Learning To Love

by Chris Simmons

Anyone can please God. Peter, by inspiration stated in Acts 10:34-35, “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right, is welcome to Him.” Regardless of our background, upbringing, personality, temperament, strengths and weaknesses, we are “welcome to Him” if we’ll learn to fear Him, please Him and do what He says is right. The ability to please God is not a trait we are born with but something that must be learned. Paul said in Ephesians 5:10, that as Christians, we are always to be “trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.” Teaching and learning are critical components of those who hope to “come to God” even as Jesus taught in John 6:45, “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught of God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me.” There are several things that God’s word says we must learn if we hope to please Him and come to Him and I must choose to make the effort to learn and believe according to His will that I indeed can. If I’m not what God wants me to be, the good news is I can learn to be. The challenge is, learning requires great diligence, effort, persistence and a price to be paid. What remains to be seen is whether I’ll exhibit the diligence, whether I’ll make the effort and persist and whether I will pay the price. Will I learn what God would have for me to learn?

Learning to love

Love is viewed in our society as something you “fall in” or “fall out of” – something that is “there” one day and sometimes “gone” the next. In contrast to that is a love that is to be taught and learned. Paul wrote in Titus 2:3-4, “Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children.” Part of the “good” that is to be taught, Paul says, is the need to teach women how to love their families. Love is an acquired skill and we need to seek to stop the foolish notion that love is a random and fleeting human state or simply the product of human chemistry. The love that Paul describes and commands in 1 Corinthians 13 is something that is learned and the attributes of patience, kindness, lack of jealousy, humility, selflessness, truthfulness, hopefulness, and endurance are issues of choice and not fate. We must learn to love!

We need to learn about the different types of love taught in the Scriptures. The love we are to learn and practice is not the emotional, sensual or romantic love that is the preoccupation of the world. Rather, it’s the agape love which learns to seek the best interest of the object of our love. Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words says of this love that it, “is not an impulse from the feelings, it does not always run with the natural inclinations, nor does it spend itself only upon those for whom some affinity is discovered. Love seeks the welfare of all (Romans 15:2), and works no ill to any (Romans 13:8-10); love seeks opportunity to do good to ‘all men, and especially toward them that are of the household of the faith,’ (Galatians 6:10).” We learn from God Himself that “this is not the love of complacency, or affection, that is, it was not drawn out by any excellency in its objects, (Romans 5:8). It was an exercise of the divine will in deliberate choice, made without assignable cause save that which lies in the nature of God Himself, cf. (Deuteronomy 7:7-8)” (Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words). The other type of love mentioned in scriptures is the Greek word phileo which refers to the natural affection, sentiment and feelings we have for a friend. Strong distinguishes agape and phileo love by noting that phileo “being chiefly of the heart” and agape “of the head.” The point being, we must learn to agape.

God loved us when we were unlovable and it’s our responsibility to learn to love those who are not easily loved. Jesus teaches us to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44) if we hope to be true children of God. Loving our enemies is certainly not a natural inclination of man and the only way we’ll do it is by learning what God has taught us and choosing to practice it. Loving those who love us requires no learning. Jesus asked, “For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?” (Matthew 5:46). Inherent in learning to love is learning to deny self and focus on God and others, seeking to please God and others before self (Romans 15:2).

We’re to learn about an all consuming love. Jesus established the standard for love when He taught, “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” (Mark 12:30). It’s a love unique to the world we live in and is to be an indentifying mark of the Lord’s disciples. Jesus said in John 13:34-35, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

There is so much to learn about love that cannot be addressed in a short article. But if we hope to learn to please God, we will commit ourselves to learning to love, even as He has loved us (I John 4:10; 5:19).

(Articles to come sometime in the future will address our need to learn: contentment, obedience, humility, good works, godly fear and the ability to teach others.)