Pastor J: [00:00:00] Let all that you do be done in love. Amen. You’re listening to the Soul Food podcast and I’m your host, Pastor J.
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Announcer: Everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he’s a child, but solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. This is SoulFood podcast.
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Pastor J: In this episode, episode 5, we’re beginning a new two-part series on a topic that I’m very passionate about speaking on, love. By the time I was 16, I had already observed that what I was reading in Scripture about love, what I was hearing the pastor preach about love during church service, that wasn’t what I was seeing lived out in the world around me. Even my so-called Christian friends and family members were not living out what Scripture says love is and how it ought to be lived out. I decided that I needed some solid answers regarding love, so I dedicated myself to coming to an understanding of what love really is. I’m now confident in what love is, as the Creator of love intended it, and I’m confident in sharing what I’ve learned with those around me, [00:01:00] both through word and action. And in this episode, I’m going to share with all of you what I’ve learned so that you can have a firm understanding of love too. Stick around and we’ll get to it right after this.
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Pastor J: [00:01:16] Welcome back to SoulFood. I’m your host, Pastor J, and I’d like to take just a moment to encourage all of you listeners out there to head on over to soulfoodpodcast.com and to make a contribution right now. Whatever you can give is helpful and will go a long way to keeping this podcast feeding hungry souls all around the world. And since that was actually the only announcement I had for the top of this episode, let’s dive into our topic of discussion, love. I think the most helpful way to begin this topic is to share an analogy I like to use to describe love on a most fundamental level. You know, just barely scratching the surface. Now, if you regularly follow this podcast, [00:02:00] you’ve probably already heard this one, as I did share it back in episode 2, but as I even stated then, I do frequently use this explanation when talking on the topic of love, so you’re likely to hear it again and again. When I want to provide someone with a generic overview of love, I tell them that love is like a never-ending bottle of the best of the best champagne being poured out over a champagne tower, and that champagne, or love, fills up each glass, or person, until it is overflowing into the glasses around it, but not only that, the champagne also flows back up toward the bottle it came from. Even when the glasses on the bottom layer of the champagne tower have all been filled, the champagne never spills out onto the table, but continues flowing seamlessly between the glasses, and to and from the never-ending source. I believe these fundamentals are of the [00:03:00] utmost importance when establishing a correct understanding of what love is, because love according to the world doesn’t work like that. For most people, including many of you listeners, love is some commodity that you own and control. You are of the belief that you get to decide who is or isn’t worthy of receiving love from you. You observe a scale that has hate on one side, like somewhere in the middle, and love down toward the other end. You believe, as was taught by the ancient philosophers, that there are several different kinds of love, and based on your relationship with someone else and where they fit in on your scale, you will feel one of these kinds of love toward them and that will influence how you interact with them. This is all wrong. I know it’s quite bold of me to dare to make such a conclusion, but I have read and re-read the Scriptures regarding love, prayed and [00:04:00] prayed that the truth of what love is would be revealed to me, and have observed love in the world around me for many years now. And no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get myself to accept this erroneous, worldly version of love that most people subscribe to. Yet, I can understand that a worldly person is going to have this worldly understanding of love. But when I observe Christians, steeped in the lessons of scripture and in true-blue faith, practicing this understanding of love, my brain train just totally derails in my inability to comprehend why. In fact, there are few things that boggle my mind more than this. However, that’s the whole reason I’m doing this series on love, or so I’ve gathered. When we get back from the break, I’m going to continue by tearing down this idea that there are different kinds of love, because there’s actually only one kind of love. Back in just a moment. [00:05:00] Stick around.
