Notes of Faith February 1, 2025
The Four Loves: Agape—Our Love for God
We love Him because He first loved us.
1 John 4:19
The New Testament was originally penned in Greek, and there are four different Greek words translated love. The word agape represents the essence of divine love—God’s own special love. It’s the love God has for us and the kind of love He gives us for Himself and others.
Osborne Gordon, a nineteenth-century British pastor, said, “There is no soul so pure and heavenly that it can throw back upon God all that love which He lavishes upon us. God loves us infinitely more than it is possible for us to love Him; but whatever feeble flame of love is kindled in our hearts and goes up as a sacrifice to Him, we are only giving Him of His own.”
That’s a good description of agape. The greatest command within Scripture is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, and soul (Matthew 22:37). It’s the Lord Himself who gives us the agape that allows us to do that. Let His love set your heart on fire, and return it like sparks flying upward to Him.
Our love of [God] is nothing more than His love to us, reflected back upon Him, the source of love.
Osborne Gordon
1 John 4:7-12
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.
I have learned of love in sacrifice and try to teach others to see an expression of their love through sacrifice for another. God’s greatest love for us was His greatest sacrifice in sending His Son into the world to die for us. Love is expressed in many ways as is given to us in 1 Corinthians chapter 13…
1 Cor 13:4-8
4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails
Let us strive to be more like the character of God in our love.
Pastor Dale