Three Kinds of Love
- “If” kind of love. It’s conditional love – if you meet a condition I will love you.
- “Because” kind of love. Love based upon some external truth about your life.
- “In spite of” kind of love. This is God’s kind of love. He loves us in spite of our failures, weaknesses, faults and miserable past. This does not keep track of the past, only looks towards the future.
God is continually pouring His love out into our hearts, to the point of overflowing. He does this in order to transform us into the image of Christ and so that we can pour His love out to others around us. He does this by first revealing to us that He is love and second that we are loved unconditionally. Our sins cannot stop His love. They may cause us to keep away from His love, but they won’t stop Him from loving us.
Our love for Him is what will keep us from sin. We don’t prove our love by our obedience, but our obedience is a result of our love for Him. The problems with accepting His love and giving love all come from our natural souls. Our natural mindset cannot understand or accept the unconditional love of the Father. That means that we don’t accept it or understand it, and we tend to give our own love conditionally.
How do we know if we are operating in His love or ours? Do we try to force our will on others?
Key Scriptures: 1 John 4:7-11, Ephesians 1:4-6, Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 13:1-8
