Talk of JESUS . com

Tag: Church

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!
February 12, 2015
My Love – 3 – Affection
Affection! How hurriedly has this love fled our homes in the hustle and bustle of these last days?

Hardly a child will remember affectionate extended time with both father and mother at home. It is a great failure of our broken, worldly ‘christian’ families. How by our selfish quests for ‘happiness’ in the world ‘christians’ have forgotten not only the importance of our marriage vows, but also the affection and stability needed by our children for this essential love.

The word for this love in Greek is storgē. This love is our natural affection of a parent toward our off-spring and the dependent children toward parents without whom they would not have been born and could not survive as God has intended.

The relationship carries on into the extent of the lives of parent and child even well into adulthood and times when circumstance may dictate a child caring for their aging parent prior to death.

Briefly consider the affection and nearness of the families of Noah, Abraham and Jacob (even when his son, Prince Joseph of Egypt, cared for all of the sons of Israel and their families).

Read how near David remained in his affection, honor and relationship to his father Jesse. See how the families of the Priests and Prophets all lived together in one home or places near to one another as the faithful of God maintained the love and affection of community.

Another antiquated use of this storge love is expressed by a people for their King (even if he ‘did evil in the eyes of the Lord.’) We do not get to choose this relationship of inequitable dependence.

Our children must depend on and require the love and affection of their father and of their mother (and to a lesser extent, the people of their King, Queen, Governor, President or leader). A parent (or King) has duties of affection and responsibility toward each child (or subject).

Look also to the application for widows in this. Look to the needs of their children. See the God-given affection of dependence on family, rather than independence of self-will.

When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, Lazarus was not only a beloved friend but also responsible for his unmarried sisters, Mary and Martha.

What wonderful long-term affection of one in need dependent on a family member to provide or care for them. It is the familial plight of children, widows and widowers, aging parents, handicapped children or siblings. Love provides the compassion they need.

Is it not our God-given duty to love our children with the greatest affection?
- Is your instant message, your text, your clever ‘fb share’ enough affection?
- Is it enough for only a ‘single’ parent to manage this important love God expects from all of us?
Storge (per se) is not specifically used in the Greek New Testament; however this love and affection of family is well documented in many books of the Bible.

The Apostle Paul uses a similar word as direction to those with charge of our church family for some who must submit as children of God as a dependent one of Christ’s body, His church. Please hear the appeal and responsibility for this love (storge) as instructed in Paul’s Letter to Titus, a leader in establishing the foundation of the church and family.

Titus 2

Teach Sound Doctrine
But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. 2 Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. 3 Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good,

4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

6 Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. 7 Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, 8 and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.

We ought to see a hierarchical dichotomy in this instruction between the expected mature behavior of the older men and older women of the church, in contrast to their loving responsibility to train the younger women and younger men in the will and ways of Christ Jesus our Lord.

The instruction in the King James Version describes these differences with serious gravity.

That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise…

Would this not also imply a similar duty and affection for the husband and wife of our Christian homes?

And to these instructions Paul adds (as just reason for the older women): … that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;

How are we doing with that, men and woman of Christ’s church, in our Christian homes? Are we, as mature Christians, ‘teachers of good things?’

We can be certain that our affection, teaching and guidance in the love of the Lord in our homes is much needed in this 21st century. (If you don’t believe it, just ask nearly any of our ‘christian’ youth.)

These young men and young women so depend on us and look to us; yet so often as parents and as their mentors of the church we ignore our teens and fail our youth.

Hear once more (in the KJV) what Paul instructs the older women and note once more that it is OUR responsibility to teach them (again, a familial dependent love):

That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,

To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

(I have added links to definitions in the Greek, in some instances root words, and always other uses of the same Greek word in New Testament scripture for your own study.)

Again, I ask us: has this love, this affection been diluted and nearly lost in our Christian homes?

