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Tag: agape

  • My Love – 4 – a Love Feast

    My Love – 4 – a Love Feast

    “There is a love of God inexplicable, except by our inclusion in His love feast.

    This love of God is to be sought and treasured, though none can earn this highest of all loves. It is the upward call well-known to the world, yet rejected by the worldly.

    John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

    God gave us Jesus Christ! His love is sacrifice for our sins – and we are ALL sinners.

    Agape – (pronounced: ag’-a-pe) The name Agape or “love-feast,” as an expression denoting the brotherly common meals of the early church… 

    Agape is much more than this, common meals and communion being just one visible evidence of God’s love in the community of the church. This “agape love” appears throughout the New Testament, again the evidence of Christ Jesus in the life of Christians as part of the lives of believers:

    • affection, good will, love, benevolence, brotherly love, charity and other Spirit-given practical application of the benefit of Christ in the lives of the body of believers, His church.

    Hear the caution of Jesus, you cautious or straying believer:

    But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.

    – John 5:42

    Agape is the word for love Jesus uses here.

    Would you have this be our Lord’s judgment on you unless you repent? Jesus continues:

    How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? – John 5:44

    God is love; but each of us must accept God’s love and be part of the love feast of Christ’s overflowing love for us shared in His Blood of the Cross.

    C.S. Lewis addresses five loves: the first being our ‘liking and loves for the sub-human:’ animals, the beauty of nature, food and the like. The other four are human loves for humans.

    I have reordered Lewis’ treatment of The Four Loves. We have already spoken of friendship (between equal humans) and affection (between humans unequal in their relationship: parent and child). I have left Eros and specifically the love between a man and a woman (man & wife) until last. Lewis concludes his book with this highest and most important of loves: agape. I cannot focus our thought here on this love any better than Lewis.

    “For most of us the true rivalry lies between the self and the human Other, not yet between the human Other and God. It is dangerous to press upon a man the duty of getting beyond earthly love when his real difficulty lies in getting so far.”

    Love one another. A familiar challenge? Yet Lewis states the difficulty of us experiencing this highest love of God when we cannot get beyond loving others as God loves all of us.

    Lewis points to the moral of a story of St. Augustine after grieving over the death of a dear friend.

    “This is what comes, he says, of giving one’s heart to anything but God. All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away. Of course this is excellent sense. Don’t put your goods in a leaky vessel. Don’t spend too much on a house you may be turned out of.”

    Do you believe, then, in God? Why would you not trust God with the love of your soul? God IS. Christ Jesus IS. Would you not also have your love last for ever?

    Lewis concludes “The Four Loves” as follows (after which I will have a little to add):

    “Perhaps, for many of us, all experience merely defines, so to speak, the shape of that gap where our love of God ought to be. It is not enough. It is something.

    If we cannot ‘practice the presence of God’ it is something to practice the absence of God, to become increasingly aware of our unawareness till we feel like men who should stand beside a great cataract and hear no noise, or like a man in a story who looks in a mirror and finds no face there, or a man in a dream who stretches out his hand to visible objects and gets no sensation of touch. To know that one is dreaming is to be no longer perfectly asleep. But for news of the fully waking world you must go to my betters.”

    Love & Charity – Connection between God & feast in His love

    John 15:9-11 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

    Abide in my love.

    10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

    11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

    Jesus commands: Abide in my love (agape).  Learn the application of living in this agape love of God by reading the linked definition and scriptures of ‘abide,’ a word falling from use in our temporal fleshly culture.

    The Greek word for love with which Jesus begins by saying the Father has it for Him and He has is for us is: agapaō. By definition: to welcome, to entertain, to be fond of, to love dearly. 

    WELCOME to the feast of GOD’S LOVE.

    We do NOT deserve an invitation. God loves Jesus. Jesus loves you. (This I know, for the Bible tells us so.) A message of love so simple and profound, yet so clearly unattainable by anyone lacking a trusting and child-like faith in Almighty God, our loving Heavenly Father.

    “IF, you keep Jesus’ Commandments” our Lord says.

    Do you keep and abide and live in the Commandments of Christ Jesus?

    In fact, it is agape love Jesus gives to the lawyer’s of “What is the greatest Commandment?”

    Matthew 22:37-38 And he said to him, “You shall love [agapaō] the Lord your God with all your heart [kardia] and with all your soul[psychē] and with all your mind [dianoia]. This is the great and first commandment.

    God loves. God provides the banquet of love.

    It is by the charity of God that we sinners saved have been invited into the joy and celebration of the love of God in Christ Jesus.

    Let us not forget to extend this love of God in Christ Jesus into our loves for all others in this brief life in the flesh and lasting joy of God’s eternal feast.

    And remembering the words of our Teacher to His learners (disciples) prior to the love feast by which He set His example and remembrance – communion:

    “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love [agapē] for one another.” – John 13:35

    O, the joy of LOVE awaiting us at the banquet table of heaven with our Lord and King, Christ Jesus!

