Fall on Love before falling in love
I. The World’s Perspective of Love
What have we heard or learned from the songs about love so far?
-We have heard how the world defines love (give examples from the song)
-we see the world’s definition on tv, the internet, movies, ads, magazines, songs, the media in general
-Love= crush, kilig, boy-girl relationship, puppy love, romantic relationships, physical attraction, sex, endless waiting for that one special love
-usually, love is defined as Eros (romantic relationship) especially every February
-BUT this is an incomplete views or understanding of love!
GOAL: We are here not just to dance the night away with catchy music or emotional/sentimental songs. What I want us to get tonight is a richer, a fuller understanding of love. And this definition comes not from the world but from the very author or inventor of love—God Himself.
II. Love from the Author of Love
-if we want to fully understand love, we have to go back to its inventor—God (inventor illustration)
How do I know that He invented love?
-God is love (1 John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16b)
-Illustration: LOVE RADIO AD- “Love is the greatest emotion man has ever discovered…”
What can we learn from this statement?
-True: we never invented love, we only discovered it
-False: love is not just an emotion (we will discover much more about it here)
A. God the first lover and the first loved
We know that God invented Love, but when did God first love and whom did He first love?
-When He created the angels and the heavenly hosts?
-At Creation when he created Adam and Eve?
-No! It must be much much earlier. If God is affirmed as love, then, He should have been practicing this attribute—He should have been loving—even before the foundations of the earth and even before the creation of the heavenly hosts!
Was this ever the case?
-This is exactly the case. God has been loving from eternity to eternity
-This was possible because the Father loved the Son, the Son loved the Father, both of them loved the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit loved them both (Matthew 3:16-17)
-There is eternal love, care and concern in the Godhead
-That is why if there’s someone who knows what love is and if there is someone we can ask about how best to love, that’s God
B. The 4 Kinds of Love and the Highest form of Love
But what kind of love did God exhibit?
-let me introduce you to the 4 kinds of love in Greek, and we can see these in God’s Word
1. Eros: romantic love, sexual love, between a husband and a wife (Song of Songs)
2. Storge: love as seen among family members, parents and children, siblings (Rom. 12:10)
3. Philia: love among friends (John 21:15ff)
4. Agape: unconditional, self-sacrificial love (John 3:16) *Christian invention
-when we talk about God’s love, we mean agape love
-of the four loves, this one’s the highest form
-apart from agape, we can only exhibit but a fraction of the other three loves
How can we illustrate agape love?
-think of a person you don’t like (kaaway, nasaktan ka, napahiya ka)
-now imagine that person deep in need (financial, may sakit, may problem sa family)
-agape love is this: without second thoughts, you are able to set aside your anger, pain, prejudices and do what is right (to help him/her) expecting nothing in return
-hindi ito pagiging martyr because agape love doesn’t end in self-pity but in fulfillment for having done what is right and pleases God
-Agape is much much more than this! (Luke 23:32-39)
C. The Love that Binds Them All
Wait lang! ‘Di ba love concert ito? ‘Di ba dapat about sa crush ko at bf o gf ko ang pinaguusapan? Bakit may unconditional love na at love of God?
1. Unless we understand God who is the Author of Love, we will end up expressing only the imitation and not the genuine kind of philia, eros or storge because we’ll be relying on our poor understanding of love
2. Unless we understand unconditional (agape) love, our love will always be self-centered, never giving and always wanting to get and get
***We will not be able to have genuine philia, storge and eros apart from agape and apart from God
An illustration of God’s high standard of love
-1 Corinthians 13:4-7 = change the words love and it, and place your name there; you will see how utterly untrue the statements are not only sometimes but most of the time
-but try this, change love and it with JESUS and you will see how He truly reflects genuine love
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TRANSITION: We have spent the first few minutes actually understanding that there is a problem in our understanding of love, and that there is a need to go back to God’s definition of love so that we will be able to genuinely love like Jesus.
III. God’s Definition of Love
A. 1 John 3-5: Loving through God
How does God define love?
-to answer this question, I’m choosing the Book of 1 John Chapters 3 through 5
-the passage is long and there are parts that do not really answer the question because 1 John actually answers the issue of “Who is a true Christian?”
-but it’s interesting that part of the proof of genuine Christianity is being able to love like God
How do the relevant verses interact with one another?
commands: love one another
disclaimer: you cannot love without God first loving you
-you can’t love genuinely if God is not with you
-you can love genuinely only because God loved you first
-those who love genuinely exhibit the love they have received from God
-those who do not love, don’t have God’s love in them
**Though God commands us to love, He warns us that we will be unable to love if we don’t know Him and His great Agape Love
B. 1 John 4:10 – Defining Love
Love is defined:
1. Not as us loving God: our love as humans is not the standard in defining love because we only know a small fraction of love
2. As God loving us: we find love’s definition in God’s act of loving (agape) us, and this is the standard
How did God love us?
1. He sent Jesus, His one and only Son into the world (John 3:16)
-the infinite chose to be finite
-God Himself took the trouble of putting the frailty of humanity just so He can save us (unique)
2. Jesus became the atoning sacrifice for our sins on the cross
-“propitiation” : God is set to punish everyone who has broken His law, everyone who has sinned
: for the Holy God, this punishment is eternal spiritual death, we cannot enter heaven because of sin (Romans 3:23, 6:23)
: Jesus, because of obedience to God and agape love for Him first and for us, took the punishment as our substitute when he died on the cross
AGAPE in Action: That is love. Jesus demonstrates it literally by His self sacrifice, by His death on the cross
C. Mirror Illustration: Love as Gospel springboard
1. God is the Author of Everything including love
2. At creation, we were made in His image and likeness capable of fully loving like God
3. But, then, humankind rebelled against God; asserting themselves and rejecting Him; we want to do things our way (this is sin)
4. Sin marred our relationship with God, though we’re created in His image and likeness, we have only a poor reflection of who He is because sin is blocking our way to God
5. Jesus’ coming here on earth, His death and sacrifice made a way to cleanse us from the filth of sin, so that we can again fully reflect God in His fullness as His sons and daughters
6. This cleansing is true to all who trust in Jesus, who by God’s grace believe in Him (faith) and repent, ask for forgiveness from sin; by doing these, we receive the effectiveness of Jesus’ substitution on the cross
TRUTHS:
-apart from this cleansing from Jesus’ blood, we will not be able to align ourselves to God’s definition of love because we will continue to reflect Him poorly; our love will still be imitations and not genuine
-and I tell you, this cleansing affects not only our ability to love but our whole lives; when we are cleansed by Jesus’ blood we become new creations that’s why we are now, slowly but surely, becoming more and more capable of loving as God loves; there is also the assurance of eternal communion with Him in heaven
IV Summary and Recap
1. Unless we understand God who is the Author of Love, we will end up expressing only the imitation and not the genuine kind of philia, eros or storge
-we understand God, we get to know Him through His perfect revelation, Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:9)
2. Unless we understand unconditional (agape) love, our love will always be self-centered, never giving and always wanting to get and get
-we understand Agape love when we understand Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross which is the perfect example and illustration of Agape (Romans 5:8)
***We are able to have genuine philia, storge and eros because God’s agape love is in us