Love:
As distilled first from 1cor13: Let love be your highest goal.
Love is always concerned with what is true in any matter. Love never to settle for the the contrary, called falsehood.
Love doesn’t demand its own way but must always demand the just way. For God is Just.
Love is never glad about injustice – it always works toward justice. How God defines justice in His Law.
Love always is exceedingly glad when the truth wins out; love always pursues that evidential truth.
Love endures through every circumstance - it desires to finish the good as God defines good.
If I love others in these particular ways, what I do has value.
Love doesn’t give in to error or the bad or to foolishness. Love is not childish.
Love doesn’t participate in wishful thinking, mythological tale tales and immature childish behaviors.
Love as it must be expanded and given distinction from these statements:
Give honor to your neighbor as you would have honor bestowed to you - with the necessary condition - if true honor is deserved.
Feelings of love have no direct link or place with these prior stated moral disciplines of love in this chapter.
The mind is the seat of love for it is the seat of morals – not the heart as defined by emotions and feelings. The heart flows forth from these requirements. It does not lead the way.
Love is about being morally self-aware – which are acts of the will to what is good and just.
To have moral outrage should not be equated with being unkind or impatient or rude. Expressing concern is squarely in the realm of Love.
Are we loving if we violate the law as God commands it? The question then is about what is true in each situation: and example is would you save your dog or a stranger if both were in need of rescue? This is about knowing willful love and having moral clarity about the differences and distinctions in God’s created order.
Love the other [neighbor] by defending those who are innocent; no equivocation.
Love the other by wanting for them justice in any situation.
Love one another [enemy] by stopping those who are doing evil.
Love the enemy by acting on what is truly good for the perpetrator; which will correspond by necessity to the good which must be done for the victim.
Loving the stranger is primarily worked out in God’s original order - by loving the opposite sex you are married to.
Loving is an act of our will; sentimentalism is about feelings and has no place in superior love of 'agapao'; for feelings are often blind to what is good.
A value system that is good will be higher than our own feelings and passions.
Love justice. Do not show favoritism or partiality between different people; you will pervert justice. [lev.19:15] Justice shall you pursue. Social justice is very different than justice. Social justice is about favoring one over the other. Therefore, if you favor one group over another, it is unjust.
Loving is seeking what is good for your enemy; good from God’s perspective and demands.
Loving is permitting only that which is right to prevail.
Loving is an act of the will so must be judged and implemented properly as each situation dictates.
Loving is doing good to the enemy – but loving is not appeasing the enemy. Don’t do what they wish for or want ultimately, do only good, do only that which is true to the law of God – that which is right, the Lex Eternitatus.
5th command says that there is a distinction for one’s parents; not to love parents but to honor them.
Love must always be distilled and processed through what Justice is. If you love and it results in injustice, then, you are not loving but perpetrating injustice.
Loving isn’t letting someone walk all over you. Though there may be a rare circumstance to allow it sometimes for a short period. So loving depends on something else for it to be ‘true’ love. Love is never alone. It must be coupled with goodness and truth.
Love never infers we should let people 'walk all over us.' To turn the other cheek is a particular 'fos' or expression that describes not becoming overly angry to soon and without taking in the true motivations of the perpetrator.
Love is not naive idealism, it is not social equality, it is not monetary equality…
Loving cannot be worked out justly through pacifism. That is, being a pacifist is not loving someone. Pacifism cannot be good.
You aren’t loving others if you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of humans. Meekness is not passivity.
If you are doing unto others what they should be taking care of for themselves, you are in a relationship of co-dependency and not of love.
If God is love; that is, if He is loving; If God has love as a part of what makes up His full character, then, the eternal Law of God, the Lex Eternatalis, must be a part of God’s love for mankind.
Loving God does not make for a hate free life. Loving is not the absence of hating. Because we have to do something with acts of evil. When you hate evil you will not hate anything else. Hate evil not the person is what God states and displays. For example: you must hate racial bigotry because it is about haters of a race. There is an increase in certain people who hate pollution, over population and over sized soda's but these aren’t about evil. Proper hate is for deliberate infliction of unjust suffering. If you are moved to goodness then you will love God by hating evil. If you don’t discriminate properly in this quality then you don’t love God. (1,2,3 John)
It is said by some that because we love mankind, we uphold the true nature of love, and as such we should love the murderer and oppose capital punishment. But according to every book of the Pentateuch God dictates that capital punishment is just when merited. Therefore those who say they care and love the murderer by wanting him alive are upholding sanctimonious falsehoods about what God Almighty expects for us to have as values.
The barometer of moral discernment is weakening in this time. As such people speak untruthfully about love in this time also.
Can you love truly if you have a fundamental misunderstanding of people?
