1 John 4:5, 7-10 "They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
As you may, or may not know, I am facilitating a weekly Bible study at our local, assisted care living facility each Tuesday. The people who attended my first two studies told me that they had a Thursday prayer group that also did a Bible study, and they asked me if I would be willing to combine the two studies into one. Today I was surprised when one of the ladies from the Thursday prayer group came up and asked me if I was going to combine the two groups together. She asked which church I attended in our town and then explained to me that she was in a church, which believed that to love is God. Knowing that love is an attribute of God and God is love, I asked her to explain that statement.
She told me that, if there was a man walking down the street, and he did not know God or Jesus Christ, but loved everyone, then his love is God. She asked me if I agreed with that statement, to which I replied that I would go out and tell that man about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why?
The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and mind your soul, and all your strength in the second is like it, and that we are to love our neighbor as her self, but we cannot love who we do not know. God is love, but love is not God; love is godly. “We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Love without God is not saving faith, but is a fruit of the Spirit in the true Believer. You cannot know or have true love without God in you. Saving faith comes from believing in God and His Holy Word, repenting of sin in our life, knowing that there is no way to forgiveness on our own, there is no redemption and salvation except through the free gift of Jesus Christ’s atoning dead on the cross to pay for our sin, accepting Jesus as our Savior and following Him as a disciple.
John 3:16-17, 36 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”
In Christ, Brian
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