tina turner: what's love got to do with it?
Friday, January 21, 2011
Actually, it is everything!
Jesus said "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all you 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 22:36-40
Does it matter that I obey and not love? Yes it does.
Although obedience is the primary way we express our loVe to God, it is not the same as loVe. LoVe is essentially a motive. Someone has made the point that loVe is a verb. For example, I am to loVe my wife as Christ loved the Church (Eph. 5:25). Jesus said we are to loVe our enemies (Matthew 5:44). In each instance loVe is used as a verb. In another sense, however, loVe is not a verb but the motive that prompts and guides other verbs; that is, certain actions. LoVe always needs other verbs to give it hands and feet. By itself it can do nothing. This can be seen in 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul used loVe as a noun, the subject of a whole list of action statements. Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, etc.
LoVe for God, then, is the only acceptable motive for obedience to Him. This loVe may express itself in a reverence for Him and a desire to please Him, but those expressions must spring from love. without the motive of loVe, my apparent obedience may be essentially self-serving. Negatively, I may fear God will punish me, becuase of some disobedience. I may abstain from a particular sinful action out of fear I will be found out or because I don't want to feel guilty afterward.
Our motive for obedience is just as important, probably more so, to God than the level of our performance. A person who struggles with some persistent sin but does so out of loVe for God is more pleasing to Him than the person who has no such struggle but is proud of his or her self-control. Of course, the person who obeys from a motive of loVe will be concerned about his or her performance. There will be a sincere desire and an earnest effort to please God in every area of life. The Discipline of Grace ~ Jerry Bridges
Jesus said "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all you 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 22:36-40
Does it matter that I obey and not love? Yes it does.
Although obedience is the primary way we express our loVe to God, it is not the same as loVe. LoVe is essentially a motive. Someone has made the point that loVe is a verb. For example, I am to loVe my wife as Christ loved the Church (Eph. 5:25). Jesus said we are to loVe our enemies (Matthew 5:44). In each instance loVe is used as a verb. In another sense, however, loVe is not a verb but the motive that prompts and guides other verbs; that is, certain actions. LoVe always needs other verbs to give it hands and feet. By itself it can do nothing. This can be seen in 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul used loVe as a noun, the subject of a whole list of action statements. Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, etc.
LoVe for God, then, is the only acceptable motive for obedience to Him. This loVe may express itself in a reverence for Him and a desire to please Him, but those expressions must spring from love. without the motive of loVe, my apparent obedience may be essentially self-serving. Negatively, I may fear God will punish me, becuase of some disobedience. I may abstain from a particular sinful action out of fear I will be found out or because I don't want to feel guilty afterward.
Our motive for obedience is just as important, probably more so, to God than the level of our performance. A person who struggles with some persistent sin but does so out of loVe for God is more pleasing to Him than the person who has no such struggle but is proud of his or her self-control. Of course, the person who obeys from a motive of loVe will be concerned about his or her performance. There will be a sincere desire and an earnest effort to please God in every area of life. The Discipline of Grace ~ Jerry Bridges
~We love because He first loved us ~
1 John 4:19
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