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Pastor J: [00:05:01] Welcome back to SoulFood. I’m your host, Pastor J, and we are talking about love. Not love as the world knows it, and erroneously so, but love as the Creator of love intended it to be. As I mentioned just before the break, one of the errors in the general understanding of love is that there are numerous kinds of love. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times, there is one type of love, love, and it is the Lord, and it belongs to the Lord, not to us. Love is poured out upon us in abundance by our Heavenly Father, so that we may share it with everyone around us, and also return it back to him who poured it out for us. In case I didn’t make myself clear, yes, I am saying that the ancient philosophers were wrong when they concluded that there are different kinds of love. For instance, and I can’t [00:06:00] emphasize this enough, sex is not love. It is an expression of love. Yes, you heard that right, there are different expressions of a single, universal love. Sex is one of those expressions and was intended to be reserved for one’s spouse. However, in our sinful nature, we have bungled that one up too, but I digress. To get us back on track, I want to look at an excerpt from 1 John, chapter 4, verse 7-8, quote: “Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.” End quote. Okay. So, if God is love and we have been made by God in his image, then the love we have is the same love that God has and [00:07:00] is, and therefore we love with the same love that God loves with; the same singular, universal kind of love. “But Pastor J, if you look at the Scriptures in their ancient Greek form, there are different words used for the word love. Clearly, that proves there are different forms of love.” Well, first, let me say that I get a kick out of this more modern attempt by Christians to use the ancient Greek form of the scriptures as the inarguable arbiter of truth. It’s the equivalent of the whole “trust the science” mentality right here in the theology world. If I can make some valid statement with regards to the ancient Greek form of Scripture, then I’ve just validated my entire argument and there’s no way you can shoot my argument down, right? Wrong. You see the scribes who recorded and re-recorded the documents we refer to as the Scriptures did so in the parlance of the times, and the parlance of the [00:08:00] times was rooted in the so-called wisdom of the philosophers of the times, at least in part. Therefore, those scribes would’ve used different words for the word love, based on the kind of love that seemed to be referenced in the moment they were writing about, because that’s how someone who spoke and read the Greek language in those times would’ve best understood the writing. [00:08:25] So, in that regard, it could be said that the Scriptures were “written for those people then,” because they were written using the vernacular of the times. That said, because I can hear someone trying to use that statement against me, the lessons and commands we find in Scripture still apply to us today. I was merely pointing out that the vernacular selected coincided with linguistics of the times the documents were written in. So, in other words, the scribes were sharing [00:09:00] their incorrect understanding of love as they incorrectly understood it in accordance with the incorrect understanding of love in those times. Back in just a moment.
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Pastor J: [00:09:11] Welcome back to Soul Food Podcast with your host, Pastor J. I just got done making a solid argument for there being only one kind of love, noting that the scribes would have used different words for love, as that would’ve coincided with the parlance of their time. Yet, despite the fact that they did use different words to describe different kinds of love, we have this understanding that God is love, and we further understand that we have been made by God in His image. And if that is the case, then the love we have is the same love that God has and is, and therefore we love with the same love that God loves with, a singular universal kind of [00:10:00] love. When I came to this realization, I thought to myself, if this aspect of love, which I have been taught, is incorrect, then there’s a good chance that the rest of my understanding of love is incorrect too. After all, how can the house be stable if the foundation isn’t? So with that in mind, let me tackle some of the major common and incorrect beliefs of what love is in a manner that helps you understand what love isn’t. We’ve already touched on one of those, but it’s worth repeating. Sex is not love. It’s an expression of love. However, it is also bound with lust because it provides the physical body with a sense of pleasure. So, just because someone is engaging in sexual acts doesn’t mean that the person is doing so as an expression of genuine love, and Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 6, [00:11:00] verse 18, warns us that we ought to flee from sexual immorality, as it is a sin against our own bodies. This warning comes to us with the understanding that our own body is the temple of the Holy Spirit of the Lord. We further understand, in accordance with Scripture, that sexual acts are to be engaged in by husband and wife. In fact, Mosaic law punished sex outside of wedlock by forcing the marriage of the two who committed the act. This is no joke. Take a look in Exodus chapter 22, verse 16: Quote. “If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride price for her and make her his wife.” End quote. It seems quite evident that God intended for sexual relations to be regarded as something much more special than just some [00:12:00] activity people casually engage in to blow off steam or to, if you’ll pardon in the pun, scratch an itch. Moreover, there is no solid evidence in Scripture, neither explicitly nor viably implicitly, that deems sex to be a separate form or kind of love. It seems to be presented as a special way a husband and wife can express love to one another. And with that understanding, that sex, in and of itself, is not love, along with the understanding of where love comes from, from the Creator of love, the Lord our God, it can also be understood that referring to engaging in sexual intimacy as making love Is also an incorrect understanding of love. Sex is not love and love, like energy, cannot actually be made. [00:13:00] So think about this, if all of you listeners out there stopped referring to engaging in sexual intimacy as making love, you’d be taking a simple step toward correcting the plethora of errors that have misrepresented love for so long, and that would, in turn, have a big positive impact on how people understand what love truly is. Back after this.
