Bible Study Lover

Bible Study Lover

Bible Study Lover:

Love in the Bible, as in our everyday usage, can be directed from person to person or from a person to things. When directed toward things, love means enjoying or taking pleasure in those things. Love towards persons is more complex. As with things, loving persons may mean simply enjoying them and taking pleasure in their personalities, looks, achievements, etc. But there is another aspect of interpersonal love that is very important in the Bible. There is the aspect of love for persons who are not attractive or virtuous or productive. In this case, love is not a delight in what a person is, but a deeply felt commitment to helping him be what he ought to be. As we will see, the love for things and both dimensions of the love for persons are richly illustrated in the Bible.

As we examine the Old Testament and the New Testament in turn, our focus will be on God’s love, then on man’s love for God, man’s love for man and man’s love for things.

Love in the Old Testament

Jesus said that the greatest commandment in the Old Testament was, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind” (Matthew 22:36ff; Deuteronomy 6:5). The second commandment was, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39; Leviticus 18:19). Then he said, “On these two commandments hang all the law and prophets” (Matthew 22:40). This must mean that if a person understood and obeyed these two commandments, he would understand and fulfill what the whole Old Testament was trying to teach. Everything in the Old Testament, when properly understood, aims basically to transform men and women into people who fervently love God and their neighbor.

God’s Love

You can tell what a person loves by what he devotes himself to most passionately. What a person values most is reflected in his actions and motivations. It is plain in the Old Testament that God’s highest value, his greatest love, is his own name. From the beginning of Israel’s history to the end of the Old Testament era God was moved by this great love. He says through Isaiah that he created Israel “for his glory” (Isaiah 43:7): “You are my servant Israel in whom I will be glorified” (Isaiah 49:3).

Bible Study Lover

Thus when God delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt and preserved them in the wilderness it was because he was acting for his own name’s sake, “that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations” (Ezekiel 20:9, 14, 22; cf Exodus 14:4). And when God drove out the other nations from the Promised Land of Canaan, he was “making himself a name” (2 Samuel 7:23). Then finally at the end of the Old Testament era, after Israel had been taken into captivity in Babylon, God plans to have mercy and save his people. He says, “For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you…For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another” (Isaiah 48:9, 11 cf. Ezekiel 36:22, 23, 32). From these texts we can see how much God loves his own glory and how deeply committed he is to preserving the honor of his name.

This is not evil of God. On the contrary, his very righteousness depends on his maintaining a full allegiance to the infinite value of his glory. This is seen in the parallel phrases of Psalm 143:11, “For thy name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life! Inthy righteousness, bring me out of trouble.” God would cease to be righteous if he ceased to love his own glory on which his people bank all their hope.