Posted by Illuminati on 5/9/2005, 7:48 am, in reply to "Re: Validity of the Bible" When debating about which is the greatest commandment Jesus made the following statement. Our love for other people is conditioned by the command to love your neighbor "as yourself." Our love for others is supposed to have no other conditions. I believe the most logical reason for the difference between our love for God and our love for other people is that with God, we are safe to love completely because He loves us just the same way and will never use our love to hurt us. Since our neighbors often don't love us at all and rarely love us unconditionally, to love them more than ourselves would be completely incompatible to our survival. God can love us unconditionally because He is beyond our ability to injure Him or threaten His survival. His very nature as the supreme being gives Him the power to love unconditionally in a way which is beyond our ability. It is His love which we are to mirror in our relationship with Him and in our treatment of other people. John the apostle clearly understood God's unconditional love. In 1 John 4:19 we find why we are supposed to love. "19 We love because he first loved us." NIV. The reason we are commanded to love is because God values love above anything else. Love is the greatest commandment, it is God's will for us. This idea is repeated in: When one understands God's love the following command not only makes sense but is the only way Jesus could have possible taught.Matt 5:43-48
206.206.120.230
I have offered the ten concepts which I find clearly taught in the New Testament without offering scriptural support since that would take a long time and would be tedious. The concept of God's unconditional love is one which is basic to my understanding of Christianity and should be supported. Many Christians probably don't understand this concept since the New Testament doesn't have the phrase unconditional love. Instead it consistently uses a special Greek word "agape" to describe this special love.
Matt 22:35-40
ne of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
37 Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
NIV
It is my understanding that this leaves no logical room for conditions in our love for God. If we say I love God except under the following conditions, that is not loving with all the heart. From this passage, Jesus taught our love for God is supposed to be complete and unconditional.
Rom 5:6-8
7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
NIV
The Bible consistently teaches that God loved us first and we are to love because of His love. We are to be loving like our Father in Heaven. Love originates in God and then flows into our lives through God's power.
1 John 4:7-11
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
NIV
Here John tells us that God IS love. Love is not one among several of God's attributes, it forms the fullness of His character and everything He does and commands is a manifestation of His love.
The unconditional love which God commands from us is a faint reflection of God's infinite love for us. He commands us to love because we are supposed to be like Him. He is love and we are supposed to love to the best of our ability.
43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
NIV
The commandment to love our enemy central to God's righteousness. Anyone who doesn't follow this commandment shows they don't understand God's love. I can find no words to excel those of the apostle John so I will conclude with a statement from him.
1 John 4:19-21
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
NIV
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