We recently had Valentine’s day - when you look around on that day of events, you wonder how much of business is around Love. Lot of ads on how business can help celebrate love, Cake and flower shops having special cakes offers, restaurants having bookings for couples to celebrate privately, beauty salons to have us make more beautiful for the day etc.. many deals in shops to buy things for Valentine’s day (chocolates / Gifts, greeting cards etc.. ) One thing struck me to understand more on Love. What is the world view of Love and is this what God calls as “Love“? I was doing a research on what this “world love “ is and it took me to 8 type of love that Greeks suggest, which may be true to what we live today
8 Types of Love ancient Greeks believed. This information is common you can find in internet research, nothing new that I am telling here.
Eros (romantic, passionate love) – Eros is passion, lust and pleasure love we have.
Philia (affectionate love) – it’s the friendship love we have
Agape (selfless, universal love) - selfless universal love, such as the love for strangers, nature, God’s love.
Storge (familiar love) - Storge is a natural form of affection experienced between family members
Mania (obsessive love) - When love turns to obsession, it becomes mania
Ludus (playful love) - ludus is playful form of love
Pragma (enduring love) - Pragma is a love built on commitment, understanding and long-term best interests
Philautia (self love) – Loving oneself.
My Post title came from this Greek love - Agape love – What’s is this love for God and how does bible teach us?
God’s Love
We read Jesus commandment for Love in Matthew 22:37-40
'Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” ' Matthew 22:37-40
There are two aspects that our Lord commands us to love
Love for God – Our Lord says “ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment “ – what our Lord refers here Heart, Soul and Mind is Trinity, When we love our God we need have “all” the three, it’s not optional to have one over other, all the three are must when we love God. He goes on to say. This is the first and greatest commandment.
Love for Neighbour – Our Lord says – “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’. if you read the verse again. There are three things we need to remember
The second half of the verse starts with “AND” - Which means the love for God alone does not make us follow the commandment, we need to follow the second part of the verse as well.
Love your neighbour - So who is the neighbour ? it can be anyone whom we live in, our own family, people near our house, office and our locality.
“Yourself” – The love we should exhibit has to be like how we love ourself. Think of this, every human being loves first himself more than his family or even his parents, that’s how we are self-centred, God knew this and that’s why he says love as “yourself”. God expects that kind of love that we should show to all – this includes people whom we have good relationship with and people whom we don’t agree with (even enemies).
God sums outcome of the commandment in one line “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Satan’s Weapons against Love
Satan’s two biggest weapon against love is
Human Memory
Human Emotions
We humans have this ability to record all the events in our memory good and bad, it’s like a live video camera recorder, recording everything that we do in a day. Say you go to a vacation and see a good scenic place, its recoded in your mind, the moment you see a picture or recall, the exact day / time of events play back. You have an awesome feeling to live the same day even after if that’s 1 week back or 10 days or 20 yrs. back. That’s the power of Memory, we lose this memory as we age.
Similarly when we have a fight with someone, the exact hurtful words, expressions from the other person and what you countered to that hurtful words are stored in our memory. Satan uses this for his advantage to replay the incident again and again. it’s like how the replay happens in cricket match. He does this replay over and over again day and night, Satan does this till this memory gives birth to emotions/feelings.
Think of this we have a fight with someone, the first thing he does is make us recollect the words they spoke and bring back the exact image / word by word in slow motion. Second as we think on this we have our anger / bitterness / resentment / gossip etc.. fuel against that person. We want to do something about that, this gives birth to Vengeance, enmity, bitterness / resentment or gossip etc.. and we do some fight with the person again. This is how Sin is formed.
We need to manage our emotions. Satan’s favourite tool is negative emotions. He will use fear , resentment and worry to wreak havoc in our life.
