God's Love (Agape) : The Greatest Love of the Universe

God's Love: The greatest Love in the Universe. (Agape Love) 

Meaning of Love

Types of love

The Ultimate Rule

Description of God's love

What do we do to obtain that love?

You are important to God (God knows and values you) 

What is love? 

Love is an intense, deep affection for another person. Love also means to feel this intense affection for someone. 

Types of love

1. Philia

2. Storge

3. Eros

4. Agape (Our Focus) 

Philia: love of friends and equals

It can be the love between lovers when they've been together for a long time and are not so hot and bothered anymore. It's also called brotherly love as in the city of Philadelphia. The city of brotherly love. Of course, it could be sisterly love and it is the accepting love of good friendship. 

Eros: erotic, passionate love

We might as well get that one out of the way first. Eros is erotic or sexual or passionate love. It's often all about need and it's more about the person who's feeling sexually attractive than it is about the person who is the focus of that love or thing that is the focus of that love. It is addicting. 

Storge: love of parents for children

This kind of love is what mothers know best but isn't talked about too much when we talk about love. It is the love of parents for children. It is described as the most natural of loves.

Agape: love of mankind

The love modeled on the love of the Christian God for men and the love of man for God. It's the love that is given whether or not it's returned. It's the love without any self benefit.

Ultimate Rule (Golden Rule): 

[37] Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. [38] This is the first and great commandment. [39] And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [40] On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Mark 12:30-31, “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength; this is the first commandment…There is none other commandment greater.”

My people perish because they lack wisdom

For God so love the World that he gave his only begotten Son..... John 3:16

Ultimate rule: Love your neighbour and love the Lord your God.

God is Love

Description of God's love

God's love is discipline 

God is a jealous love

He protects the ones he love (security) 

God's Love: His Discipline

Within God’s perfect love is the reality that God chastens those whom He loves. Hebrews 12:5-7 reminds us, “You have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: 

My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten?

God's Love: Jealousy

In Exodus 34:14, we find the command, “worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” John Frame in Systematic Theology explains, “God’s jealousy is not inconsistent with his love or goodness. On the contrary, his jealousy is part of his love.”

The Love of God and the Christian’s Security

In Romans 8:31-39, Paul writes about the love of God and how down to the nanosecond the Christian is held secure in His sovereign hands. Only those who are truly Christ’s will be held until the end, for they have true faith in Him. Times of doubt may come, and the storms of life may assail them, but if we belong to Christ, we are held by Him and will belong to Him always. Such biblical truth should cause Christians to draw near humbly to the throne of God to know and grow in the love of God.

The intensity of God's love (How strong is the love). Lori Iro or not? 

Romans 8:35-39 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

NOTHING IS ABLE TO SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF CHRIST.

“I am convinced” of this, says Paul. “I hold it with my whole soul. This is my spiritual certainty of which I am utterly persuaded. I have grown in this persuasion as my years as a follower of Christ have rolled by. My conviction of this truth has only become stronger as one day follows the next. On the anvil of my experience of God’s love and God’s providence I have come to this total conviction that nothing shall separate us from the love of Christ. Now you see how comprehensive and universal is Paul’s disavowal of the possibility of some secret force one day erupting into our lives resulting in the love of Christ being torn away from us. No such potency exists, not in the earth, not in hell and not in heaven. There is nothing whatsoever that can separate God’s people from God’s love. No one and nothing can do this.

Intensity 1:

i] Death cannot separate us from the love of Christ. That is where he starts, with the great separator itself. Death will come to the most blessed of relations of a husband and wife, what man is warned not to put asunder, what God has joined together, and yet death will separate one spouse from another. Death destroys fellowship; death is the severer of souls. It will separate us from every earthly experience. It terminates them; it severs every earthly relationship. It stands in its awesome authority over the most precious and intimate bonds we know. Death threatens a marriage of a husband and wife in its joy and solemnity and they must acknowledge that they will not always be together. It is, “Till death us do part.” Death even separates the soul from the body. It separates friend from friend; David and Jonathan loved one another with a pure and holy affection until death ended their friendship.

Do not fear he that can destroy the body but fear he that destroy both the body n soul

Intensity 2:

ii] Life cannot separate us from the love of Christ. There are times in our lives when it feels to us that we are far from the love of God, that God has forgotten all about us, that we find ourselves thinking that only in the glory beyond are we going to know that love. Here we know so much stress and it is getting through to our relationship with God; there is pressure and privation and a lot of pain. We know that here we have to walk by faith not by sight, that we labour under all kinds of difficulties. Often life means a dull routine, frustration, nothing exciting at all is happening, a lot of monotonous chores, another week’s plodding full of basic duties to be done. 

