, I am only a noisy bell or a ringing cymbal.

2 I may have the gift of prophecy, I may understand all secrets and know everything there is to know, and I may have faith so great that I can move mountains. But even with all this, if I don’t have love, I am nothing.

3 I may give away everything I have to help others, and I may even give my body as an offering to be burned. But I gain nothing by doing all this if I don’t have love.

Paul starts with languages: It doesn’t matter what you sound like or what language you are using or if you are trying to have a conversation with angels or foreigners, here’s the rule:

If that gift if operated without agape love, it is self-serving and doesn’t serve the body of Christ. Remember, every gift of grace is given for the common good. Paul says it don’t matter how you talk. You are just noise without love.

Then Paul mentions prophecy and understanding and knowledge. He even mentions faith enough to move mountains. These are important categories in the spiritual realm, and like all the others are given for the good of the church. But if they are about oneself, instead of about loving others no matter what the cost for their good, well, who cares about you?

He speaks of sacrifice: giving away everything may help some people you give things too, but with love there is no reward. Even if what you give is the sacrifice of your body, if you are doing it for the posthumous silver cross or some such, or to make sure the insurance will pay out to the ones you should be taking care of, well. What have you really gained?

The heart of the matter is this: All the religious stuff you can do means nothing if you don’t actually have a will to love others and serve their real needs no matter what it costs you. Here’s a simple measure you can use: did you do more good for others than the praise you got for yourself?

The Most Important Things About Agape Love

Paul shares 15 features of agape love that we can aspire to:

1 Corinthians 13:4-5 Easy to Read Version

4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, and it is not proud. 5 Love is not rude, it is not selfish, and it cannot be made angry easily. Love does not remember wrongs done against it.

Every great reality has things we won’t understand until they have time to cook. So with agape love. This love of the will, this love by choice, matures into greatness as we begin to live it out in relationship with others.

The Soft Side of Love

Love is patient

Love is kind.

Pride or Love?

Love does not envy

Love is not boastful

Love is not arrogant

Relational Love

Love is not rude

Love is not self-seeking

Love is not irritable

Love keeps no records of wrongs

Love Cares About What God Cares About

6 Love is never happy when others do wrong, but it is always happy with the truth.

Love is Always Around

7 Love never gives up on people. It never stops trusting, never loses hope, and never quits.

Love Lasts

8a Love will never end.

Love never ends.

Not so much prophecies.

Not the gift of tongues.

Not even knowledge lasts

Love is God’s Great Command

1 Corinthians 8:3

But whoever loves God is known by God.

1 John 3:23

This is what God commands: that we believe in his Son Jesus Christ, and that we love each other as he commanded.

1 John 4:8

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

1 John 4:12

No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us. If we love each other, God’s love has reached its goal—it is made perfect in us.

1 John 4:16

So we know the love that God has for us, and we trust that love. God is love. Everyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in them.