(Part 1/3 – A summary of the Sunday morning teaching on 21-Jun-15, in AFT Church, English service. From the series The Foundation For Victorious Living)

Last week, we saw a glimpse of God’s perfect love that existed right from the beginning. His love has not changed. Our reflection of that love, though, has been altered drastically. Since Adam and Eve’s fall, selfish love has replaced God’s love. Interestingly, both these loves operate in this world. More often than not, it is the stained human love that creates strife and tension. But there is hope. Romans 5:5 says that, ‘Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.’ God’s love has been poured out in the hearts of followers of Jesus. God’s love now is not a thing of the past. We can experience, appropriate and release it to others around us.

So, today, let’s dig deeper and understand the differences between God’s love and the human love.


DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GOD’S LOVE AND HUMAN LOVE

4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

1) THEY ARE EXACT OPPOSITES TO EACH OTHER

1 Corinthians 13 is a beautiful description of God’s love which was fulfilled in Jesus. Addition of a ‘not’ here and deletion of a ‘not’ there in the above passage changes the entire meaning of God’s love. And just like that, voila! We now have human love. Here are some samples of what it would look like.

a) Human love does not suffer long and is not kind

b) Human love does envy

c) Human love does rejoice in iniquity, but does not rejoice in the truth

In a nutshell, the exact opposite of God’s love is human love.

2) INHERITED vs. GIFTED

Every human being is born with human love. It has attached to our soul and is now part of our character. Divine love or God’s love, on the other hand, is received only by those people who have accepted Jesus in their hearts, who are born again and have been gifted with the love of God.

3) DEPENDENT vs. INDEPENDENT

Human love is dependent on:-

a) Feelings

b) Human knowledge

c) Response of the recipient of our love

d) Circumstances

Divine love is independent of human behavior. God’s mercy extends to us and to a thousand generations. Even if the thousand generations haven’t come into existence yet, He won’t renege on His Word. He will be good and loving to them irrespective of their behavior.

4) FAKE vs. REAL

Human love is:-

a) conditionaltwo sided

b) two sideda bondage love

c) a bondage loveself-centered

d) self-centered

In essence, there is no freedom to be ourselves while expressing human love. There is a compulsion to fabricate or resort to people-pleasing. It doesn’t leave us any room to be real and to talk the truth.

My brother’s friend used to maintain a lie book where he’d write down all the lies that he had told people. He’d refer to it often to get his stories right every time he met people. Funny as it sounds, we are also like that. Our mind is the reference point for all the lies we have ever said so that we are politically correct at all time.

God’s love is as real as it can be. It gives us the freedom to speak the truth and nothing but the truth.

…to be continued…

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