Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
The categories of love found in members of the Royal Family of God.
Thursday, April 22, 2004
PHI 4:8 “whatever is lovely” – personal pronoun – hosa – o@sa + adjective – prosphile – prosfilh (plural). Prosphile = preposition pros + noun phile – phileo which connotes personal love; love that is personal.
A. Category one = love toward God.
B. Category two = love toward right man-right woman – a relationship between two members of the opposite sex designed for each other by God in eternity past; PRO 18:22; PRO 19:14, GEN 2:18,22, ECC 9:9, 1CO 7:17.
C. Category three = love toward friends.
D. Category four = love toward members of the human race or impersonal unconditional love.
Category four love is an impersonal unconditional virtue-love = agape.
The other word for love is phileo = a personal love.
Prosphiles – (pros) face to face love or those loves in your life that are closest to your heart. Prosphiles is a hapax legomena – only used once in the New Testament.
Category one love = personal love for God indicates the believer’s capacity to love God and to respond to God’s love based on Bible doctrine resident in the soul.
DEU 6:4-5 “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one or unique! And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
DEU 10:12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you, but to reverence the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,”
DEU 11:13 “And it shall come about, if you listen obediently to my commands which I am commanding you today, to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your heart and all your soul,”
It means that you “know” Him and that you have fellowship with Him through His mind, the word of God.
Apart from the daily function of perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine, it is impossible to love God.
a. The cosmic pastor is distracted by some form of works, crusades, or social action, being very moral, arrogant, and self-righteous.
b. The baby or immature pastor who has never learned Bible doctrine and therefore spends most of his time in the cosmic system.
c. The adolescent pastor who teaches some truth but is distracted by various forms of high profile.
Through his faithful Bible teaching, personal study, and avoiding high profile distractions, he advances in the PPOG and leads his congregation there.
JOH 3:30 “He increases … I decrease.”
Since God is invisible and the object of category one love, we must see and love Him through doctrine in the soul.
JOB 42:5 I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees Thee;
EXO 33:20 But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!”
JOH 1:18 No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
1PE 1:8 “And though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,”
HEB 6:10 “For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, [How?] in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints.”
It is this love, category one love, that frees the justice of God to bless you with supergrace blessings.
Not because He’s bribing you to do so but because through your love for Him you are free from the bondage of materialism and lusts, and therefore you have a capacity to receive God’s highest and best for you as His child.
Not because He’s bribing you to do so but because through your love for Him you are free from the bondage of materialism and lusts, and therefore you have a capacity to receive God’s highest and best for you as His child.
1CO 2:9 but just as it is written,“Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, And which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him.”
PSA 37:4 Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart.
Category one love, love toward God, will also give you courage and confidence as you face spiritual warfare and the conflicts of life designed by Satan to defeat you and cause you to go AWOL as a spiritual soldier of TLJC;JOS 23:10-11.
JOS 23:10-11 One of your men puts to flight a thousand, for the Lord your God is He who fights for you, just as He promised you. So take diligent heed to yourselves to love the Lord your God.
Category one love provides strength for adversity and pressure, HEB 11:27; HEB 12:3.
1CO 16:22 If anyone does not [phileo] love the Lord, let him be accursed. Maranatha.
Witnessing is motivated by category one love, 2CO 5:14.
The description of category one love is given in 1JO 4:15-19.