If I were to ask a room full of people what love is, I think we would get a lot of different ideas, especially when we look at God’s love. Do we realize that God is actually love? Galatians 5:22-26, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have the sinful nature crucified with their passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us stay in tune with the Spirit. Let us not become vain, provoking and envying each other.” I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the list of the fruit of the Spirit begins with love.
In John 21:15-17 Jesus reinstates Peter after the three times he denied Jesus. The first two times Jesus uses the word ‘agape’, and the third time he uses ‘phileo’. In the English language, love is a difficult word because you have to look at what you are describing to know the type of love. You can say ‘I love Jesus Christ’, ‘I love my best friend’ or even ‘I love shoes’. Agape is sacrificial and unconditional love: it is the love that God has both for you and for me. You cannot act to earn this love, you cannot deserve it, and you cannot work hard to get more of it. He simply loves us unconditionally and forever and will never change. Looking at the love of God, God loves you perfectly and you cannot add to what is perfect. You can’t get up in the morning and think ‘I’ll do better, work harder, serve more, give more money, read my Bible more and pray more to be loved by God more, because God already loves you, with his agape love.
As we look at the fruit of the Spirit, we need to understand the call to be conformed to the image of the Son of God in the realm of agape love. If you’ve raised children, you know that sometimes they do nasty things, but that doesn’t mean you stop loving them as a son or a daughter. You can hate the behavior, but you must still love the person, even though the behavior or sin may be unacceptable. You need to truly understand that God does not withdraw love from him if we misbehave. God loves his children with an eternal love and he has nothing to do with us, he has been born from the heart of God for each one of us.
How did God show that agape love? Through the cross. Yesterday I did a one hour live television show with Revelation TV about intimacy with God. I told the producer that I wanted to talk about the cross and about the love that God showed through the cross. It is important to realize that we must never speak of the Fatherly Heart of God without speaking of Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross. Yes, we want to understand the heart of the Father, but we remember that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus.
The next type of love is phileo love, which is brotherly love. When we believe in Jesus and follow him wholeheartedly, we are part of God’s family, and therefore we are brothers and sisters, capable of expressing this phileo love for one another. Make sure you embrace this kind of love. He has a clean heart and surrenders. There is a principle about love that is never taught in school and it is this: Love gives. When we have phileo love for a brother or sister in Christ, we will be giving. When love tries to take, it gets nothing. Lust takes, love gives. But how can you love brotherly if you have never received God’s agape love?
The only way to be a love giver is to have some love to give! Imagine you have a ‘love tank’. Is your love tank quarter full, half full, or three quarters full or overflowing? Where do you go to fill your love tank? Make sure you have learned that it is not from horizontal relationships that we should be filling our love tanks. There is a law that sustains love, like the law of gravity, and the law is that love gives. If you start becoming a predator in relationships, you become an abuser. We need to ask God to come and fill us so that we can be qualified to enter into horizontal relationships where we can give out of the overflow we have received from God. If you don’t have the love of God poured out in your heart, you are not able to give and receive love properly, which is where relationships, especially marital relationships, fail. Many people are incapable of giving and receiving love, and that is what rejection is all about. Instead of loving others, we can reject them, and instead of loving ourselves, we can reject ourselves. This is an epidemic in the body of Christ today because we have not understood this truth, the only place your love tank can be filled is from God the Father, through Jesus Christ the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
How do we receive that love? We need to know that our sins are forgiven and that we are born again of the Spirit. Often we need to go back and unblock, as if there is a tube from God to us and instead of a free passage, there are blockages and damage. It is not that God is not acting, it is simply that we are incapable of receiving God’s love.
What are some things that keep us from receiving God’s love? First of all, the wounds of the parents. Unresolved issues with mom and dad, whether they are dead or alive, can affect our ability to receive God’s love. Also, fear. “In love there is no fear, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). We need to deal with our fears and be able to say, “Whenever I feel afraid, I will trust God.” Fear is one of the things that damages the conduit between God’s love and our hearts. Rejection is also a great harm, and it means that we are unable to give and receive love both with God and with people. If our relational antennas are damaged, there will be damage not only in our horizontal relationships, but also in our vertical relationship with God. If you can see someone in front of you continually in bad relationships and broken relationships, you can see that his relational antennae are damaged and broken, and so you can know that his relationship with God is also damaged.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have no love, I am but a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but I have no love, I am nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. He is not envious, he is not boastful, he is not proud, he is not rude, he is not selfish, he is not easily angered, he does not keep track of his mistakes. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth, always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be silent; where there is knowledge, it will pass away, because in part we know and in part we prophesy, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When he was a child, he spoke as a child, thought as a child, reasoned as a child. When I became a man, I left childish customs behind. Now we see only a poor reflection as in a mirror; Then we’ll meet face to face. Now I know in part; then I will fully know, as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
– 1 Corinthians 13 (NIV)