Intensity 3:

iii] Neither angels nor demons can separate us from the love of Christ. No spiritual being can do this. The angels have immense spiritual power. The Seraphim could separate Adam and Eve from the Tree of life so that there was no way they could ever reach it again. Angels could destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and sulfur and render them uninhabitable. One angel could pass over the whole land of Egypt and kill all the first born. Just a single angel could destroy the entire Assyrian army. They are called the hosts of heaven and they are described as the army of the Lord. Yet even the most powerful archangel, Michael or Gabriel, is quite unable separate us from the love of Christ, the most glorious, or most able, the very wisest of all those heavenly beings, if he should try, he would utterly fail. All of them, the innumerable hosts of heaven, should they all try together, emptying heaven and target the weakest, youngest, newest Christian in the world, their combined endeavour would fail to separate this baby Christian from the love of Christ. They are quite incapable of doing that. In fact they cannot destroy a single hair on his head without God first giving them permission.

Intensity 4:  (Corona) 

iv] Things present cannot separate us from the love of Christ. And you know what that can mean for some people, and it certainly meant for Paul what he lists for us in verse 35 “trouble, or hardship, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword.” Yet Paul tells us that all of those trials failed to separate him from the love of Christ

Intensity 5:

Things in the future cannot separate us from the love of Christ. Paul is thinking of all those things of which we are anxious; all the worries that we carry. It is so easy today even in the light of our own experience and knowledge, to put the permutations together in a most distressing and horrendous way. We might know that in the near future we’re going to have to face certain difficulties and problems and how terribly wrong things could go. Those are the things looming up ahead the possibilities and anxieties and Paul is saying that nothing in the future – nothing certain or a mere possibility – can separate us from God’s love.  Second coming of Christ and judgement day shall be in our favour

Intensity 6:

vi]  No powers can separate us from the love of Christ. Physical powers, nuclear power, tsunamis, hurricanes and drought; a new ice age or global warming; virulent new viruses like H.I.V., or those that destroy animals and crops, plagues and diseases; the power of a new age, or the new world government, or the illuminati; or international Marxism seen so spectacularly in China; the emergence of the old religions in all their anti-Christian virulence and militancy, Islam and Hinduism. By calling the name of Jesus', every knees must bow. 

Intensity 7:

vii] Neither height nor depth can separate us from the love of Christ. Paul is thinking of the distances that at times separate us from familiar scenes and beloved people. Satan took Jesus to the top of the highest mountain from which to show him all the glory of the whole world but what he experienced there even with the devil tempting him was the love of God keeping him trusting in God. David says in the famous 139th Psalm that it doesn’t matter where you are, whether the greatest possible height or the lowest possible depth all we would discover, up or down, is the constancy and nearness of God’s love for us in Christ. It was already there in our conception in our mother’s womb. Distance, location, position make no difference to the love of God

Intensity 8:

ix] Not anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God. There are only two entities in the heavens and the earth. There is the Creator and the creation. And no creature in the creation can possibly separate us from the Creator’s love. Everything c

onfronting you is a creature and it cannot overcome the uncreated God. Paul says that it is all a matter of ability or power. No force in all creation has the resources or the skill to stop God loving us. It is utterly unthinkable; it is quite inconceivable.

Further explanation 

A)   We cannot be separated from the love that is working all things together for our good. Nothing can take from us the guiding principle of God’s policy, the guiding principle of the whole government of God. Not one morning you shall rise, and not one experience you shall pass through to find that that is not true. Everything will work for your good through the love of God.

B)   We cannot be separated from the love that is determined to make you like Christ, that will conform you to his likeness. That is your inheritance. That is God’s commitment. God has said it. He has poured out his heart and soul and all his resources into this. His mind is made up. His plans are all being accomplished. His purpose is inviolate. His resources are all focused on that. God has made up his mind.

C)   We cannot be separated from the love that says, “those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” God has highly exalted Christ. He has put him in the midst of the throne with all the power of his sovereignty that flows from that throne everywhere. God has raised him to an eminence as high as God can conceive of, and he will glorify us in his love and it will be to the same measure and by the same power as his grace is able to achieve, as his wisdom can conceive, as glorious as Christ deserves

D)   We cannot be separated from the love that spared not his own Son. That is the measure of it. He did not hold him back, and then he will hold nothing back. Shall he now with him graciously give us all things? The argument is marvelous in its simplicity. The God who has done the greater will not shrink from doing the lesser. The God who has done the maximum in giving his Son to the shame and blame of Golgotha will withhold nothing less than that for his people. All that he thinks they need, all that is beneficial to achieve the chief end in life glorifying and enjoying God for ever – such things he will, he must, give to them

Questions: Are you in that love?  Ask your neighbors 

Prayers  (3)

1. Open my eyes and mind to know the dept of your love

2. Help me to accept your love

3. Give me the strength to stand strong in your love. 

Prayer:

Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior. In Your Name. Amen.