Grace Bible Church Pastor Teacher Robert R. McLaughlin Wednesday January 21, 2015
1. Divine love with us. 2. Divine love manifested by the Six Trials. 3. Divine love in the Seven Sayings on the Cross.
The word for love in is agapao which refers to a mental attitude love based upon a maximum amount of doctrine resident in your soul.
PHI 1:9 In fact, I pray this, that your virtue-love may excel to the maximum still more and more by means of metabolized doctrine resulting in all spiritual discernment, 1TH 4:9 Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; You cannot have impersonal unconditional agape love for all mankind until you first of all have personal love for God.
The word for control is the pres-act-ind of sunecho which is sunechei meaning to motivate, to compel, to urge.
Loving TLJC motivates us, it compels a person to go forward in the plan of God in spite of the pressure and distractions.
When we talk about God's love, agape love, we are talking about a certain type of love, a love that comes from the MA of the soul and therefore a love that is based upon thoughts and knowledge.
Satan has so bombarded the church and this society with a spirit of hardness, indifference and self‑importance that we automatically think of our own interests first and others' second.
It doesn't say we love {Him} as the KJ"s Bible says, it says "we love," a reference to loving God, loving ourselves, and loving others.
Are we required to have feelings of inferiority about ourselves?
The Williams translation says, "Practice treating one another as your superiors."
The 20th century New Testament states it, "Each of you should... regard others of more account than himself." - Attitude.
The New American Standard Bible has it, "Let each of you regard one another as more important than himself."
It means putting the interests, cares and comforts of our fellowman above our own ‑ forgetting ourselves in sacrifice and service.
TLJC said, "I pray NOT that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from evil" (JOH 17:15).
"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven" (MAT 5:16).
Esteeming others above ourselves, then, describes the attitude God wants Christians to develop as a basic approach to life ‑ whether toward each other or toward the world.
God wants us to empty ourselves of vanity and self‑centeredness so that the happiness and well‑being of others becomes more important in our minds than ourselves.
God's desire is for us to lose our sense of self‑consciousness and replace it with an attitude of outgoing concern for all ‑ an attitude of wanting to see them grow, advance, prosper and be blessed.
A major test of how converted we are or how much we have really changed in the positive realm is how we respond to the needs of people less fortunate than ourselves.
Prin-The strength of personal love toward people comes from your personal love for God.
To love people impersonally demands more ability, more character, more integrity, more grace and more power than anything in life.
The word for love in JOH 13:34 is agapao which refers to a mental attitude love based upon a maximum amount of doctrine resident in your soul.
God's love is not a feeling or emotion but a system of thinking.
In fact, Inconsistency is the only thing in which most believers are consistent.
The strength of personal love toward people comes from your personal love for God which produces impersonal love toward others.
Virtue means right thinking resulting in right action.
Virtue means operating in graciousness and power.
1JO 4:16 And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
"and we have come to know", he uses the per-act-ind of the verb ginosko which means to know, to become aware, to perceive, to understand, to be conscious of, to comprehend intellectually.
The command for the Christian way of life is virtue first. Not witnessing! Not serving! Not praying! Not doing great things for God......but virtue first.
1. Virtue always meant devotion and loyalty to your family.
They are pre-occupied with themselves - i.e. subjectivity.
PSA 130:3 If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
1KI 8:46 For there is no man who does not sin.
PRO 20:9 Who can say, I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from my sin?
ECC 7:20 Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins.
PRO 17:17 A friend loves at all times, and as a brother he is born for adversity.
1PE 4:8 Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.
The Romans also knew that no one could be virtuous unless they accepted authority (beginning with the authority of their parents).
2. Virtue also meant reverence and devotion to the authorities over the Romans at that time.
This included respect and loyalty toward God which was revealed by exact performance of all that God required.
3. The third meaning of virtue to the Romans meant justice or faith - to them faith meant to be true to one's word.
By virtue they meant what we would call faithfulness or the ability to fulfill one's obligations and keeping one's word.
4. The fourth meaning of virtue meant virtue through absolute self-control.
5. The fifth meaning was consistency or perseverance.
It is important to note that agape love is NOT always the love of God. Agape love is a certain type of love OR A CERTAIN WAY TO LOVE.
When God's love is in view, agape love is simply a mental attitude love requiring the thoughts in the Bible concerning how to handle different situations.
JOH 3:19 "And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men [agape'd or they loved] the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil.
JOH 12:43 for they loved [agaped] the approval of men rather than the approval of God.
Agape love is not automatically the love of God, it is a certain way to love and that way to love is defined for us in the Bible.
To not love someone personally is with phileo love is not sin, but to not love them with agape love is sin.
MAT 5:44 "But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you."
To say you don't agape someone is to say that you have mental attitude sins in your soul toward that person and you're the problem not him or her.
God's love for us is based upon who God is not who we are. Just like agape love in us is based upon who we are not the ones we're showing love to.
Because God looks at our position and not our condition and therefore all losers and winners have the perfect righteousness of God given to them at the moment of salvation.
When you and I love with this impersonal unconditional agape love, we are literally loving with the very nature of God.
Immutability simply means that God never changes, including changing His attitude, His opinion, but most of His love, no matter what you are doing or may do in the future. Immutability simply means that God is absolute stability.
ISA 40:28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The eternal God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired.
MAL 3:6 For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, o sons of Jacob are not consumed.
Because of his immutability His love is unchangeable.
Because He is immutable and does not change, His omnipotence or his power can never diminish. His glory can never change.
Because He is immutable and does not change his veracity which is his truth is forever settled in eternity as PSA 119:89 says, His word is forever settled in heaven.
MAT 24:35 "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words shall not pass away."
Because of his immutability his love is eternal which is a part of His Divine Essence: JER 31:3 says "I have loved thee with an everlasting love."
Jude 1:13 "Without God we are like wild waves of the sea, casting upon their own shame like foam; wandering stars out of our orbit.
ISA 57:20 We are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest and there is no peace.
When we have doctrine in the soul we have the only stabilizer in life.
Actually, immutability is the character and essence of God and faithfulness is the expression of that character.
Immutability is that which is within. Faithfulness is that which is revealed without.
Unfaithfulness is one of the most committed sins today.
Even in the Church we are seeing on the part of spiritual leaders academic dishonesty and out-right manipulation.
DEU 7:9 Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God.
2TI 2:13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful; for He cannot deny Himself.
It is one thing to accept the faithfulness of God as truth it is another thing to act upon it.
1. For instance; God is faithful in keeping His promises, 2CO 1:20.
2. God is also faithful to forgive Jo 1:9.
3. He is faithful in keeping us saved, 1PE 1:4.
4. God is also faithful to deliver us from and in pressure or testing. 1CO 10:13.
5. He is faithful in stabilizing and protecting the believer, 2TH 3:3 But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen and protect you from the evil {one.}
He is faithful in the administration of His plan, 1CO 1:9, God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
6. God is also faithful in disciplining His people. He is faithful in what He withholds just like in what He gives.
7. God is not only faithful in stopping affliction but in sending it as well. HOS 5:15 In their affliction they will seek me earnestly.