God is Love

Richard T. Ritenbaugh:  Perhaps the most critical question in every nation and every era is "Who is the true God?" In his final book, Mystery of the Ages, Herbert W. Armstrong titled the chapter explaining the first mystery ...

Christians have been known to toss about the word "love" with seeming abandon, quoting verses from Jesus' lips or the apostle John's pen as if they were talismans that can solve all problems. Joseph Baity, however, calls their bluff, suggesting that culture has so confused the common understanding of love that most people do not know what true, godly love is.

Clyde Finklea, focusing on Psalm 19:1, which proclaims that the heavens (the firmament) proclaim the glory of God, and on Isaiah 6:3 which avers that the entire earth reveals God's glory and perfection, reminds us that the pinnacle of God's Creation, beings created in His image started out as mud sculptures, into which He breathed the spirit of life. The vastness of the universe has not even been tapped with the accuracy of the Hubbell telescope, which helps us to estimate that it would take eight minutes to travel to the sun at the speed of light and 20 billion light years to travel to the edge of Milky Way, not even scratching the surface of Creation. David proclaimed that we are awesomely made, with the human brain, for example, containing 10 billion nerve cells. God is bringing many sons to glory, implanting His character traits through the means of His Holy Spirit, including the multiple aspects of love described in I Corinthians 13. As our sanctification process comes to full term, we will see our Creator as He is, having attained the same glorified state. In response to this, all we can say is "Wow"!!!!!!

Martin Collins, acknowledging that because we still have human nature, selfishness dominates our prayer, in contrast to Christ, who devoted 5 petitions on His own behalf and 21 petitions on behalf of His disciples entrusted to Him by the Father to help Him bring glory to God. Jesus revealed the Father to the disciples, including the instructions to regard the Father as a loving parent. The disciples preserved this relationship in their prayers and in their relationship with one another as siblings with Christ. God has planned our way, doing the lion's share of the work, continually keeping us on track if we maintain a teachable attitude. If we observe Christ's words, there must be a demonstrable difference in our behavior and a commitment to obey His teachings in order to bear good spiritual fruit, adopting a lifestyle which the people of this world hate. Christ prays for us as He did for His original disciples because we too have been called by the Father and entrusted to Him. Christ values us because the Father values us.We glorify Christ when we obey Him, carrying His example of holiness to the world through our behavior and actions. As Christ intercedes in prayer for us, we must intercede in prayer for our brethren, realizing we are all in this together.

Joe Baity, focusing on a 1642 law enacted in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Old Deluder Satan Act, an attempt to create a literate population to read the Bible, preventing deceit and heresy, jumps ahead to January 1992, when the Church of the Great God, following the disintegration of the Worldwide Church of God, asked constituents of the greater Church of God whether they could see God. On October 8, 2014, the Church of the Great God challenged its members to search for a clear world view, unimpeded by the polluted and sullied springs of the world's culture. God has called us out of ignorance; we must see clearly the perspective Christ came to reveal. The world's sloppiness with language has cheapened the precision of meaning. For example, the myriad imprecise and often trivial contexts of the word "love" has blurred the solemn commitment of keeping God's commandments. The old serpent that deluded Eve has bastardized the term love, flooding the world with over one billion books distorting love, calling it "a four letter word," "falling in love is like falling in a hole," "love is to be avoided," "all is fair in love and war," or "don't let love let you down," making it nearly impossible to understand the love of God. Satan has actually deluded mankind that love is hate and hate is love. As God's called-out ones, we must seek God with all our might, learning that love is to keep His Commandments in the letter and spirit, constituting pure love to God and one another.

Richard Ritenbaugh, reflecting on popular music involving the theme of romantic love as the answer to all the world's ills, remarks that the composers of these lyrics have no idea as to what love really is. The fuzzy definition of love is responsible for tolerance of sin, deviancy and liberal, multi-cultural mis-evaluations. We should have a more mature understanding of love for God and love for neighbor. The outgoing concern toward other beings begins with God the Father to Jesus Christ to us. Without godly love, real love does not exist. Real love does not exist in isolation; another being must always be the object of real love. God's plan involving the reciprocal sharing of love among members of God's Family began well before the foundations of the world, at which time a possible sacrifice for sin had to be factored in. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The love of God, through the mechanism of His Holy Spirit, works on our inner beings (our mind and spirit), making us like Him, demonstrating the love of God, loving God with all our minds (keeping His commandments) and our neighbors (including our enemies) as ourselves. The extent that we love our brethren may be an accurate gauge as to how much we love God.

John W. Ritenbaugh:  For the past twenty-five years or so, tolerance has been a powerful theme of secular preachers of political correctness. ...

John W. Ritenbaugh:  Shortly after the 9/11 tragedy, I wrote a brief column because so many were asking, "Where was God?" implying, "Why did He allow such an event to occur?" Perhaps a few made outright accusations such as, "How could He be so cruel?" but mostly it was implied. ...

Life sometimes seems to be one trial after another. However, Pat Higgins asserts that God has revealed an astounding facets of our relationship with Him that should give us the faith to soldier on despite our many trials.

