Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Who Are the Most Loving People You Know?

"Love" is one of the most misused and corrupted words in the English vocabulary.  Very often when I am evangelizing, I have to give the correct definitions to whole host of words, including the word, gospel.  The word "love" in English vocabulary originates from the Bible.  It is used now in the English language, but it is pulled directly from God's Word.  Changing the meaning of words is a way to corrupt the teaching of scripture, but it is also a main strategy of postmodernism and critical theory, that says there is power in vocabulary.

The Bible itself talks about changing the meaning of words, done to fool people.  It is evil, done by evil people.  Many words are being changed today that buttress faith in scripture and obedience to the Word of God.  "Changed" is actually a soft word to describe what people do.  They are despicably corrupt, twisting, and perverting scripture through the changing of the meaning of words.  Isaiah 5:20 says, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"

In the Garden of Eden, God said one thing, and Satan immediately said something different that made Eve feel like Satan loved her more than God did.  God said, Thou shalt surely die. Satan said, Ye shall not surely die.  They couldn't both be right.  Which do you think is more popular?

Satan then ripped on God to talk about how unloving He was:  "God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."  God is just ripping you off, trying to bring you down, Eve.  Doesn't Satan sound loving to Eve?  Why don't you all send a comment to Eve on her instagram feed.  She's been attacked by God so why not join Satan and let her know how much you love her at this time of personal attack.  Today she would get hundreds of likes and dozens of supportive comments.  It's no wonder that Noah and his family got only eight people to be together on the ark, even after over a hundred years of preaching.

Scripture says, God is love (1 John 4:8, 16).  Love is an attribute of God, so love is who God is.  That also means God defines love.  When Romans 3:23 says "all. . . . fall short of the glory of God," it means that all fall short of the perfections of God's attributes, which is what His glory is.  People fall short of love.

Love is obviously important in scripture, because it is the first and second great commandments of God, (1) love God, and (2) love your neighbor.  The entire law of God, we know, is wrapped up or summarized in those two commandments of God.

Before I go further on what love is, so that I can answer the question in the title of this post, let me explore that briefly.  I've heard people through the years say that such and such a person is the most loving person they know.  How would someone know that?  What would characterize the most loving person someone knows?  He would go to scripture to make that assessment, because God is love.  God defines love.  If someone uses his own definition, like Satan did with Eve, then he's just a deceiver, using the term for his own purposes.

Today, words that define the way the world uses love, that conflicts with what scripture says, are toleration, feelings, niceness, fun, and lust.  These words all easily conform to the world system.  Two weeks or so ago, I wrote about the values sign, you'll see that comes from the hard left in this country, and one of its epithets is, "love is love."  Love does not define love, so what's happening with that?  This is a removal of God out of the definition and changing the definition based on the perspective of the subject, or in other words, a subjective definition.  This is just rebellious, calling good evil and evil good, but it is postmodern too.  That "love is love" bromide justifies sodomy.  Love is love, even if it is two men loving each other, is the lie.

The corruption of love relates to a perversion of values that ignores the true God of scripture.  New values, contradicting scripture, are wellness, self-love, or self-care.  Someone is doing wrong, violating scripture, sinning, rebelling against God, or transgressing God's law, let's say with transgenderism, and someone disapproves.  He or she states the disapproval.  Loving people come to the rescue of the transgender.  Disapproval brings self-loathing, depression, and suicidal thoughts.  It causes a loss of endorphins, which brings severe headaches.  This person is now in pain and in need of healing.  Loving people come to the rescue from the community to lift this person up.  He can now happily go his/her/its merry way in his sin with the full support of others.

Actually the grief the "transgender" feels from disapproval is the right feeling.  He needs to abhor his sin. This is what David felt when he committed adultery.  The pangs of conscience are good.  It's like the pain someone feels when he touches a hot stove, telling him not to do that.  The conscience is an internal warning device.  "Coming to the aid" of someone who is hurting over disapproval of a righteous confrontation just shuts down the properly working conscience.  This person is learning not to listen.  He or she is not swift to hear.  In other word, the person is being truly hurt, hurt in an actual way, harmed eternally, and this is not love.  This is not love.  It is hatred.  The people being given credit for love are hateful people.  What I'm writing here is very important.  This is some of the worst kind of deceit that there is in the world.

Children disobedient to their parents, not honoring their parents, need to feel very, very bad about that.  If a young lady is dressed like a prostitute, or as the King James says, the attire of a harlot, she should be discouraged in that.  That is the strange woman in Proverbs 6-8.  The fellow millennials or highly deceived middle aged and older people, who tell them that self-care is more important, and they need to feel liberation instead, are Satanic liars.  They are bringing destruction on this person and disintegrating his or her biblical discernment or wisdom.  The wisdom of this world, that does not descend from above, is earthly, sensual, and devilish (James 3:16).

Alright, so let me come back to the definition of love.  I said God defines it and what do we see again and again in scripture.  Consider these verses, read them all:

1 John 5:1-3, "1 Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments:: and his commandments are not grievous."

John 14:15, 21, "If ye love me, keep my commandments. . . . He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."

John 15:10, "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love."

I'm guessing that some of you reading this don't like what God says about love.  You don't like His definition.  You would rather stick with yours.  In the end though, you don't love God or others when you are sinning without repentance.  Someone may say that you are, but don't listen to that person.  He is lying to you, like Satan lied to Eve.

God is love.  Whatever contradicts God's Word is not love.  It will bring the worst possible circumstances to your life, even if you think that things are better for you in the short term, just like Eve did.  Just because you feel something that you think is love, that isn't love.

To answer the question, the most loving people are the ones who keep God's commandments.  Of course, someone can't do that without faith in Christ.  Love is fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22).  It is produced by God internally in a person, but it still always looks the same.  It does not accept sin. Like Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13, it rejoices not in iniquity.

Someone may feed you a bromide, platitude, and epithet, that will get approval from the world, and especially unsaved people, but do not believe the lies.  Turn to God.  God is love.  Someone is not the most loving person in the world, who is in a constant state of sinning against God and is not keeping what He said.  The loving person is the person who does the will of God and tells you what you need to hear.  Listen to that.

3 comments:

Kent Brandenburg said...

I saw this linked to, and I checked it out, even though he's not where we're at, it is a good reminder of how these wrong views are propagated by influencers, a very millennial word right now. God tells us not to be influenced by ungodly influences, and especially in our understanding of what love is and a host of other terms.

https://www.challies.com/articles/the-influenced-will-be-like-the-influencer/

Dr. Chuck Barnes Sr. said...

As always, I appreciate your blog posts and the insights provided. Thank you.

Kent Brandenburg said...

Thanks Dr. Barnes.