What is Love? Part II

 I've been doing a Bible study through She Reads Truth on the Attributes of God. SRT is an app I found in the app store, and they have free and paid memberships with a variety of topics for different studies you can do through the app. I have done a fair few of their studies now, and I find they contain a lot of solid theology.

Each day of a study includes some Bible verses, all written out for you to read right there in the app, and then there is a short essay that builds on and illuminates what is in the scripture. The third screen for the day is where people can share their thoughts and responses.

I like to list the scripture references on the left of my notebook (yes, I do this in a notebook) and if the readings trigger my memory of a particular song, I note that to the right of the reading in question. After that, I take notes on the short essay and expand on my thoughts.

The last day I completed is titled "God is Loving", and I thought I'd share what I wrote in response.

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God made us to be recipients of, and vessels for, His love, which is far too expansive to be contained.

Humans love brokenly and imperfectly. When we base our understanding of God's love on our experiences at the hands of our fellow human beings, we see but a shadow of all that He holds for us.

Because we cannot contain God's love, it spills out into the world through us. Trying to keep it for ourselves warps the spillover, and trying to conform the overflow to the world's broken definition of love twists it into a pale reflection of the beauty of the real thing.

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One of the passages in the list of readings for this day is 1 John 4.7-21. It's pretty long, so I'm going to link the full passage and just pull out a verse or two as I go along here.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

1 John 4.7-8 (NRSV)

 If you grew up when I did, you may remember Psalty the hymnbook and the song that uses these words. What a great way to learn and remember scripture! It sure worked for me; I listed that song next to this in my study notes.

I have always believed that when we spend regular time with God, we become more like Him. It's like when we spend a lot of time with a friend, we take on some of their characteristics--phrases, ways of saying certain words--because it rubs off on us. Heck, I started saying "oryange" and "tomorryow" because a kid I nannied for two months when I was in university said "orange" and "tomorrow" that way!

Because of this tendency, I think that spending time with God is a great way to up our "love quotient" (I don't know if that's a term that already exists). Since God is love, spending a lot of time with Him will help fill us with love. His attitude will rub off on us and we will find it more and more difficult to be unloving.

Along these lines, let's move on to the next bit I want to discuss.

Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

1 John 4.11-12 (NRSV)

Like I said, we spend time with God and we get overfilled with love and we have loads more to give away. That's how it works.

Check this out:

God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

1 John 4.15-16 (NRSV)

See, I'm definitely onto something here. We spend time with God, we have love because of Him. It rubs off on us, and the more that happens the easier it becomes to show love to the world.

We love because he first loved us.

1 John 4.19 (NRSV)

God loved us first, and we know this because He created us. Our love for Him is in response to His love for us. Think about how much easier it is to treat people well if they treat you well...

...and how difficult it is to response to anger and hate with calm, respectful, loving kindness.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

1 John 4.18 (NRSV)

I moved this one out of order because it goes better with my last bit of scripture for today. This verse is, I think, really important, because it emphasizes how important it is to nurture love and to recognize and spread love. We don't deserve God's love--we don't deserve any love, really--because we all fall short of that. But God is merciful and just and loving and full of grace, and because of Christ we don't have to work in order to deserve His love. That's impossible! We cannot achieve perfection on our own. But through Christ, through faith, we don't have to fear punishment because we are justified through His sacrifice and made worthy to come into His presence.

That is the beauty of love, of God.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

John 13.34-35 (NRSV)

This wasn't in the study but it came to mind because of all of the rest of what I've been talking about this time around.

This passage isn't about loving the world, though; it's about loving our fellow believers. It's about having a community of faith that is grounded in--founded upon--God's love. It's a huge challenge, to love our fellow believers in the same way Jesus loves us. Remember, He gave up all that was His in Heaven to come to Earth and live as a man, to spread the Good News of God's love for all of creation, and to die for us, so that we are now able to have God with us at all times, helping us and guiding us in our lives, filling us with His love so we can share it with the world.

And for me, it still all comes back to those two greatest commandments, to love God with everything we are, to love ourselves, and to love others.

I think my next post in this series will look at these commandments more in-depth, because there's some interesting stuff there.

Peace & Blessings.