Love is often diminished by Christians who see it as little more than a second rate emotion or fickle human passion but not so by the NT writers. Jesus said the new commandment by which all will know we are his disciples is love. Paul the great champion of faith said that without love faith is meaningless. John the beloved disciple wove the theme of God’s love into every letter and almost every paragraph with greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Now the bible does speak of two different types of love being phileo and agape. Phileo is the selfish love of man and agape is God’s unconditional love. We are all born as sinners and sinners can express love but it is always the selfish human love where I love you if you love me. It is conditional on the object of it’s desire and many mistake this for the supreme and unconditional love of God. Many Christians struggle with the idea that God’s love is unconditional. He loves us not because we are worthy but because he is worthy. Those with this misunderstanding feel they have to prove their love to God and make themselves worthy of it but this can never be done. There is no amount of good deeds that can be performed to earn God’s love. We simply need to behold it and the truest expression is found in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the expess image of the Father and he offered his life as a ransom for all and became the savior of the world. And by beholding we become changed.
Whenever the love of God is mentioned most see it as a human desire or sexual passion and while these are components of love this is not what the bible authors had in mind. Love or ‘agape’ is the character of God himself or his name. In Exodus 34 the Lord revealed his name to Moses and there were seven attributes to his character, technically there were eight but two are repeated. We also learned that the rainbow appears over the throne of the Father so each color is a facet of God’s character. Red would be compassion, orange would be grace, yellow is patience, green is mercy, blue would be truth, indigo is forgiveness and lastly purple would be vengeance. When Jesus appeared on earth he exemplified the first six attributes of the love of God but suppressed the final attribute of vengeance or punishment of sin. The second coming and the events that lead up to it will be a revelation of this final attribute of God’s love or his vengeance against sin and sinners. Fittingly this attribute is purple which is the color of kings and it was a purple robe that was placed on Jesus at his crucifixion.
Whenever the love of God is mentioned most see it as a human desire or sexual passion and while these are components of love this is not what the bible authors had in mind. Love or ‘agape’ is the character of God himself or his name. In Exodus 34 the Lord revealed his name to Moses and there were seven attributes to his character, technically there were eight but two are repeated. We also learned that the rainbow appears over the throne of the Father so each color is a facet of God’s character. Red would be compassion, orange would be grace, yellow is patience, green is mercy, blue would be truth, indigo is forgiveness and lastly purple would be vengeance. When Jesus appeared on earth he exemplified the first six attributes of the love of God but suppressed the final attribute of vengeance or punishment of sin. The second coming and the events that lead up to it will be a revelation of this final attribute of God’s love or his vengeance against sin and sinners. Fittingly this attribute is purple which is the color of kings and it was a purple robe that was placed on Jesus at his crucifixion.
