V Indicates Scripture or other reference

When God created Adam and Eve, He gave them (and every one their descendants) a primary mission, and a secondary mission:

Our primary mission is to love, honor, and worship God as our Lord and MasterV1; and

 

Our secondary mission is to have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, all the cattle, and all the earth. In other words, we are to rule God’s creation as God rules us [01].

God rules us with loving care because God is love. We are to rule God’s creation in the same way – through loving relationships. That is why God gave us the ability to have and to enjoy a great number of loves that are (1) secondary to our love for Him; and (2) public examples of the agape love of God[14].

Tragically, many people get things out of order. They make love for God secondary to their love for themselves and for the things of this world. This robs God of the worship and love that those out-of-order people owe Him. It also robs other people of the blessings God desires to give them through those out-of-order people, because people can only share what they have. If anyone does not love God above everyone and everything else, He will not give them His love, and they will be left with nothing but self-love – the same un-Godly self-love that caused Lucifer to become Satan[02]. Anyone who has this kind of love is walking in the spiritual image of Satan – and has nothing to share except Satan’s despicable counterfeit of God’s love.

In this chapter, we’ll talk about some of the loves that God wants His people to enjoy, to share with others, and to use as earthly examples of the love that keeps the heavens in order – His own agape love.

Marriage is the love-relationship that God ordained to give the world a picture of His Son’s love-relationship with His BrideV2. In fact, the marriage of one man and one woman is the first human-relationship-picture shown in the Bible. In Genesis 2:21-22, we see how God created Eve from Adam’s rib and brought her to him. The moment he saw her, Adam exclaimed, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” (Genesis 2:23) This was Adam’s way of saying, “Yes! I take this woman to be my lawfully wedded wife.” And the moment Adam made that marital commitment, God declared, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24)

When God made that declaration, He was obviously not saying that a married man should cut himself off from his parents. God created the entire human race to be one family and to stay a family (the devil is “the divider”). What God is saying is that married people must put their love-relationships in the proper order: love for husband or wife ahead of love for parents; and love for all of their earthly family members after their love for God.

When Jesus came to this earth, He set out to restore this Godly order. When people asked if they could be His disciples (that is, part of His family), He reminded them of the Old-Testament picture of family love being lived out under the agape love of God. He told them they could not hold on to their worldly ways any longer, but would have to put their love for Him ahead of their love for anyone else – even themselves. Here is the strong-sounding language Jesus used:

If any one come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14:26,27

Is Jesus telling His disciples to “hate” their families? Not at all! The Greek word miseo, which is translated as “hate” in the above Scripture, can also mean “to love less than” or “to love in secondary order.” (The English word “hate” carried those same meanings when the King James Bible was first published, in 1611). Jesus is the Son of God, and God is love; so it is obvious that Jesus could not want any of His disciples to “hate” anyone. But He does want all His disciples to line up their love for everyone else under their primary love for God.

Because this is the Godly order our Lord came to restore, we Christians are obligated to line up our own marriages in this order. Happily, that isn’t hard to do. Ephesians 5:25 tells us that married people are to love each other the same way Christ loves His Church (see V2). The Greek word translated as “love” in this verse is agape. Paul’s deliberate choice of the word agape makes it clear that husbands and wives are not supposed to just “get along with each other” or “have fun with each other” – they are meant to exchange the love of God with each other[14]. This is what makes marriage marriage – because, when two people give their partners the love of God, they give each other a closer love, a deeper love, and a far more meaningful love than any human heart could originate or any human mind could imagine.

The most common counterfeit for God’s love that the human mind can come up with is ... lust. Nobody wants our lust; and if we ever do succeed in inflicting it on another person, he or she will know, long before it’s over, that there’s no love in it. But when we bring God’s agape love into the marriage-bed (and we can rest assured that God will never allow His love to be taken into any un-married bed!), then His love becomes, by the power of His Holy Spirit, the highest form of intimacy that people on earth can exchange with each other.

God gave people the ability (and the desire!) to enjoy this level of love, not only as a way to conceive children, but also to give married couples a continual and unfailing source of pleasure, no matter what their personal circumstances or their financial resources might be. It is true that sexual intimacy, without a strong “beyond-the-bedroom” romance, cannot make a good marriage; but it’s equally true that no marriage will ever prosper – spiritually or emotionally – unless both partners do their utmost to bless each other “in the bedroom.” Here is the way the Apostle Paul explains it:

Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.

