Love

God is love-1 John 4

When I say that I love, I imply that I know God (actually meaning that God has revealed, is revealing to me, in continuing measure, what love is, what and Who He is, that He is love). This is faith. Since God is love, there is no loving course of action God can take except to open my “eyes” to see, know and join Him in that love-Heb 11:6.

When I say that I love you, that can only mean that it is my desire to see you fully developed into the creation that God created you to be, to have the impact and purpose of God for the specific design He calls “you”, made real, tangible in every dimension of living, visible (and invisible) to you and your sphere of influence. To see you rightly related to God now, even today, and for all of eternity. That the joy of fulfillment be evident in you because you are rightly related to God and all that He has placed in your area of living.

My loving you has no bearing on any satisfaction I would receive from or desire of you for purposes of my own fulfillment, for then it would be conditional, contractual, merely a business deal, not love-1 Cor 13. In fact, my love for you will have cost-John 3:16. My love for you can only be explained by my actions toward you and my thoughts about you-Rom 5. Words may convey ideals, and even truth, but without action the words have no impact. Loving action for you may not always be visible to or understood by you.

Love is visible in right relationship. It can be seen as unity but must be undergirded with an individual desire of every component of a relationship to see every other component of that assembly in a contiguous, mutually beneficial relationship. That mutually beneficial relationship can only be actualized in God. A God Who has the infinite and unending capacity to fulfill and satisfy. To continuously open the “eyes” to new revelations of love and relationship.

There are unseen forces that are against you (and I) that are not conducive to love. These forces drive wedges and divisions into the fabric of relationship. They threaten to disassemble and destroy all that has been put together and all that is being put together.

When I say that I love you, I recognize that those forces that are against holy relationship are on and in me and I actively reject them. Allowing and intentionally pursuing a transformation of mind and spirit (from my will of self-satisfaction, self-fulfillment and self-contentment to a desire to see you satisfied, fulfilled and content). Overcoming evil (self-death) with love (God Living) sets me on a course to love you correctly-Ps 51 & Rom12

Augustine Soliloquies

Reason: I never ask about any man, what he doth; but yet I ask thee now why thou lovest thy friends so much, or what thou lovest in them, or whether thou lovest them for their own sake or for some other thing.

Augustine. [39.14—41.19] I love them for friendship and for companionship, and above all others I love those who most help me to understand and to know reason and wisdom, most of all about God and about our souls; for I know that I can more easily seek after Him with their help than I can without.

Luther

Human sin is rooted in the rejection or turning away from Jesus Christ, God’s Word, and the full expression of God’s love for creation. This rejection manifests itself in disobedience. Typically acts of disobedience trigger painful consequences in the lives of individuals and communities. It is the important work of the Holy Spirit through the community to admonish, discipline, and comfort. The failure to provide remedial comment is actually an act of anger and expression of hostility to our neighbor. Martin Luther said, “I should certainly rebuke and reprimand my brother, but I should not be hostile to him. If I say to him out of a brotherly heart: You fool, as Christ said to his disciples . . . this is not a sign of anger; it is a sign of friendly love. For if I did not have the welfare of my brother at heart, I would certainly be quiet and let him go. But the fact that I open my mouth and rebuke him is an indication that I love him and seek his welfare. For my failure to instruct and rebuke my brother is actually evidence of anger.” From “Sermon on Matthew 5: 20-26,” What Luther Says, vol. 3, ed. E. Plass (St. Louis: Concordia, 1959), 1169.

The gift of life is love and the gift of love is life. One does not exist without the other.....

Mike Mason: Practicing the presence of people

Love is a big thing, but it is made up of small, daily actions, simple words, shared intimacies. Love is a necklace forged of intimate moments. When the chain is broken and the beads scatter, there is nothing to do but get down on your knees and string it again, one precious bead at a time.

Mike Mason: Practicing the presence of people

“these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). One day while considering this verse, it struck me that there is a progressive order to these three words. If love is the greatest of the three, then hope is the second greatest and faith the third.

What could it possibly mean, I wondered, that hope could accomplish more than faith? Faith could move mountains. What then might hope do?...and what about love?!

God is love. 1 John 4

Interestingly and thought provoking is the concept of God actually BEING love. Not that He created it or acts in it, but that He is actually the blueprint and very fabric of love itself. That He and love are synonymous in their definition, content and intent. To continue along this path of God BEING love and the creating nature of God, it seems reasonable to believe that all things created (that exist) must be of that same DNA of love. To go further on that trajectory is to say that loving is living. For that DNA to grow and multiply would be life. In opposition to that, to deny that DNA would be to subtract from it, ultimately resulting in a total erasure of it. Removing life leaves the only alternative to it, which is death (non-existence).

“For God so loved the world that He created it. He gave it ability to choose. Even to choose a path separate and away from Him and His nature of love. His desire for His creation was for it to live and to live with Him in the fullness of love forever, that He gave His Only Son, the perfect seed of His being of love, to be an offering of proof, a record of truth of that love. So that whosoever would believe in Him, would choose love, that physio-spiritual entity of the love of God, Jesus The Christ, sent from the very seat of love to walk in the created world and thereby live, forever”. Me

Renovation of the heart: Dallas Willard

“God is Love.” Yes. But we must not miss the essential point. The profound good news is not just that he loves us, as is often said. A pretty mean person can love someone for special reasons (Matthew 5:46-48). But he is Love and sustains his love for us from his basic reality as Love, which dictates his Trinitarian nature. God is in himself a sweet society of love, with a first, second, and third person to complete a social matrix where not only is there love and being loved, but also shared love for another, the third person. Community is formed not by mere love and requited love, which by itself is exclusive, but by shared love for another, which is inclusive. And within the Trinity there is, I believe, not even a thought of “First, Second, and Third.” There is no subordination within the Trinity, not because of some profound metaphysical fact, but because the members of the Trinity will not have it.

Dallas Willard: In Search of Guidance

When we love someone, we of course want to do what they wish, but not because we wish to avoid trouble or gain favor. Cooperation is a way of being with them, of sharing their life and their person.

On the other hand, the beloved who also loves does not want to be in the position of forever ordering the lover-beloved about: “Do this for me. Do that for me”. The less of such talk there is, the better, as everybody knows. All of us would like to be understood in a manner that makes such directiveness completely unnecessary.

Galatians 5:6 (KJV) For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.