Love, unconditional love, that\u2019s what today\u2019s scriptures are all about.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere John writes that \u201cGod is Love\u201d.\u00a0 There are four words in Greek that mean love.\u00a0 They mean a mother\u2019s love, passionate love; friendship; and unconditional love respectively.\u00a0 But the kind of love that John is talking about is unconditional love or agape.<\/p>\n
When you think about it, God\u2019s loved has to be like that.\u00a0 Because everything He created, by definition, is imperfect compared to God.\u00a0 And so, God has to accept it as He created it, unconditionally, otherwise, if God rejected it, it would be eliminated, gone.\u00a0 Here John is telling us we need to love God the same way as He loves us.<\/p>\n
Now on first thought, that sounds easy enough.\u00a0 God created me, I know that, I appreciate that He created me, so I love God unconditionally.\u00a0 But John is saying, \u201cWait a minute; it is not that easy\u201d.\u00a0 First, he tells us that if we don\u2019t love our brother, who we can see; then we cannot be loving God correctly.\u00a0 So the first question is- do we love our brothers- all of them?\u00a0 Then John says, the way you will know that you love God is if you keep His commandments.\u00a0 And His commandment is that we love our brothers- all of them- with unconditional love, agape love.<\/p>\n
Now our brothers include our family, our friends, our coworkers, and our classmates.\u00a0 But they also include pedophiles, illegal aliens, homosexuals, politicians in the other party, and just to make it real, real, clear, the Alabama Football team are our brothers!\u00a0 Wow, what a tall order is that.<\/p>\n
I think we have to understand that there is a difference between loving someone and liking what they do.\u00a0 We are asked to love as God does.\u00a0 So, we need to unconditionally love sinners, just like God does.\u00a0 We should always thank God that he loves us that way- because we are all sinners and each of us wants to be loved by God and be with Him forever in eternity.\u00a0 So does everyone else- including the Alabama football team and all people in those other groups I mentioned.<\/p>\n
The secret to the apparent dilemma is twofold.\u00a0 First, God is the judge, and will administer eternal justice; and so we should leave the condemnation up to God.\u00a0 And if you listen carefully, that\u2019s what the psalm is all about this morning.<\/p>\n
And second, the way we can be sure that we project God\u2019s attitude of love is to let God\u2019s spirit do it for us.\u00a0 That is what the Gospel this morning is all about.\u00a0 It says very clearly that Jesus claims the scripture was fulfilled in the assembly\u2019s hearing:\u00a0 \u201cThe Spirit of the Lord is upon me to\u2026\u201d.\u00a0 To do all those things he mentioned.\u00a0 Yes, indeed, that is what Jesus did to fulfill God\u2019s will for Him, to love unconditionally even love those who caused him incredible suffering and death.\u00a0 Jesus called on and let the Spirit of God work through Him.\u00a0 Jesus didn\u2019t react to those who confronted and persecuted him with his human emotions- with anger, judgment, scorn, sarcasm, and the like.\u00a0 Rather, He let the Spirit of God, who is love, guide His way.<\/p>\n
We are all being called upon to do the same\u00a0 To let the Spirit of God dominate over our human emotions when dealing with the difficult people and situations in our lives and to love others as God loves us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Love, unconditional love, that\u2019s what today\u2019s scriptures are all about. Elsewhere John writes that \u201cGod is Love\u201d.\u00a0 There are four words in Greek that mean love.\u00a0 They mean a mother\u2019s love, passionate love; friendship; and unconditional love respectively.\u00a0 But the kind of love that John is talking about is unconditional love or agape. When you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[196],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":299,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions\/299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}