1^st Corinthians 7:3-5

“Due benevolence" means that married people must not expect too much from, nor give anything less than their best to, their partners. They must never judge their partner’s performance according to what they expect from the marriage-bed – but they do have an “open invitation” to ask God to anoint the sexual gifts He gave each of them, and share those gifts with each other. If a married couple’s sex-life is not fulfilling, they should give themselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again. In other words, God is assuring all married couples who have a love-making problem that they are always free to, “Refresh yourselves in My agape love, and then make love to each other in the glow of My love for you and your rekindled love for Me.”

The above Scripture also warns married couples what can happen to them if they do not take their problems to God: Satan will tempt them to look for sexual fulfillment outside of the marriage. And that all-too-often leads to ... divorce. In America today, both Christians and non-Christians think nothing of “solving their problems” by “getting a divorce.” For the Christian, that attitude is sheer blasphemy. Here is God’s attitude on the matter:

For the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hates putting away (divorce): for one (who seeks an answer through divorce) covers violence with his garment, saith the Lord of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.

Malachi 2:16 

The Hebrew word for “hate” in this Scripture is sane', which means “to hate violently and personally; to consider a way of life, and anyone who insists on living his or her life in that way, to be utterly odious.” God is warning His people, “If you initiate any divorce action against your wife or your husband, you have made yourself My enemy!”

And no wonder! Divorce is the work of God’s enemy, Satan, who leads married couples into sin, and makes them feel ashamed to call on God to deliver them from their sin. And, because so many couples do get trapped in Satan’s web of sin, God provided this legal (but not loving!) way for them to end the marriage:

When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes (here the man is walking in the sin of unforgiveness), because he hath found some uncleanness in her (here the woman is walking in, or is suspected of walking in, the sin of adultery): then let him write her a bill of divorcement (an open and honest explanation of what both of them did to cause the marriage to fail, instead of trying to “cover their spiritual violence with the garment of holy matrimony”), and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house (instead of “dealing treacherously” with her by kicking her out and telling lies about her after she’s gone).

Deuteronomy 24:1 

When Jesus walked this earth, the land was filled with lawyers – men who knew the Law of God, and were trusted to explain and apply the Law for the benefit of the community. Some of those lawyers (like some lawyers today) served God faithfully and honestly; while others twisted His Law to mean whatever they wanted it to mean. Many lawyers (both honest and evil) belonged to a group of Jews (actually a Jewish denomination) called Pharisees ... “the Separated ones.” One day, a group of those lawyers came to Jesus and asked Him,

Is it lawful for a man to put away (divorce) his wife? tempting him. And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses allowed us (not “commanded” us!) to write a bill of divorcement [for a wife who does not please us], and to put her away.  And Jesus answered and said unto them, For [because of] the hardness of your heart (your sin of coldness that drove your wife to seek fulfillment outside the marriage, and your sin of unforgiveness after she did what you drove her to do), Moses wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And the two shall be one flesh: so then they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Mark 10:2-9 

Those men who came to Jesus knew that God wanted all married couples to be one flesh. They knew that Deuteronomy 24:1 was only an “escape hatch” to keep the devil from destroying unhappily-married people. They knew that Malachi 2:16 was really God’s call for married couples to seek renewed joy in the glow of His love. And, because Jesus knew that those men were legal experts posing as innocents, He knew that they were tempting Him. Jesus also understood human nature; and so He knew why they were tempting Him. Whenever someone says, “Is it lawful for a man....?” he is probably asking, “Is there a way for me to get away with....?” Seeing their motive, Jesus answered those lawyers in a way that exposed the hypocrisy in their hearts – instead of just telling them what was lawful for “some man.” The moral of the story: don’t twist the Scriptures to suit your selfishness, and then ask God to bless your lusts!

Everything we’ve mentioned in this chapter (and, of course, much more that we haven’t mentioned) is an essential part of every God-ordained, agape-based marriage relationship. But what should you do if you are already married to someone who does not love God –  someone who is not saved and doesn’t want to be? God’s answer: Love! The Bible tells married Christians they must never withhold sexual love, or any other expression of love, from an unsaved husband or wife. Just the opposite –  they should use all the gifts God gave them (home-making; bread-winning; sexual passion, all of God’s gifts) to win their marriage partners to ChristV3.