     

  • but have not love,

    but have not love,

    1 Corinthians 13

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    The Way of Love
    13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,

    Let us summarize the list (from the ESV):

    •  2 And if I have prophetic powers,
    • and understand all mysteries
    • and all knowledge,
    • and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains,

    • but have not love, I am nothing. 

    • 3 If I give away all I have,
    • and if I deliver up my body to be burned [to death],

    • but have not love, I gain nothing.

    WE are nothing and we gain nothing without this love – we are NOT Christians without Christ’s love evident in our faith and in our lives.

    This famous “love chapter” of 1 Corinthians 13 is most notably read (often at weddings) as an example of the love of a husband and a wife. The following verses, more notably than the opening verses, are truly much more than just the romantic love between a husband and wife; for the Apostle Paul speaks not of eros, nor phileo (brotherly love), but of agape – a godly love to which Christians must cling, pouring out sacrificially from the overflowing fountain of the love of Christ Jesus.

    The literal translation of agape love in the King James Version is charity. (Don’t get it mixed up with the giving away of money; charity is an outpouring of the overflowing love of God.)  Think of ‘charity’ as the love given so personally by our Lord Jesus Christ – charity is the touch of love Jesus would give to another, if He were you.

    1 Corinthians 13 in the original KJV.

    IF you were to replace the word ‘love’ with ‘charity’ or ‘agape’ in your Bible, you would likely come nearer the intention of what the Apostle is telling Christians about its importance in the witness of our lives. The following is such an example from the Amplified Bible:

     4 Agape [Charity] endures long and is patient and kind; charity never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily.
    5 It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Agape (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong].
    6 It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.
    7 Charity bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].
    8 Agape never fails [never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end].

    Please study more about this special love Christians must have for each other; for it is a command of our Lord Christ Jesus.

    Let us close in consideration of the briefness of this life in the flesh, in witness to the charity of Christ Jesus. Closing in the same manner of substituting “charity” or the original Greek word, agape. from the Amplified Bible:

      13 And so faith, hope, charity abide [faith—conviction and belief respecting man’s relation to God and divine things; hope—joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation; charity —true affection for God and man, growing out of God’s love for and in us], these three; but the greatest of these is agape.

     

  • Jesus’ Commandment

    Jesus’ Commandment

    “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” – John 15:13 – NKJV 

    Christ Jesus, who would lay down His life for us as sacrifice and redemption for our sins, tells the Disciples how God’s love is unconditional and how God’s love is overflowing beyond description.

    But what about our love for God? What about our love for Jesus?

    I cling to my flesh; I remember my sinful desires. I believe that Jesus died for me, but if He wants me to “follow” Him, I don’t think I can do it. (Isn’t this what we all think when we resist doing what we know God wants us to do?)

    While we brandish our ‘freedom’ to choose to do whatever we want (perhaps even as ‘grace’), most of us struggle with two principles of relationship taught by Jesus Christ: sacrifice and obedience.

    We want to ignore the advice of Jesus (whom we call, ‘Lord‘) when he said:

    “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” – John 12:25

    And:

    And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” – Luke 9:23

    These sound a lot like ‘conditions’ from Christ Jesus (whom we call, ‘Lord‘). For that matter, another thing Jesus said (which we would rather ignore) is:

    “… whoever does not obey [apeitheō] the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” – John 3:36b

    Are you apathetic about Jesus Christ, the Son of God?

    Jesus asked the crowds who claimed His Name:

    “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” – Luke 6:36

     

    Someone (of a higher authority) gives a command and having no choice, you choose to obey. (But you don’t like it, do you?)

    If GOD, the ALL-POWERFUL Creator of life, accountant of your days and judge of your soul – if the LORD GOD gives you a command, can you choose anything but to obey?

    Of course… we often (and regrettably) do not obey our Lord.

    I remind us of all this to point to what Jesus said just prior to His oft-quoted “Greater love has no man than this…” application, which He did fulfill for us on the Cross.

    “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. – John 15:14

    Imagine Jesus ‘commanding’ you to love other Christians as He has loved you. Can you do it?  (Many of us are most difficult to love.)

    We expect the grace of this Savior we call ‘Lord’ to cover our lack of love for others, but we must not  imagine that Jesus has only suggested it.

    Our Lord has spoken it to us as His “command.”

    Once again, think of yourself as a ‘follower’ of Jesus (even to the cross, if you must… even at some personal sacrifice, if you must) – put yourself in the well-worn sandals of Jesus’ Disciples and hear our ‘Lord’ in the eyes of your heart:

    John 15:12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

    13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

    14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.

    15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

    17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

    Lord, you have commanded me, your saint and servant, heir to the life and the love of the house of the LORD, forever.

    Have you ever lamented: “Where are my ‘christian’ ‘friends? Have you ever wondered, “Where are my’ fellow ‘saints’ who would lay down their life for me?”

    It is to our shame that any member of our church should have to ask for the love of Jesus in us.

    For our ‘Lord’ and Savior has spoken His commandment to you and to me:

    “…love one another as I have loved you,”