What Love Looks Like

I spent several posts explaining why I believe there exists an all-knowing personification of Love who is personally interested in us and who communicates with us through the Bible as his written word, and the reason is because this post would be meaningless without that. 

We can describe love as seeking the ultimate good of the one being loved, and we have said that this occurs through an attitude of caring, knowing, respecting and taking responsibility for that one.  We also said that this love depends not at all upon the beloved, for it is unconditional. 

God goes further than this.  He tells us what we will and will not be doing if we are loving.  He gives us a mirror which we can use to examine ourselves.  It is what in Hebrew, the language in which it was first written, is called the Torah. It’s a word translated into English as law, but is better translated as teaching. 

God gives us teaching and says that whatever is disobedient to that teaching is sin, and that sin earns death as its wages. There is a reason for that.  God is love.  This is what I John 4:8 tells us.  The letter called I John has love as its theme.  It’s an appropriate read for this topic.

God defines love by what it does and by what it refrains from doing.  First, he provides a general description of love.  Deuteronomy 6:5 gives this prescriptive teaching: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” ⁷  Leviticus 19:18 adds: “…you shall love your neighbor as yourself…”⁷ 

Just how are we to do that? 

In Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, are listed what are known as the Ten Commandments.  They are comprehensive and cover almost every area of life when we consider the spiritual principles behind each of them.  Basically, they are ten broad examples of what it means to love God with all our heart, soul and strength and what it means to love our neighbor as ourself.

1. We are told to put nothing ahead of God. Our devotion to him is to supersede everything. This is not ego thing for him, but is totally because it is what is good for us.  He gives us this teaching because of his love for us.

2. We are not to limit God. We must not lose sight of who he is and what he can do.

3. We must grasp his character and what he is, and remember to respect his name because that is what his name represents.

4. We are to be productive, but take the seventh day of every week to rest from that productivity. He doesn’t say one day in seven: he specifies that it is to be the seventh day.

5. We are to honor our parents. That kind of attitude will help us be teachable and we will learn wisdom that leads to long life.

6. We are not to diminish anyone’s life.  The instruction is that we do not murder, but Y’shuah tells us that even if we are angry with someone (“without cause”), we have murdered them (Matthew 5:22).

7. We are not to adulterate our love relationship.  Y’shuah says that even if we look at someone else in lust, we have broken this teaching (Matthew 5:27-28).

8. We are not to steal.

9. We are not to lie.

10. We are not to desire what is not something we can properly have.

The first 5 books of the Bible (the Bible is a collection of books) are known as the Torah, and contain hundreds of statements meant to magnify these 10 instructions.  Collectively they have come to be known in English as the Law. It was given at a time when people did not have access to what the Bible describes as the spirit of God.  When we have his spirit, we have access to wisdom that helps us to see how to apply love. The Law is basically saying “Here is how to love.”

From the New American Standard Bible:

Romans 13:10: “…love is the fulfillment of the law”.

I John 5:3: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.”

I John 2:3-5: “³ By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. ⁴ The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; ⁵ but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him…..”

A BIG Question

How can I respect a God who would consign people to a hellfire to be tortured forever?

This is not what the Bible teaches, even though most of Christianity does.  Something to be understood about Christianity is discussed at Matthew 24:5. As the centuries old King James Version states it, “For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.”    Luke 13:24-27: “²⁴Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. ²⁵When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open for us,' and He will answer and say to you, "I do not know you, where you are from,' ²⁶then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.' ²⁷But He will say, ‘I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.'” Just because people claim to be preaching and teaching from the Bible doesn’t mean that they are.  

It is beyond the scope of this work to explain this further here, but suffice it to say that the Bible is clear that God’s will is that nobody perishes.  There is a “hellfire”, but it is not a place; it is a condition that will come on the earth as the planet is destroyed.  The Bible tells us that God will save the people, but burn up their works. 

How Can I Respect a Vengeful God?

In the past several essays in this series, I've addressed many questions about God and his relations with mankind. Some people have the concern about the God of the Old Testatment and it might be expressed as follows:

The God of the Bible is a vengeful God.  The Old Testament is full of death and destruction.  How can I respect such a God?

            The God of the Old Testament became Y’shuah (Jesus).   I Corinthians 10:4b, speaking of the Israelites described in the Old Testament, says that they “drank from the spiritual rock that went with them, and that rock was Christ.”  Don’t think that God is different from Christ.  Y’shuah taught that God the Father was not revealed before he came.  Speaking of the father, Y’shuah says in John 5:37: “You have never heard his voice, and you have never seen his form.”  What we see in the Old Testament is the God who became human in the person of Yeshua-ben-Yosef of Nazareth.  What we see revealed in him is the God of the Old Testament, and he is always the same (Hb. 13:8).  This means that we must interpret what we see in the Old Testament in light of what we know of the character of Christ.  We do not see in him a man given to whim, but a totally loving and self-sacrificing God who makes decisions seriously and out of love.  He is not just a God of love, but a God of holiness.  There are things he will not abide because of the great damage they cause.   Yes, there were people destroyed enmasse in the Old Testament, but archaeology has demonstrated that in the Canaanites we have people who engaged in cruelty that would send shivers through most people sensitive to right and wrong.  We are talking about people who, in terrible ways, afflicted the weak and defenseless, and there comes a time when the way to stop the spread of evil is to destroy it.  We must not forget also that the end of their lives is not the end of them.  One day God will deal with them in a society of his making rather than their own, and they will have a chance to learn about love.  Anyway, God who made life owns it and can take what is his anytime he pleases.