Of all the other love-relationships that God may give us, one of the most rewarding is love for our children. (Unmarried adults may bless children in their churches, their neighborhoods, and in foreign countries.) Children are a heritage of the LordV4 – and parents should love their children in a way that demonstrates our Heavenly Father’s love for His children. The Bible gives us plenty of instruction on how to do this – including this clear and to-the-point advice by the Apostle Paul:

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:4

(That’s the King James Version. Some of the later translations say, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children.”)

In the original Greek text, the word translated as “provoke to wrath” (or “exasperate”) is  parorgizo – literally, “to stuff a person full of anger which they are not able to deal with, either verbally or physically, and which builds up inside them to the point of explosion.” This is the kind of anger that leads some children to develop rebellious attitudes ... others to associate with loafers and criminals (in much the same way unsatisfied husbands and wives seek fulfillment outside of the marriage) ... and still others to wake up one morning and, “for no reason at all,” murder their parents. And then, when the police come to investigate those killings, the neighbors say, “But ... he was always such a nice boy!” Of course they say that. Neighbors can’t see the anger inside a child any better that his or her parents can.

Inside anger builds up when parents (and other authority figures) train and correct children according to their own standards of right and wrong. Personal standards are confused at best and sinful at worst –                    

First, because even parents don’t know everything they need to
                  know;
          Second, because people’s values change from day to day as they
                  learn (or fail to learn) new facts of life; and
          Third, because most people cannot explain their values, and the
                  rules and regulations based upon those values, in ways that  
                  other people will understand.

Happily, Ephesians 6:2 tells parents how they can avoid all these problems: Bring your children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. In other words, Bring up your children according to God’s standards, not your own. God’s standards have never changed, and never will; and when you teach your children right from wrong according to God’s standards, you give them a consistent and reliable code of conduct that will serve them well all through their lives.

You can teach your children right from wrong in words, straight out of the Bible. Better yet, practice what you preach. Teach God’s standards by your personal example of a Godly life – not just in church, where the preacher and congregation can see you; but also at home where your children are always watching you.

When Paul urges us to bring up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, he is encouraging us to teach them the standards of God by using the ways of God.

•     First, explain the difference between right and wrong (as 
               God did when He gave us the Bible).

•    Then, demonstrate what is right by the way you live your
               life (as the Father did when He sent His Son to this earth).

•    Then, if a child misses the mark one or two times, correct
               him or her verbally (as God did when He sent His prophets   
               to call the people of Israel to repent of their sins).

•     Finally, as a last resort, spank (as God chastens
               [disciplines] His dear children when they will not learn any
               other way)V5.

If you expect to teach your children God’s ways, you must let God teach you His ways. Otherwise, you’ll have nothing to share with your children except “morality” – which is nothing but another counterfeit of God’s agape love. Now that’s something to remember the next time some intellectual tries to tell you that Jesus was just “a good, moral teacher.”

The agape love of God is the sovereign standard we must use as we enter into, walk in, and build relationships within, all of the secondary loves God may give us. There may be thousands of such loves in God’s Kingdom of Love! Here are some examples – along with some ways we can apply (or fail to apply) God’s agape love to each of our secondary loves:

•           We may love the church we attend – so long as we recognize  
        that a church is a place for us to love, honor, and glorify God. It 
        is also our “base of operations” for serving people within, and  
        outside of, our local body. That church is not there to let us    
        molder our lives away by recounting the works and traditions of
        the people who founded it or contributed to it. If we love the 
        works and traditions of man more than we love the God who
        created mankind, we are way out of God’s order; and our “love”   
        becomes but ... idolatry

•       We may love sports – but there is a Godly way and an ungodly   
        way to be a sportsman (or a sports fan!). When we respect the
        gifts that God has given to all the athletes on all the teams, and
        when we see sport as one more way to express and to exercise
        peoples’ God-given talents, then we are Godly sports-lovers. But
        if all we care about is “who wins,” we are not even showing love
        for the sport itself – we are glorifying the “winners” rather than
        glorifying God. Again ... sheer idolatry.

