Day 35: Love for God

Gary Chapman's book The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts has sold over 20 million copies and related hashtags have billions of views on social media. In it, Chapman asserts that people communicate love differently. Further, knowing your language and the language of others helps one communicate love more effectively. Whether he exactly captures all categories or not, he raises some important questions regarding the greatest commandment. What does it mean to “love God?” Are there right and wrong ways…or at least better and worse ways to love God?

How many times have you heard some say “I love vanilla,” “I love baseball,” or “I love sunny days?” This is a much different use of the word than what is collectively conveyed by New Testament passages. The word most used for love in New Testament scriptures and in the Septuagint is ἀγαπάω, agapaō. Outside of scripture it was relatively rare compared to other Greek words for love. In secular writings agape referred to an emotion (as did the other Greek words for love). Similar to “I love vanilla,” the Greeks used the word to convey how something made you feel…and that feeling inspired one to place a high value on the subject. The New Testament uses phileo in such cases…when speaking of the emotion. In contrast, agape in the New Testament conveys action without regard to emotion toward the beneficiary.

Examples include:

• Matt 5:43-48: We should love like God who blesses the evil and the good alike.

• Luke 6:27-35: We are to love our enemies, doing good to them.

• John 15:13: No one has greater love than this—that one lays down his life for his friends.

• Rom 13:10: Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

So, John 3:16 is not telling us “how much emotion” God had for us, but rather, the extreme action he took to save us.

John 3:16: For this is the way God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. (NET)

When we make up our minds to be transformed into a person whose life glorifies God by adopting His perspective and investing according to His plan, there is only one possible end.

1 John 5:3: For this is the love of God: that we keep His commandments. And His commandments do not weigh us down. (NET)

Which commandments might he be talking about? John spelled it out in the previous verses…

1 John 4:20: If anyone says “I love God” and yet hates his fellow Christian, he is a liar because the one who does not love his fellow Christian whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And the commandment we have from Him is this: that the one who loves God should love his fellow Christian too. (NET)

So, do you think there are right, wrong, or at least better or worse ways to love God?

Matt 22:37: Jesus said to him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. (NET)

Faithful with Little