Dangers Surrounding Love, Part 1
David W Palmer
Love is eternal; it is a powerful force, and it is of paramount importance. Therefore, Scripture gives some clear warnings about love—its misuse and neglect.
General Warnings About Love
We will see seven “do-nots” and two more warnings from Scripture about issues surrounding love. The Holy Spirit wrote these in the Bible, because he felt he had to; we are looking at them here because they are crucially important.
1. Don’t Only Love Those Who Love You
(Matthew 5:46 NKJV) “For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (See also: Luke 6:32)
Jesus warns us of a tempting shortcut where love is concerned. Christians, full of the love that the Holy Spirit has poured into them, find it almost effortless to love those who love them. However, the idea of loving those who do not love us is not so salubrious. God wants us so filled with his supernatural love that we overwhelm the evil in others by the power of his love in us (See: Rom. 12:20–21). Furthermore, Jesus said to love your enemies, not just your friends (Luke 6:27).
2. Don’t Be Without Love
(John 5:42 NKJV) “But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you.”
In this passage, Jesus is answering the Jews when they were questioning him about healing on the Sabbath. However, his interlocutors weren’t born again, they wouldn’t follow the Holy Spirit, and they definitely didn’t have the love of God in them. We also know from many other Scriptures that this meant they didn’t know God at all. Therefore, they were following selfish motives at best. This is born out by the fact that these “fake” believers were plotting to kill Jesus. They were manoeuvring, in other words, to kill the very God they claimed to serve. There is a great warning for us in this. We must take seriously the command to love, or we too could be just serving our own idea of God, and not God himself. This proud deception kills off any expression the Lord would have in us, and leads ultimately to assassinating him just as the Jews eventually did. Jesus wants to live through you (Gal. 2:20), so don’t be without love.
3. Don’t Pass by Love
(Luke 11:42 NKJV) “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass by justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.”
Here is another trap that the “religious” Pharisees fell into. They fulfilled the written requirements of the “letter” of the law perfectly; yet they didn’t really get to the heart of the law. We saw earlier that Jesus said that the whole law was summed up with, “love the Lord your God,” and, “love your neighbour as yourself.” Despite their observances of hundreds of written commands, the Pharisees still didn’t express love to God or the love of God to others. In truth, they could never have achieved this through the method of legalism they were using. Confirming this, 2 Corinthians 3:6 says that the “letter kills” but only the “Spirit gives life” (ESV).
Today, I believe Jesus wants us not to overlook or pass by love; it is of ultimate importance to his Father, the Holy Spirit, and to him. We cannot achieve the love he wants by laws, legalism, or the “letter”; we can only receive it on our knees with humble hearts before God. That’s the only way we can love those who don’t love us, and keep it up. For whom do you need the unending source of love today? Are there people—or someone in particular—an enemy perhaps—that you know you need to love, but who doesn’t love you? Can I humbly suggest that if you look to the infinite source of love first, you can sustain perfect love for them? What’s more, you won’t pass by love to focus on the dry letter or dead works, and you certainly won’t overlook love; it will jump to the top of your priorities and lead you from your melted heart—after you have encountered his perfect love for you.
(1 John 4:19 ESV) We love because he first loved us.
