Love is…not lust

Numbers 24; Numbers 25; Numbers 26; Numbers 27; 1 Corinthians 13
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Scripture

1 Corinthians 13

Love Is the Greatest

1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.
11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

Observation

God is Love. God’s love is called Agape love. Agape love is the kind of love that God tells us that we should have for other people. There are other kinds of love described in the Bible and we use the word “love” to describe how we feel about many things. I love pizza would be a good example. There is a romantic kind of love that God uses to help us be drawn to a person of the opposite sex to help us discover our wife or our husband. There is a brotherly love mentioned in scripture.

The highest kind of love we can have for someone is God’s love that is described in I Corinthians 13. It is a self-less love. It is the kind of love that God has for us. When someone says, “I love this woman and I no longer love my wife” they are not talking about Agape love. They are using the word love to describe “lust” and they have perverted God’s intention for the erotic type of love.

When you married your spouse you made a commitment or promise to God to “Agape” love your wife or husband. Your wedding vows are a promise to “Agape” loves your spouse, to love him or her with 1 Corinthians kind of love. The erotic love that draws a couple together may change with time, but the “Agape” love will continue to grow if we are growing in our relationship with Christ.

When someone comes to me and says, “I don’t love him or her anymore” my response to them is too bad. You made a commitment to God. You made a promise to God to love them. And usually when someone tells me that it is because they are lusting after someone else. Love for someone outside of your marriage is not love it is lust. It is selfish not self-less. It is wrong. It is not love. It is not God’s love.


Application

I will continue to establish and maintain boundaries between women and myself so that I am not drawn into sin.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, help me love Kathy with Agape love. May she always be my only love. Keep our love for each other strong. Help us model the kind of love that others should have for each other. May she always be the number #2 person in my life. Help me keep you as #1. I pray for our people that they understand this love relationship. I pray for them to be pure and not to violate their marriage vows. I pray that they would not yield to the temptation of lust. In Jesus Name Amen.

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