Welcome to BibleTalk

But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
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Please take note of the fact Jesus is speaking to those who will hear Him—the vast majority of the people in the world will not! It is called selective hearing and while it is not always bad, it certainly is when people focus on what the world says and then turn a deaf ear to what the Lord is saying. Remember that Jesus said we are to be careful what we listen to. {Mar.4:24}

When it comes to His instruction to love your enemies it is surely apparent that most people choose to turn a deaf ear! The world is filled with music; love songs, love stories plays and movies, yet not really even knowing what true love is. And therein lies the rub as Shakespeare’s Hamlet once said! We all are being conditioned to think that love is a greater or lesser fuzzy, warm feeling of affection. While that’s not necessarily a terrible thing it is however just that, affection and not love, and typically self-centered.

The Word of God, the source of truth, actually tells us how to know love. As we learn to imitate Jesus we will be led by the Holy Spirit and taught by Him and through the Word what love really is! The ultimate and perfect example is Jesus Christ, sinless and innocent, as He went to the cross and laid down His life for us. {Jn.3:16} And He literally did that while we were yet sinners, enemies of God. {Rom.5:8-10} The Lord said in the Sermon on the Mount that loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us is what makes us sons of our Father in heaven. True love!

I flew in the early and mid 1960’s as an aircrewman in the U.S. Navy as well as doing some piloting myself and I learned the importance of using a check-list. It is used every time, all the time because memory can fail. We have been given a ‘love’ check-list. The apostle Peter wrote that the Lord has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness. {2Pt.1:3} So too the apostle Paul, who says he was the foremost, the chief of sinners {1Tim.1:15} was used by the Lord to define exactly what real love is, what it looks like and what it does!

“Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails…” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

We are called to test ourselves to see if we are in the faith, to examine ourselves. {2Cor.13:5} Love is the only true measure of our relationship with God, not how highly people see you, and surely not how highly you think of yourself (don’t) but by your love for Him. Paul began his discourse on love by showing what it is not, defining the religious counterfeit…

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

WE LOVE BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US