To contend for the truth would mean to contend for love, for love is always about truth. Understanding this is a gift of God. Or it may be a fruit.
Therefore, it would be untrue about love: to let your neighbor enslave others as he may because you have the same regard as he. There are moral 'oughts' for your neighbor as there are for you. The nature of 'active love = agape love' is not blind. the imperative to love as unbound to the goodness of God. Which abhors the opposite of goodness. Because if God is good, then He is not including 'anti-goodness' as apart of His attributes.
It would be unloving to say that this 2nd law is unbounded. There is a precision
The Hebrew rendition of love and what an enemy is:
Lev.19:18 says love your neighbor as yourself. But not that only, almost all chop the quote short. It should be quoted as saying, ‘love your neighbor as yourself, for I am God.’ The difference being ethical monotheism vs. secularized non-binding ethics; which are just opinions tailored to today’s thinking norms.
The Hebrew should be translated to mean, “show love ‘to’ your neighbor.” A command of behavior; how you act. Not an emotion of perfect affection toward someone.
When Jesus spoke of in terms of someone as an enemy, what was Jesus referring to? The story he went on to tell to give us a description what an enemy was that of a decent person who was of a different ethnic group; someone who’s culture was demeaned and had a tragic things happen to him. One group preying over another group is not to be lived out on an individual basis and given sanction. The enemy Jesus describes is a neighbor or stranger in your local area who is different in either race or ethnicity or religious temperament. Don’t prejudice your conduct because of these ethnic, cultural or blood line conditions. Love that 'enemy'. For Jesus makes the case that that person is not an enemy. This being said, an enemy, as just described, has nothing to do and is not in the same category with wickedness or evil doing. That kind of an enemy is never to be tolerated and accommodated but decently brought to the authorities who will stop his evil. We must distinguish what the 'enemy' is.
Some resources to verify this would be 1. Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, and the people of Israel would sing songs when they defeated their hostile and evil enemy; 2. Proverbs 12:10; 3.
Proverbs 13:24 makes the contrasting case that love isn’t about being nice but about right activities versus wrong activities. Love is about knowing justice and the discipline it takes to take charge of your children promptly.
Proverbs 11:9-12 speaks of evil being illuminated and dealt with as an outcome of being just and lovely. When we act this way we have our moral clock in alignment. If we do that which is unjust we do not love.
Be decent to your neighbor and you will fulfill what true love is.
The Gospel of John states that Jesus was asked if you were either to do Love or Justice. But Jesus new this was an error and fallacy of the mind in limiting what the true answer may be. A fallacy the false dilemma or the excluded middle; it is not either or, but both together.
There is a war against common and spiritual ‘sense’. There is the lack of being able to distinguish between love-compassion versus objective standards. The micro of private life and the macro of public life. This is detailed in ethical monotheism. This modern principle of love has been set up as a shibboleth to obfuscate what it was intended to be. But these confusions have always been apart of the human condition.
Proverbs:
What does perfected in Love mean? Is perfected love synonymous with Gods wisdom of Proverbs?
It is written that God is Love; God is good; God is just. Also it says He is Holy. But unlike any of the other attributes of God in the Hebrew; it exclaims that God is Holy – Holy – Holy. It should be understood that saying something ‘three’ times is as an exclamation point to the 10th degree and a superlative of the highest order in the Hebrew language.
Is loving, in the biblical sense, having to do with appeasing your neighbor or confronting your neighbor? Is it both or something else? Isn’t loving your neighbor shorthand for the discipline to do what is right by them? Not in a reciprocal manner, untethered by moral standards but a 'right relationship'.
Is the concept of Love in both Testaments about behaving in certain ways as opposed to what your raw nature tells you to do? Isn’t this reflected well in Proverbs that your personal nature can be most detrimental to the nature of love?
Proverbs 1:3; Could this reception of instruction of being disciplined, good in conduct, of doing what is right – or just and acting unbiased and fair be the same in configuration as the outward behavior in life called love?
Proverbs 4:6; states to love wisdom, to let it protect you, let it guard you, never let up on getting it.
Proverbs 8:1-17; the love of wisdom lives together with good judgment. All who love wisdom will understand what love is. Always search for more wisdom.
Proverbs 12:6,10; says that loving or showing kindness to the wicked is cruel and foolish. Wisdom always must reflect God's truth. So to love correctly is in fact to have wisdom that is more precious than refined gold. From 5:9 and the warning and chastising to approbation:
Galatians:
From 5:9, from warning and chastising to approbation:
Genuine love is a combination of:
- conflict and confidence
- willing to argue and encourage; the mind is appealed to
- destitute of quarrels is destitue of depth and growth
- is not mere docility and peaceful coexistence
Good:
It is good to make correct judgments.
It is good to have standards.
Accuracy is our first responsibility to being good.
