Hi people, today I’ll be writing on God’s Love. Yeah, this to is from a sermon I heard. I can’t help but share this with you all because it is so soul stirring. I am actually starting to live of sermons…lol, may be someday I’ll get back to writing my own. Anyways coming back, let me share with you what I understood so far of what he spoke of on God’s love, I would like to tell you guys that the Bible is founded on the Love of God. In the Old Testament, God declares to his people how much he loves them and in the New Testament, he actually proves it in action. Let me give you an example.
Isaiah 49:15 (Old Testament)
So the Lord answers, “Can a woman forget her own baby and not love the child she bore? Even if a mother should forget her child, I will never forget you.
1 John 4:10 (New Testament)
This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven.
As you know, God (Jesus) endured being tortured and put to death to pay the price of our sins, which was death itself. This was the will of the Father. This is something, which shows that Faith in Jesus is the only Faith that you can have in God because this is the only faith in the whole world that shows God’s Sacrificial Love not only in word but also in action. Do not get me wrong, I am not trying to show you some “new age love stuff” or some sought of “hippy love idea”, you know like “make love not war” or like in the 60’s when a hippy would give a soldier a flower. What I am talking of is what message the authors of the Bible were talking of. Let me add a drop of water to your ocean of what you already know. Well for starters the New Testament was written in Greek because at that given time Greek was the most popular language. So the Bible was written in a time & in a language that the majority could understand. Now the “love” that was written of in the New Testament was written as “Agape”, which is Greek. Check the definition given below.
Agape/Agapao defined:
Agape (noun)/Agapao (verb) is an unselfish, unconditional, sacrificial love, and is a love that can also be given to one who is NOT worthy of it. It is often referred to among Christians as the God kind of love.
Here is a break down on “Agape/Agapao”:
Agape (noun) is used 116 times in the New Testament.
Agapao (verb) is used 146 times in the New Testament listed below.
So you see this kind of love existed even during the time the Bible was written, which was a few decades into AD for the New Testament and many of years into BC for the Old Testament. Let me emphasize that the Love spoken of here is “unselfish, unconditional, sacrificial love”, this kind of love exist fictionally only in movies & in reality only from God. This kind of Love is given not because the recipient is deserving, infact the recipient does not have the potential to Love the same way because human nature takes advantage of what is good not to give back good but to make use of what is good to the fullest ….that is what human nature is by itself. Let me put it this way, God love us so much that he gave up his own Son to save us, fully knowing that we would never deserve or be able to repay such love. Let me quote Titus 3:5-7.
Titus 3:5-7 (he is God)
5 he saved us. It was not because of any good deeds that we ourselves had done, but because of his own mercy that he saved us, through the Holy Spirit, who gives us new birth and new life by washing us. 6 God poured out the Holy Spirit abundantly on us through Jesus Christ our Saviour, 7 so that by his grace we might be put right with God and come into possession of the eternal life we hope for.
If you would allow me to be very blunt then I would say that man is worse than an animal. I’ll give you 2 examples.
- Consider a dog, you will know that a dog by nature will never bite the hand that cares for him but you cannot say the same about a mans nature.
- We all know that 90% of the damage caused to the environment is because of no animal but because of man.
Don’t get me know wrong people I do not hate mankind. I am a man myself and I love the new life that Christ has given me but what I was trying to show you is that God love us so much that he saved us by his grace even though we are sinful by nature. Here is some supporting scripture.
Ephesians 2:5
that while we were spiritually dead in our disobedience he brought us to life with Christ. It is by God’s grace that you have been saved.
Another thing that I would like to enlighten you with is that it is God’s love that saves us. Let me light you up with some more scripture.
1 John 4:16
16 And we ourselves know and believe the love which God has for us.
God is love, and those who live in love live in union with God and God lives in union with them.
1Corinthians 13:4-5
4 Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud; 5 love is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs;
From the first piece of New Testament scripture you can see that God is love. The second piece of scripture tells you among other things, that Love does not keep a record of wrongs. Linking the two, you can see that it is God’s love that will make sure that your wrongs are forgiven. I repeat it is God’s Love, which is the reason you are forgiven… again I would say God’s Unconditional Love. I have shown you from above that this unconditional is from the Bible (Agape). So my friends your sins are NOT forgiven because of what you have done, you may have prayed everyday or have done good / charitable deeds or fasted or sacrificed an animal. You are forgiven because God loves you. This forgiveness in love makes sense ONLY when you consider the Jesus’ died for your sins. Unconditional Love my friends that is why we are saved. If our salvation were to depend on us it would not be called Unconditional Love. God’s love is unconditional and it is for this reason that we receive what we don’t deserve and this is what is known as His grace.
