What the Bible says about Loving God
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Galatians 5:5-6

The last phrase, "but faith working through love [is everything]." It is contrasted to circumcision, which avails nothing.

Faith works through or by love. This is a two-sided statement. The love of God produces faith in us for Him because, without His revelation of Himself, we would never have faith in Him since, before conversion, we do not know the true God. We do not know what He is like. We do not know where to look for Him, and until He reveals the truth about Himself, we are behind the proverbial eight ball. So, faith works by love in the sense that in God's revelation of Himself, He opens knowledge and understanding to us that was not previously available to us. God's love begins by building faith in us in Him.

The other side of the coin is, in return for God's love given to us to produce faith, faith reveals itself to God by returning love to God. We give it back to Him in submission. "If you love Me," Jesus says in John 15:14, "keep My commandments." A living faith will do that.

Suppose a husband asks his wife, "Do you believe that I love you?" and the wife answers, "Yes, I know that you exist." Do we get the point? If our Bridegroom, Jesus Christ, said to us, "Do you know that I love you?" how does He expect us to reply? Does He want to hear, "Yes, I know that You exist?" This answer is faith at its lowest form, merely a belief.

If we really love Christ, our faith in Him, our future Husband, will respond, not by merely acknowledging that He is, but by loving Him back. Faith works by or through love. In this way, God can tell how much faith we have. He learns this not merely by testing us through trials, but by seeing if and how we give the love of God back to Him through submission. We understand by experience that we can return love, an intimate love, only to someone we trust—faith. If one's spouse, the one to whom we should be giving such love, disregards us and commits a horrible sin that destroys our trust, it is quite difficult to return real love or even feign love to him or her.

This understanding is a way we can test our faith, and it is probably the one that God will evaluate us on most thoroughly. The first of the great commandments is whether we love God with all our heart, soul, being, might, strength, etc. If we love Him, we will submit to Him and keep His commandments. That is where faith works—in submission and obedience, revealing our love for God. How well have we done in this area?

John W. Ritenbaugh
A Pre-Passover Look

Ephesians 4:25

Thesemen feared that, if they committed themselves to loving God, they would lose the approbation of their religious peers. If they stepped out, they would lose what they already had. So it kept them from loving God, and of course, it kept them from loving man too because God would have given them growth if they had continued yielding to Him.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Love's Greatest Challenges

2 Timothy 1:7

Love, power, soundmindedness—these qualities of God's Spirit. Love's greatest challenges are to overcome laziness and fear. There is no way around them; they must be met and conquered. God has given us the Spirit to enable us, but we have to be willing to put ourselves on the line, to stir ourselves up, and risk losing some part of this human nature. We must quit protecting it.

Hebrews 13:5 tells us that God will never leave us, never forsake us, that He is always our Helper. We are admonished, then, to be content. Contentment has its foundation in knowing God. We can never reach that point unless we put ourselves out to love Him and challenge this fear, to overcome the inertia and entropy that is working in everybody's life. That is where the hard work comes in, challenging the fear and the laziness.

If we are willing to do this on a day-to-day basis and put aside our fears and make the effort, our confidence in Him will grow. The fear will dissolve, diligence will cause discipline to appear, and we will meet our responsibilities in loving God and loving men.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Love's Greatest Challenges

1 John 4:20-21

John presents these verses as a challenge, a test, to his readers. There are many who say they “love God” or “I have fellowship with God” or “I know God,” and John is saying, "Prove it by loving your brother." The proof that love is real is the action that it produces. It will always help the other person in the long run.

If a person really loves God, he will honor his parents, he will not commit murder, nor will he fornicate, commit adultery, lie, steal, or covet. In other words, he will keep God's Commandments. If a person is really becoming close to God, he will not do any of these things—and not their spiritual counterparts either.

This verse, then, offers a permanently valid test to see whether our religion is the true one or not. Do we love God? Do we love one another? The proof that we love God is that we love our brother with agape love, for that kind of love must have an outlet, or it will not be reciprocated back to God.

The feelings associated with agape love arise as a result of our fellowship with God through experiencing life's events with Him as a dominating influence on our thinking.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Love's Emotional Dimension

Revelation 11:18

We need to expand our thinking on the word "earth" and understand that it figuratively, metaphorically, represents all of creation. It is not just the earth, the orb that is spinning around through space on its appointed path, but all of the things that are on the earth. Above all, it refers to mankind, which lives on the earth.

God says He will destroy those who destroy the creation, and that includes themselves. When man does that, he is telling God that we do not appreciate what He has given us. We have a love of beauty without the love of doing what is right in order to maintain correctly what He has given to us.

By far and away, the most important abuse in all of creation deals with man's relationships with God and fellow man. We abuse our relationships because we do not love righteousness along with beauty. Rather than dressing and keeping the relationships through a love of righteousness, we use and abuse them, too.

We can see this in the divorce rate. People do not get divorces because they love one another. It is because one or the other spouse, or both, have abused the relationship. So the marriage, which was created by God to be the environment in which His spiritual creation would be carried out, is destroyed! Again, God is going to destroy those who destroy the earth, His creation.

The basic reason this occurs is addressed in I John. It is the lack of love for God and of God that is causing this. Loving God is a choice that is open to all Christians. If one does not consider God beautiful and choose to love Him, the only alternative is self-centeredness.

We turn our love in on ourselves, and instead of seeking to please God within a relationship with Him, we instead choose unrighteousness or sin, abusing the relationship between Him and us. All love for fellow man begins first with the love for God. This is why I John tells us it is impossible to love man without loving God first.

We must start thinking about what are we doing in our lives to build our relationship with God, because that relationship is salvation! Is God beautiful to us? Is God's way beautiful to us? If it is not, the self-centeredness will lead to abuse. Self-centeredness is the hallmark of worldliness.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Laodiceanism


 

©Copyright 1992-2024 Church of the Great God.   Contact C.G.G. if you have questions or comments.