Biblio

Introduction “ And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (ESV, Mark 12:30-31). We are created by God to receive love and give love. We can experience God’s love and we can love God. Likewise, we can receive love from others and we can love others too. This is the very foundation of Christian life which will be explored in this paper. God is love God is love. He loves us with His everlasting love (Jer.31.3). God’s love is steadfast, everlasting and unconditional. God’s love manifested to us when Jesus died for sinners (1John 4:9). God’s love is self-sacrificing, self-giving, unconditional and unchanging. God’s love for us is portrayed in Luke 15 in the story of a loving Father who ran to his homecoming son with compassion, embraced him, kissed him, gave him a new dress and pre

... . Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” ……(ESV) John 21:15 I feel that Jesus wants to remind us today saying “Love me.” Jesus had probably more than three and half  years of friendship with Peter, still Jesus asked Peter three times: Do you love me? Love is a word that is misunderstood a lot in today’s world. Some think that it is a mere feeling or likeness. In the Bible, love is defined very differently, especially the agape love – love is self-giving and self-sacrificing. The greatest love is laying down your life for someone. Love is a willful choice in favor of someone. Jesus has agape love towards us. The same way, he expects us to love him with agape love. The first and foremost commandment of the Lord is that we should love God. Here are a few ways to express love to Jesus: Lay down your life to Jesus. Many people would like to come to the presence of God only when they are free or things are convenient to them. When they are bu

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (NIV) 1 John 3:1 God so loved the world and sent His son to save us (Jn.3:16). God has a great love for us (Eph.2:4). His love for us is steadfast, everlasting and unconditional. God lavished His love for us by laying down the life of His Son Jesus at the cross on behalf of us. “… how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Eph. 3:18). Nothing can separate from this love, even death. This love has been poured out into our heart through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). God’s love has been LAVISHED on me and POURED OUT into my heart. When we are born into God’s family as His child, we become worthy to receive God’s love. Holy Spirit comes on us when we born as His children with this deep love of God. As a child of God, I can receive this lavishing love of God into my heart through the Holy Spirit.  I do not need to search for love, acceptance or for signific

You are created by God to receive love and give love. This article explores different aspects of this purpose of God. You can Experience God’s Love God is love. He loves us with His everlasting love (Jer.31.3). God’s love manifested to us when Jesus died for sinners. God’s love is self-sacrificing, self-giving, unconditional and unchanging. God’s love for you is portrayed in Luke 15 in the story of a loving Father who ran to his homecoming son with compassion, embraced him, kissed him, gave him a new dress and prepared a great meal for him. He forgave his son’s sin and accepted him unconditionally. God is full of love, mercy and grace which He shows to the undeserved. To nurture the love of God in your heart, Paul encourages us to pray that God’s love may increase in your heart (Eph. 3.14-19). God has been pouring this great love into your heart through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5.5). You can feel it, experience it, know it and grow in it. Being open and sensitive to the Holy

6 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (NIV) Ephesians 3:16-19 This is an intercessory prayer of Paul for believers. Christ indwells in us as the Spirit strengthens our inner man. As a result, we should be rooted and grounded in love - the self-giving, unconditional, sacrificial love, even to one’s enemy. Root and foundations play a key role in the sustenance of a tree and building respectively. If root or foundation does not go down, the tree or building will not go up tall. If the root and foundations are not strong, storms will destroy them. The founda

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. (ESV) John 13:34 God values relationship. He placed each one of us in a web of relationships. Relationship with others is the vital part of our life. Every relationship will grow and sustain only when there is a real love. A brief overview of love mentioned in 1 Cor.13:3-8 as follows: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Jesus modeled love by laying down his own life for other’s sake. It is a self-sacrificing and a self-giving love. Each one of us are different in our thinking, feeling, perception and convictions. Therefore, we should expect occasional differences with others. In su

It seems to me that sometimes we over emphasize great commission over great commandment of Jesus. The great and first commandment of Jesus: Mark 12:29-31   says 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (ESV). One thing that should precede great commission is to love God and love people. This is the foundation of everything. Abiding in love means we abide in God (John 15). We need a deep revelation and experience of love of God. If we are not touched and filled with depth of God’s love (cf.Rom. 5.4), then we will not be able to love others. Let us pray that the love of God may increase in us, so that our love for God and people around us may increase. The very foundation o

Romans12. 9-13 is a call for love in the body of Christ. For Paul, loving others is the heart of Christian living. Even charismata find its base in love. Paul links charismata and love strongly in Romans 12 and 1Corinthians. Love is the foundation of the communitarian existence of the body of Christ. In Romans 13.9, Paul says that the whole moral codes of the Old Testament are summed up in loving others. Let me expose three aspects of love in the body of Christ based on Romans 12.9-13. Firstly, Love should be liberative without hypocrisy. V.9 used the Greek word agape for love. Paul used this word for God’s love and human love. For Paul, Christ’s death is the supreme expression of God’s love to humanity. Agape indicates the conjugal love between man and woman in non biblical literature before 2 and 3 century CE. It is love for others. V.9 says this agape Love must be genuine. The Greek word for genuine is ajnupovkrito" which means without hypocrisy. Hypocrisy conceals