Step back and look
o Memory when its replayed again and again – It corrupts the Mind.
o When Emotions come within us – It corrupts the Heart
We looked earlier - God’s Love is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Mind / Heart and Soul.
o When mind is corrupted – our love to God is stopped.
o When Heart is corrupted – our love to God is stopped.
o When Heart and mind is corrupted – the soul loses the ability to tell us what we
are doing is right or wrong from Gods view.
o We slowly drift away from God’s love to Satan’s trap and get caught in his evil
ways and give birth to Sin.
Once your love for God is lost, you don’t love your neighbours as well. So in essence Satan uses this weapons to make us fail God’s commandment.
God’s answer to Satan
Our God knows Satan’s plan he is wiser than anyone in the world, he is the only one who can save us from this trap.
Dependence on God
Grace
Use Freedom wisely
1. Dependence on God – Always be dependent on God, do everything in dependence with him, He will show you the areas where you fail in love. God’s “benchmark of Love” for each of us – is this 10 things called out in 1 Corinthians 13:4-6
'Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ' 1 Corinthians 13:4-6
If you read one by one there are 10 “Love in actions “ we need to maintain this benchmark to meet God’s expectations. When you pray ask God to show you the areas in your life where your love is not to the standards that God has called for. He will revel them in your Mind (The memories that Satan plays out), he will show the emotions (Anger, bitterness / resentment or any other emotions..) that are corrupting the heart. The moment you realise the sin, the Soul long for deep repentance to God. When you ask for forgiveness wholeheartedly God in his mercy will wash our sins and make the Heart / Mind / Soul clean from these thoughts and actions that Satan is trying to corrupt will be washed and cleaned away. You will not have these thoughts again from Satan once you repent deep from your heart. There is one word for this power that God has given all of is “Spirit of God” that helps defend.
2. Grace – Once you repent and ask for God’s forgiveness of Sins – The Grace always protects us to ensure we are in God’s love.
'It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ' 1 Corinthians 13:7
When you read 1 Corinthians 13:7 The context “always” is the context of Love. Read again, the word “Always” is repeated 4 times.
God’s grace will protect us
God’s grace will enable us to trust in God when things don’t go the way we wanted to be.
God’s grace will bring Faith in us, that God will fight the battle for us and the Hope we have in God.
God’s grace will enable us to persevere when we go thru the hardship ,when we are shamed in the world or when someone shows anger against us.
3. Use Freedom wisely
We humans are given the ability to choose actions (good / bad) freely that’s the power God has given to us. The word of God says
'You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh ; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ' Galatians 5:13
If we choose our freedom to live by what the mind calls us to do, we live in flesh (our human desires) this will lead to Sin.
'So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. ' Galatians 5:16-17
The word of God clearly says three things for us to follow
if we depend on God “ you will not gratify the desires of the flesh”. Our Self (Flesh) cannot rule us and get us away from the Love God expects us to show.
Both are in Contrary – ‘For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh’ We need to understand this clearly, when anger comes in us, God will reveal the spirit and reveal us what comes from God vs. Satan. He will also give the calmness in the midst of Strong emotions. He will give his grace to find a way out of that as well.
We cannot do what we want – We cannot do what we want when we are dependent on God, ask god to guide you in that situations ‘so that you are not to do whatever you want’
Summary
Gods Definition of Love in ‘Two commandments’
- God’s Love is Heart / Mind and Soul – Trinity of God
- Love your neighbours as “Yourself”
Satan’s weapon to destroy Love
- Memory – Memory Corrupts mind
- Emotions – Emotions Corrupts heart
- Once mind and Heart is corrupt ,the soul also gets corrupted.
- This takes away the love for God and the love for neighbours and makes us fail the Gods Commandment
God’s Actions to Counter Satan
- Dependence on God – Pray to God to show the areas where you are off the mark. With God’s love, he will reveal that in your mind / heart, the soul will ask for repentance to God.
- Grace of God – God will give his grace “Always” when you depend on him
- Use your freedom wisely – Do not give room to the flesh (your own desires), ask God to lead you.
Let us allow ourself to be led by the spirit of God to control our heart ,mind and soul and not allow Satan to master our mind. And for that we need to change our mindset, the mind-set of Christ.
wonderful my big brother