To do good is not to just 'to mean well' in the intent, but when one tries, it doesn’t turn out well. Therefore, meaning well is not good, in and of itself.
It is not good to lie; lying is at the root of evil and the opposite of goodness.
It is a good in treating male and female nature differently but each person with equality.
Self-delusion is not good and it is not true to reality.
Nature doesn’t tell you anything about being good. Because nature is not about good versus bad. About the tree of 'Knowledge...'
To do good is to abandon infantile desires. Be childish no more.
Goodness is kindness is service is behavior.
Feeling for other people is not in itself a value system. It is a fine human sentiment to feel for the poor, disabled, for animals and trees but, these are not in themselves about transcendent values. We have a mind, given by the Creator, which sets us apart from the animals and all other life.
To be good one has to know what ‘good and evil’ are and the keen distinctions between them.
To be good one has to know where rights come from.
Their is no statute of limitations on getting to the truth. For goodness demands what the whole truth is.
Within the goodness of who God is, is the declaration to hate that which it is not! To hate that which is the antithesis of good, that is evil - this is a part of goodness.
Goodness and forgiveness:
Forgiving is not allowing…
Examples of Love in our culture and history:
1. ‘Restorative justice’ and Rwandan ministers who go into prisons and speak proper repentance
2. “Irena‘s Vow” the movie.
3. ‘Love your dog more than the stranger’ example by Dennis Prager
4. Mary Graham said, “’No’ is a complete sentence.”
We have 2 things that that are eternal: the word of God and a soul. Also, my friend says there is Music which comes through.
Some 40 times this word is used in the scripture. An example is 1 Peter 3:1-10
For the Gunay: 1. Hupottaso: voluntary attitude of cooperation, conciliatory and assuming responsibility, but with all attributes of wisdom and justice so you come under no disadvantage.
2. Phobeo: veneration, treating with deference. utmost respect.
For the Aner: 1. Gnosis: an advanced and enlarged knowledge set regarding her, moral wisdom as seen in right (not personal opinion or cultural norms) living in association with dwelling, living with her.
2. Tee-nay: honor, having precious value or sum, is shown by one's behavior with marks of respectful submission, deference, yielding to the opinion of the other.
Greatly Loved
The vision in Daniel 8 is appalling. The great beastly enemy of God is allowed to kill a huge numbers of saints.
His power shall be great...and he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does, and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints. (Daniel 8:24)
Daniel is made sick by the vision. But in spite of being sick and appalled, he does his work.
And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king’s business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it. (Daniel 8:27)
That is the way it is for us. From one day to the next the news changes. Some hits home so close it makes you sick. Some is global and makes the heart tremble. But we press on in the work we are given to do.
How can we do this? One way is to know that we are “greatly loved.” Three times an angel tells Daniel he is “greatly loved.”
- "You are greatly loved.” (9:23)
- “O Daniel, man greatly loved.” (10:11)
- "O man greatly loved, fear not, peace be with you; be strong and of good courage.” (10:19)
Everyone who believes in Christ experiences the same:
“But God...because of the great love with which he loved us...made us alive together with Christ.” (Ephesians 2:4-5)One would think you would be thrilled and embrace this 'work of God' that is upon me. And find the brilliance of the rigorous 'background checks', the search for provenance, the required nature of contending for God's truth.Who God is in Genesis 1, 2
- Above nature and the universe
- Created nature, time, space, force, matter, action
- Oversaw the development and transformation of earth for the condition of life
- The universe had a beginning
- Has a firmament (raiia) called outerspace, or in scientific terms - the fabric of space.
- oversaw the process and timeline for biological speciation.
- The universe and the earth and everything therein is good.
- Man and women were made in a particular time when all phases of earth were 'just right'. Were made in the Creator's likeness but were provided ground rules of what they could and couldn't do.
- this relationship that God strikes with 'Adahm' (humankind), is to be taken seriously the demands placed before them. He has the right to place obligations on each human.
- the weighty and seriousness of God, who is holy. It is seen in this theology of creation and the subsequent fall and alienation of humankind. God had a purpose for creation, 'Adahm' refused these conditions.
- God is an eternal being and created derived and contingent beings.
- His intelligence works thru design rather than chaos and chance.
- It taught a distinction between a Deity who is personal - and a tree or the sun. The axiom being, there is nothing Divine about a tree.
Hebrew scholar John Walton of Wheaton College takes this view in The Lost World of Genesis One (IVP 2009). Other works by proponents of Old Earth Creationism include Seven Days that Divide the World by John Lennox (Zondervan 2011) and In The Beginning We Misunderstood: Interpreting Genesis 1 in Its Original Context by Johnny V. Miller and John M. Soden (Kregel 2012). By the ministries The Discovery Institute and Reasons to Believe.