On a personal note, I must confess to our son and our daughters how miserably I have failed in this love and affection so needed in our own now-broken christian home; as I confess to my wife by our vows before the Lord my great failure to show the love of the Blood of Jesus to her and His compassion for the struggles of my own wife in the Lord. For this (like so many broken christian marriages and families) I am truly sorry that WE are no witness of example to the church and to the world.

I pray that the Lord and your personal prayer and study of scripture will convict you in those areas of love where Christ Jesus would have you grow, love even more and be blessed.

Pray also for me, my wife and our broken family – our grown children, yet in need of compassion.

To be continued
February 8, 2015
My love – 2 – Friendship

A friend loves at all times,
and a brother is born for adversity. – Proverbs 17:17

[Eleanor Rigby] All the lonely people… where do they all come from?

Are you one of them (at least sometimes in your chaotic busyness)? I think we all are at times; yet not for a lifetime, I pray.

Can you think of any love more important and personal in those times when you need compassion, empathy and perhaps even an embrace of love? Is any relationship on the planet more necessary to you at that moment than the support of a friend?

History and the Bible retell many stories of the great love of friendship. Like the word ‘love,’ we have also cheapened the very love of friendship, philia, or brotherly love. Wisdom and the pens of poets caution us against ignoring, confusing or devaluing the true love of friendships God would put in our lives.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend;
profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Proverbs 27:6

Has there been a Judas in your life? Yet the love of a friend loves you when you are wronged, embraces you with kindness and defends you in the battle of righteousness. A loyal friend holds near the double-edged sword of truth.

“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

The incalculable value of your friend is the faithful love of trusted relationship.

A man of many companions may come to ruin,
but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. – Proverbs 18:14

Jonathan was such a friend to David, who would not have become King of Israel without him. Jonathan was a hero to Israel even before David slayed Goliath (many of us will not recall).

1 Samuel 13:3 Jonathan defeated the garrison of the Philistines that was at Geba, and the Philistines heard of it. And Saul blew the trumpet throughout all the land, saying, “Let the Hebrews hear.”

Jonathan, son of Saul, was in line to be King.

1 Samuel 17:

57 And as soon as David returned from the striking down of the Philistine, Abner took him, and brought him before Saul with the head of the Philistine in his hand. 58 And Saul said to him, “Whose son are you, young man?” And David answered, “I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.”

18:1 As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. 2 And Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father’s house. 3 Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. 4 And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt.

The high value of David’s love for Jonathan and the love of Jonathan for David is well-documented in the many encounters between Saul and David prior to Saul’s death and David’s God-anointed ascent to the throne.

Are you a friend like Jonathan to someone you love?

Jesus was a friend to His Apostles.

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.

Imagine, a friend and equal to Jesus! This is the great humility of God. This is the greatest love of all, that He makes us once more His friends and commands us to love each other.

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

Friendship!

This love is the relationship of the church, modeled many times in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters. Perhaps a favorite early unlikely friendship is the one which brought Saul of Tarsus and Barnabas together as friends in the Lord. Here is the beginning of Saul’s story after seeing the risen Christ (you may remember):

Acts 9

Saul in Jerusalem
26 And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. 28 So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord.

Barnabas took Paul to Cypress to his home for their first missionary journey. When Peter heard of the gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit, the church sought out Paul, who would become known as the Apostle to the gentiles.

Acts 11

21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number [of gentiles or Hellenist Greeks] who believed turned to the Lord. 22 The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23 When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, 24 for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord.

25 So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

Acts 14: Barnabas & Paul refuse to be worshiped as gods in Lystra after God performs a miracle through them.

And later, in Jerusalem:

Acts 15:12 And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

It is a lasting friendship, a faithful love, that blesses the life of a Christian (even that of an unbeliever, who my be won by your faithfulness to God).

The Letter of Paul to the Galatians:

2:1 Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.

My love, my friend: my dear brother, my dear sister in our Lord and savior Jesus Christ,

Do you have a friend you love in the Lord?

We should, in fact, have more than one love, a fellow like-minded believer.

Do you LOVE your church friend? Do you hear in your heart and soul the command of our Lord and friend, Christ Jesus?

To be continued

February 6, 2015