Ephesians 2:8
For it is by God’s grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of your own efforts, but God’s gift, so that no one can boast about it.
To continue, I would like to clear a common misconception. Let me put a question to you, if you could change something in a person’s life in order to get that person closer to you then out of 2 people
- A horrible sinner
- A light sinner
Who do you think will yield a better result? Keep your thoughts with you & read the scripture below.
Luke 7:36-50 (Pharisee is like a Jewish Priest & the Pharisee thought of Jesus only as a prophet because he knew little of Jesus)
36 A Pharisee invited Jesus to have dinner with him, and Jesus went to his house and sat down to eat. 37 In that town was a woman who lived a sinful life. She heard that Jesus was eating in the Pharisee’s house, so she brought an alabaster jar full of perfume 38 and stood behind Jesus, by his feet, crying and wetting his feet with her tears. Then she dried his feet with her hair, kissed them, and poured the perfume on them. 39 When the Pharisee saw this, he said to himself, “If this man really were a prophet, he would know who this woman is who is touching him; he would know what kind of sinful life she lives!”
40 Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
“Yes, Teacher,” he said, “tell me.”
41 “There were two men who owed money to a moneylender,” Jesus began. “One owed him five hundred silver coins, and the other owed him fifty. 42 Neither of them could pay him back, so he cancelled the debts of both. Which one, then, will love him more?”
43 “I suppose,” answered Simon, “that it would be the one who was forgiven more.”
“You are right,” said Jesus. 44 Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your home, and you gave me no water for my feet, but she has washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. 45 You did not welcome me with a kiss, but she has not stopped kissing my feet since I came. 46 You provided no olive oil for my head, but she has covered my feet with perfume. 47 I tell you, then, the great love she has shown proves that her many sins have been forgiven. But whoever has been forgiven little shows only a little love.”
48 Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”
49 The others sitting at the table began to say to themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?”
50 But Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
From the above piece of scripture, I would like to talk of different love, a God given love/zeal from man for God. You see you may say “hey, I am the worst of sinners. I have been the ring leader in all the bad stuff that happens in my neighborhood”. Well the above scripture show that when Jesus walks into your life, His love will bring about the best of changes in you despite your human nature. Jesus is God and he will use his power to transform you, then you will gladly accept Jesus, because deep within, you will know that all your sins in the past, present and even in the future….have been forgiven. You have been set free. In fact as the above scripture says, you will love Him more than the others because, your sins were a lot but He loved you first (1 John 4:19) and forgave you of all your sins. Allow me to show you the unlikely people whom God has loved & used according to his purpose. So do not feel like God can’t use you, just remember.
Noah was a drunk (Genesis 9:21)
Jacob was a liar (Genesis 27:19)
Joseph was abused (Genesis 37:23)
Moses had a stuttering problem (Exodus 4:10)
Gideon was afraid (Judges 6:27)
Samson was a womanizer (Judges 14:1-2, Judges16:1, Judges16:4)
Rahab was a prostitute (Joshua 2:1)
David had an affair and was a murderer (2 Samuel 11)
Isaiah preached naked (Isaiah 20:2-3)
Jonah ran from God (Jonah 1:3)
Naomi was a widow (Ruth 1:3)
Job went bankrupt (Job1:13-22)
Peter denied Christ (3 times!) (Matthew 26:69-75)
Mary Magdalene was the Samaritan woman who was divorced, more than once. (John 4:15-19)
Zacchaeus was too small (Luke 19:1-3)
Paul was a persecutor of God’s people [Christians] (Acts 8:1-3, Acts 9:1)
Lazarus was dead! (John 1:1-16)
So you see, just as God loved these guys, despite who they were, God loves you for whom you are but it is this same love that makes you change into who He wants you to be. I would like to close this post the most popular of scripture on the love of God for the world.
John 3:16
16 For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.
Making known the Defeated Dragon 