John Reid, contrasting the world's self-serving, lust-driven "way of get" (mistakenly called love) with God's example of sacrifice and way of outgoing concern, concludes that what the world needs now is the agape love modeled by the Father and Jesus Christ. We are called to take on the very nature of God, to put on the love of God that casts out all fear. Our goal is to take on the likeness of Jesus Christ, developing His character, thereby reflecting the true love of God. If we have lost our first love, we need to rekindle it by ardently keeping God's Commandments, demonstrating both love for God (the first four) and love for mankind (the last six). Attaining God's nature and love requires that we keep His commandments. Of all the spiritual gifts we could ever hope to attain, the love of God surpasses all of them. Love is the way God lives throughout eternity.

Love is the first of the fruit of the Spirit, the one trait of God that exemplifies His character. John Ritenbaugh explains what love is and what love does.

John Ritenbaugh stresses that God esteems certain spiritual qualities above other spiritual qualities. To elevate a minor regulation above a major regulation is to spiritually lose ones sense of proportion. The attribute of love (I Corinthians 13:13) supercedes (but not negates) all other spiritual gifts or qualities. There are degrees of missing the mark (sin) as well as priorities of spiritual importance. Love, justice, mercy, and fidelity (the weightier matters of the law) God desires more than meticulous, mechanical religiosity. The greatest or the first commandments (loving God with all our hearts and our neighbor as ourselves) precedes all the other ordinances in importance (Matthew 22:37-40).

John Ritenbaugh, acknowledging that salvation cannot be earned or bought, reminds us that a gift is still a gift even though a condition has to be met. Meeting a condition does not (as Protestants would have us believe) change the character of a proposition. Keeping the commandments is the way we express love for God. The works that God demands of us consists of overcoming our flesh, the world, and Satan, as reflected in keeping God's commandments (John 14:15, I John 5:3). There is a direct relationship between loving Christ and doing the right works. God's love for us places us under a compelling obligation to reciprocate and to pass it on to others.

John Ritenbaugh focuses upon the emotional dimension of love, reiterating that love doesn't become 'love' until the thought, or the feeling, motivates the person to act. Love is an act. If we don't do what is right, the right feeling will never be formed, because emotions are largely developed by our experiences. The right emotions require God's Holy Spirit. Like a marriage relationship, our relationship with God grows more and more intimate as we give it time and attention, conforming to the other person's preferences in the relationship. We are never going to know God unless we do the same kinds of things with Him, keeping His Commandments, devoting time to prayer, Bible study, and meditation. If we are working on our relationship with God (giving it our time and attention), then God's love for us will be reciprocated back to Him in the form of obedience, totally trusting in Him to shape our lives for His purpose.

John Ritenbaugh reiterates that love is not a feeling, but an action- defined by John as keeping God's commandments (I John 2:3), the only means by which we can possibly know Him, leading to eternal life. While what humans consider love is self-centered and carnal, God's love is essentially others-centered. When God begins the love cycle, by His Spirit, He gives us His love; then it only becomes matured in us as we use it (loving God and loving our neighbor by the keeping of His Commandments). If we don't use it, then it bounces off from us and nothing is accomplished. Using God's love may be compared to learning to skate; the more we use it the stronger it gets. Beginning as a feeling, it doesn't become love until an action is taken.

The world really hasn't the foggiest idea of what love really is. Of all God's spiritual gifts, love is the preserving agent preventing any of the other gifts such as prophecy, knowledge, or tongues to become corrupted. Love, an attribute of God Almighty, needs to be the driving force of everything we do. Without love, some normally positive attributes like drive, courage, and determination become brittle and self-seeking. God is the sole source of love; mankind by nature does not have it. It is only by knowing God that we can have this love. Love can be described as a cycle, which God initiates. As we give it back to Him, He gives more to us because we are growing and our love must be perfected. Love is not feeling but action. As God loves us, He expects us to reciprocate back to Him and out to our fellowman, and by so doing we become credible witnesses for God.

God is a multidimensional personality who always acts in accordance with His perfect character. John Ritenbaugh explains that God is a whole Being whose wonderful, perfect attributes work together—and whose traits we are to come to know and reflect.

John Ritenbaugh observes that Lamentations 4 contains a series of contrasts, showing the indignities suffered by a once proud and seemingly invincible people reduced to servitude and abject humiliation because of the sin of idolatry, entered into as a result of economic and political alliances - leading to the adoption of abominable pagan religious practices, violating the covenant made between God and His people. The climax to this extended hopeless lament comes in Lamentations 5:16, when a greatly belated admission of guilt and acknowledged responsibility leads to a recognition of God's sovereignty and hope for ultimate restoration.

John Ritenbaugh reiterates that the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 did not have a blind naïve faith, but one built incrementally by careful examination of the evidence- adding things up or calculating- from cumulative life experiences. From this acquired faith, these otherwise ordinary people received the inspiration to go against seemingly impossible odds, accomplishing super human goals and objectives. This roll call of the faithful serves as a cheering section for the rest of us who are still enduring our trials, still enduring God's chastening, prone to discouragement and occasionally feeling like giving up. Like the heroes of faith- and most notably our Elder Brother Jesus, we need to look beyond the present, looking at the long term effects of the trials and tests we go though, seeing their value in providing something in us that we would otherwise lack (the peaceable fruit of righteousness) to successfully make it into God's Kingdom. God lovingly chastens and disciplines those He loves.