The secret of the mystery. Part 214. The mystery behind Christian marriage. Part 7.
Friday, April 20, 2007
EPH 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her;
COL 3:19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be bitter against them.
This true biblical love called agape love is a virtue.
It is not an emotion, not a feeling, but a virtue.
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, especially marriage.
Control - pres-act-ind - sunechei - sunevcei = to motivate, to compel, to urge.
ROM 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
A certain type of love, a love that comes from the mental attitude of the soul = a love that is based upon thoughts and knowledge.
God does not “work all things together for good” until there is love for God.
When you start to love someone you have not seen, it is because you have them in your soul, and you have lined up your thinking with their thinking.
“Believe in Him” is not used here for salvation; it is the key to loving God - believing or metabolizing Bible doctrine.
“Full of glory” = the spiritually sustained believer who is reflecting the glory of God.
When there is love for God, it results in love for people. Personal love for God therefore is a virtuous love, and you must have virtuous love in order to make personal love in relationships, such as marriage and friendship, succeed.
The strength of personal love towards people comes from your personal love for God.
Virtue means right thinking resulting in right action.
Virtue means graciousness and power.
Unless you understand the importance of personal love toward God resulting in agape love or impersonal unconditional love for all mankind, you will never be a good lover, personally.
“We have come to know” - per-act-ind - egnokamen - e*gnwvkamen = to know, to become aware, to perceive, to understand, to be conscious of, to comprehend intellectually.
“Knowing” that God loves you is a process.
It is a process which is generated from facts.
Thinking doctrine is what separates winner believers from the emotional apostates or the self-righteous legalists.
Until you have divine viewpoint and metabolized doctrine in your soul you will have no capacity to love and no virtue.
Right thinking resulting in right action.
Virtue means graciousness and power.
Agape is used here in the sense of “virtue love” and “divine love.”
This is the love which God has from His own virtue or perfect righteousness.
JOH 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
God has virtue love or impersonal unconditional love from His own perfect righteousness.
JOH 15:16 “You did not choose Me, but I chose you,”
A believer speaking out of fellowship without virtue-love is like a noisy gong, used by peddlers in the ancient world to attract attention to their merchandise. It was used for attraction to self.
The clanging symbol analogy refers to the fact that professional mourners in the ancient world would draw attention to themselves by their loud noise.
Even the gift of prophecy, no matter how much reliable information comes from it, is intrinsically valueless if it operates without love.
Not only are the spiritual gifts exercised without love of no value, but, as he says at the end of verse 2 -
“I am nothing,”
“Spiritually I am a cipher or a zero.”
My deeds of philanthropy and my resolute determination to remain loyal to the truth even in the face of martyrdom.....cannot in themselves verify my high spiritual position or the superiority of my experiences with the Holy Spirit.
Divine mathematics -
Six minus one equals zero.
Tongues, prophecy, knowledge, faith, philanthropy, martyrdom, minus love = 0
“I am nothing”
By themselves, your spiritual gifts attest nothing spiritual about you.
D.A. Carson in “Showing the Spirit,” page 61.
“If Paul were addressing the modern church, perhaps he would extrapolate further - You Christians who prove your spirituality by the theological information you can cram into your heads, I tell you such knowledge by itself proves nothing.”
And you who affirm the Spirit’s presence in your meetings because there is a certain style of worship, (whether formal and stately or exuberant and spontaneous) - if your worship patterns are not expressions of love, you are spiritually bankrupt.
“There is not evidence of even a first work of the Spirit.”
Any particular gift is dispensable, so far as spiritual profit or confirmation of the Spirit’s presence is concerned, but love is indispensable.
Virtue-love, the love husbands are to have toward the wife in Christian marriage, has nothing to do with emotion or feelings but everything to do with thought pattern and behavior.
It is virtue-love itself that is kind, or does not boast, rather than the person who displays love. Lovelessness breeds thousands of variations of inferiority complexes and superiority complexes.
Patient - makrothumei = usually suggests not merely willingness to wait a long time, or endurance of suffering without giving way, but endurance of injuries without retaliation.
PRO 19:11 A man’s discretion makes him slow to anger, And it is his glory to overlook a transgression.
PRO 19:11 “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is his glory to overlook an offense.”
He’ agape makrothumei = “the love is patient.”
Makrothumei or patience is simply poise and self-control where you are able to handle suffering, hostility, provocation, and unjust treatment... even in marriage.
Patience is stability of mentality under unjust treatment.
Patience also gives you the ability to make good decisions under provocation and unjust treatment. Patience also means that you have personal control of your life so you do not surrender your happiness because of someone who has been antagonistic toward you.
“Love is kind” = not merely patient or long-suffering in the face of injury, but quick to pay back in kindness what it received in hurt.
Kind - chresteuomai = to show oneself useful, to perform acts of kindness, to have integrity, to have moral, honest, and artistic values.
It is important to note that this is a verb, not an adjective. It is not describing agape love as an adjective; it is describing the action of agape love.
Pres-mid-ind = impersonal unconditional love causes an individual to perform gracious acts.
Jealous - pres-act-ind - zeloo = to be envious, jealous, to strive, to be resentful and spiteful.
Brag - perpereuetai = to boast, to brag; also one who is talkative, an exaggerator; in Classical Greek used for those constantly asserting themselves and having an obsession with criticizing and wounding others with aggressive words.
Phusioo = to be inflated, puffed up, conceited, to put on airs or to pretend.
Aschemonei = to behave indecently, disgracefully, to act improperly or unfairly.
In the Old Testament, in the Septuagint, it is used in DEU 25:3 to disgrace others publicly, or to publicly humiliate. Love not only does not seek that which does not belong to it; it is prepared to give up for the sake of others even what it is entitled to.
Provoked - paroxuno = to arouse and provoke to wrath, to irritate, to make angry.
“Ou logizetai to kakon” = “not reckons the evil”
This type of love will cause you to give up resentment, excuse a guilty party, release others from payment, forget an offense, never bringing it up again, not even to discuss it. Love will join with others in rejoicing over the truth.