Peace Presbyterian Church

“Loving as God Loves”

As the month of February begins, our cultural focus and attention shifts from New Year’s resolutions and the New Year to love, chocolate and to Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is a day that reminds us of both the joy and the blessing of love. As Christians, we know that we can celebrate the gift of God’s love to us, in Jesus Christ, each and every day. John tells us this, in 1 John 4:9-12, saying, “This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, let us love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.” How can we love God and love one another as John instructs us to?

Of the different Greek words for love, only one is used in this text, agape. Agape is the highest and most meaningful term for love in the Greek language, the term used when describing the love of God for us, and the love we are to show to and share with one another. The word agape stresses the importance of selflessness when it comes to love. Love is not about us, but describes how we are to treat one another, as we gratefully reflect on how God has first loved us. Agape love flows from God’s grace, for God loves us not because of what we do, but because He has created us and we are His. We are to love God and we are to love others selflessly, graciously and unconditionally, knowing that each person in our lives is a gift from God, a gift that flows out of His love for us.

Our culture stresses love in terms of romantic and sexual love, dynamics that the Greek term eros applies to. The Greek word eros signifies physical or sexual longing and desire, where we feel that such love will complete or fulfill us. Eros love then focuses on attraction or on our perceived needs for love. A focus on romantic or physical love, however is settling for too little and is settling for the appetizers of God’s intent for us, rather than being an enjoyment of the main course, or the steak of God’s love and God’s creative plan for our lives. Let us not be distracted by less than what God has in store for us, in our relationships with Him and with one another.

God calls us to share with our culture what and who love really is. True love is selfless, gracious, not based on appearance or feeling and is unconditional. Jesus shows us this agape love of God, in His life, journey to and death on the cross. So as our culture celebrates the gift of love this month, let us celebrate Jesus as God’s gift of love to us, a gift that we can enjoy each and every day and in each and every moment. Let us embrace the cross as a sign of God’s unconditional love for us.

Praise God for His great and abundant love! Praise God for His gift of Jesus! Let us share the gift of the cross with our world, as we love one another as God loves us, graciously, selflessly and unconditionally.
-- Pastor Brian

Archive of Pastor’s Pages: links to Pastor Brian’s newsletters and now his sermons, too.
View Pastor Brian’s Personal Statement of Faith.