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Pastor J: [00:13:28] Welcome back to Soul Food podcast with your host, Pastor J. Just before the break, we were talking about one of the major misconceptions related to love, that being sex. To reiterate, sex is not love. It can be used as an expression of love, which ought to be reserved for husband and wife, but of itself it is not love. Also, just because people engage in sexual intimacy doesn’t mean that they are [00:14:00] doing so as an expression of genuine love, because sex is also bound with lust since it provides a physical sense of pleasure to the body. Remember, if you’d simply stop referring to engaging in sexual intimacy as making love , you’d be doing something truly great for the general understanding of what love is. That said, there are plenty of other misconceptions plaguing the understanding of what love is, and another of them, which also tends to be a major one, is the belief that there is some special form of love reserved for one’s family that resides on the high end of the so-called love scale. Grumble and shout at me all you want, but this understanding is wrong and, of course, I have a solid argument, rooted in Scripture, to help prove as much. Let me be very clear, I am not [00:15:00] saying you ought not to love your family, and I am not saying that your family members ought not have a special place in your heart if they do. I’m saying that there is no special form or type of love exclusively for one’s family and that anyone else one knows could hold just as special place in their hearts as a family member. For starters, because I’ve already made the argument, I will reiterate that there are not different kinds or types of love, there are different expressions one can use to express love. Sure, one could choose to reserve a particular expression of love just for their family members, but they are doing so freely of their own choice, not because genuine love demands it or because Scripture commands it. In fact, I challenge any of [00:16:00] you listeners out there to find any Scripture in a wide… widely accepted translation of the Bible that either explicitly or viably implicitly indicates that one ought to regard their family members in some exclusive higher esteem than they regard anyone else. Just head on over to soulfoodpodcast.com and use the contact form to send me the Scripture reference, including the translation you found it in. And when I say widely accepted translation of the Bible, I mean, ESV, NIV, KJV, NKJV, or even the Beck translation; something like that. All of these observe a similar, widely accepted canon, having the same books included therein. Now, there are some churches that use their own exclusive cannons that contain obscure and otherwise disagreed upon books, but I’m not interested in having to [00:17:00] multiply the family love argument with a separate one on the danger of obscure books and questionable cannons. We will eventually get to that topic here on SoulFood podcast, but for now I want to focus on the topic at hand. With that, let’s look at what Scripture has to say. With regards to family, there are numerous verses that describe the need for provision for one’s relatives and members of their household, but that does not equate out to a special form of love exclusively for one’s family members, but there are also a lot of verses that describe the need of provisions to people who are not one’s relatives or even of their household. Furthermore, the members of one’s household may not even be related to them. I’d like to share some specific scripture references though, because there are a few that really stand out to me [00:18:00] on this topic. The first being Proverbs 18:24. Quote. “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” End quote. Of course, it’s the end of that verse that tends to resound in my mind because it very clearly indicates that one is capable of having a closer relationship with a friend than they have with their own brother. This is quite a blow to “family is more important than friends” argument that people often parrot. Next up, there’s Jesus’s own words, which I am here referencing from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, beginning at verse 51. Quote. “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be [00:19:00] five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother. Mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” End quote. Need I even say more? Where in that passage, words spoken by Jesus himself, is there any teeny-tiny indication of some special form of love or esteem exclusively for one’s family? And speaking of Jesus, the son of God, that brings me to the final Scripture reference I will make here. Though, I assure you there are more available. John 3:16. Quote. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever [00:20:00] believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” End quote. Now as far as I’m concerned, that’s game-set-match. If God himself, the Creator of love, sacrificed his own Son for the sake of us all, how can anyone claim that there is some special form of love exclusively reserved for family, or that one’s family members ought to be held to some higher regard than they hold anyone else to? I don’t buy that and, apparently, neither does God. Stick around. Back in just a moment.
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Pastor J:[00:21:53] In the next episode of SoulFood podcast we’ll continue this discussion about love by looking at what [00:22:00] Scripture says love is, and how we ought to live it out- how we ought to express it, how we ought to share it. For more information, more episodes, to contact me with questions and prayer requests, to inquire about marketing opportunities, or to make a financial contribution, log on to soulfoodpodcast.com and I do encourage you to visit and make a contribution today. Contributing is quick, easy, and secure. I sincerely thank you for your consideration and contributions.
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[00:23:39] And now, a blessing for you. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his confidence upon you and give you peace. Amen. This is Pastor J saying, take care and God bless. See you next time.
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