Love … Prepositions

5: Love is a Series of Prepositions

Paul repeatedly claimed explicitly that love is the center of the Christian life. “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. (Galatians 5:6) ”

LOVE IS A GREAT IDEA UNTIL … you discover who your neighbors actually are.

BUT WHAT EXACTLY IS LOVE? Hard to define, but two rules.

  1. Do not look it up in the dictionary. The current English usage of the word is a pale shadow of what it means in the Bible.
  2. Define love by watching God love Israel, his Son, and the church—indeed all of creation.

LOVE IN AMERICAN CULTURE. Love in American is defined around a chemical sensation. This is not the Bible’s view of love. Four elements of love in the Bible.

  1. Rugged Commitment. God makes this kind of commitment to Abraham that was continued in the covenant with us in Jesus Christ.
  2. Rugged Commitment to be “With”. “Love is a rugged commitment by one person, married or not, to another person, married or not. The relationship may weather stormy waters, but love hangs on through the storm. It is the hanging on — married or not — that illustrates what love is. Person A says to Person B, “I’m here with you through it all.”
  3. Rugged Commitment to be “For”. To love someone is be their advocate, to be on their side. God is that for us as demonstrated amply in the scripture.
  4. Rugged Commitment “Unto”. This is the principle of direction. God’s love should change us. Order is important. First with, second for, and third unto—presence, advocacy, and then direction. <Don’t we often get this backwards, or skip the first two. Direction without presence and/or advocacy.> McKnight calls  this coercion.

BACK TO THE CHURHC AND THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. This is not an easy task in a church of differents, a salad bowl.

MY FRIEND DAN. The effect of trying to change someone to be more like others is not a fruitful thing.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF DIFFERENTS. “So the million-dollar question for you and me and how we do church is this: How diverse is your love? or How ready are you to love the differents in your fellowship?”

Quotes From: Scot McKnight. “A Fellowship of Differents.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/9W9u1.l

Charles Eklund 2018