•       We may love the environment – if we acknowledge that God
        created everything in the world, from Mount Everest to the bog
        turtle; and if we appreciate (and show others) the glory of God in
        every bit of His handiwork. We may campaign to preserve
        endangered species of plants and animals, sites of exceptional  
        scenic beauty, and the natural condition of wilderness areas – so
        long as we understand that all this is passing away, and that our
        primary effort must go into sharing the Word of God that will
        never pass awayV6

•       We may even love money. The Apostle Paul does say that the   
        love of money is the root of all [kinds of] evilV7 – and so it is, if
        we love money more than we love God. If we hoard money, or
        spend it on our own lusts, we are serving mammon – even while
        we think that mammon is serving usV8! But when we use money
        in ways that glorify God, and in ways that put our Godly love for
        other people into practice, then our love of money becomes as
        legitimate as our love of sports. In fact, there is a word for the
        appropriate love and use of money: philanthropy.

As we walk in the different loves God gives us, we will discover that each one “has a life of its own.” All those loves “jockey for position” in our hearts. They all fight to be “the greatest.” Our children fight against God’s love when they whine, “You don’t love me because you won’t give me what I want!” Our love for our jobs (which we justify by saying, “I have to pay my bills, don’t I!”), and our love for sports (which we excuse by saying, “I need some relief from the cares of the world, don”t I!”) will do battle against our faith in God as our Provider and as our Reviver. And if we do not exercise dominion over all these loves – if we fail to keep them in their proper order under the agape love of God – we can expect to have what the psychologists call “stress.”

It is not stress (if there even is such a thing). It is Satan, trying to wear us down, just like he wears married couples down when they don’t build each other up in the love of God. Happily, we can stop Satan in his tracks by using the same strategy that Paul calls married couples to use in 1^st Corinthians 7:5. Give ourselves to fasting and prayer (that is, “get away from it all” and open our hearts to a fresh outpouring of God’s love), and then come together again (get back in touch with all the loves that make up our lives). To our delight, we’ll find them back in their appropriate order – not because we pushed them into place; but because, by faith, we allowed God to push His love back into its rightful place. At the top.

Love is always spiritual, never natural. There is no “natural way” (such as a graph) for people to compare the height, the depth, the width, the power, or the glory of the different loves in their lives. Why, then, are we showing you a graph? To give you a graphic picture – just as we have given you a word-picture – of how various loves can operate in your mind, in your heart, and in your spirit. Here, then, is a “love-at-work picture” of a ten-month period in the life of a man we’ll call “Hiram.” 

  

As we can see by this chart, Hiram began this stage of his life as a church-going atheist. The chart also gives us some idea of why Hiram went to church – to make business connections; to meet girls; to talk about sports. Hiram didn’t have much love for his family, even though his family was huge. He had “cousins” all over the world – “nice” people, who sat in churches, heard the Gospel, and slipped a little closer to hell every Sunday. Maybe you know some of Hiram’s “cousins.” Maybe you are one of Hiram’s unsaved cousins. Maybe you had better log off this web-site right now and do exactly what Hiram did during the first month of this chart.

 

Hiram got saved! His “love of God” skyrocketed from the bottom of the chart to the top. And it stayed there, except for a three-month period in the middle of the chart. That’s when Hiram lost his job, wondered if God really loved him, took his questions to the Lord in prayer, and wound up with all his loves back in their rightful order. As we can see in the final column of the chart, every one of Hiram’s loves is shining now forth the glory of God – because all of those loves are now lined up under the agape love of God.

 

What made the difference during the critical period shown in the middle of the chart? Hiram’s faith in God. He listened to his pastor’s sermons. He read his Bible to see if the things the pastor preached were trueV9. He saw that God is his Father, who has an unlimited treasury of Spiritual gifts and love relationships to offer His children. And Hiram believed his Heavenly Father would do everything He promised he would do. Even when he couldn’t see those promises coming true in his life, he chose to receive them by faithV10 – with the result that God’s great promise of 2^nd Corinthians 3:18 became a part of his life:

 

But we all, with open face beholding as in a [looking]   
        glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same
        image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the
        Lord.

 

It is only when we have a list of hates that we’re in trouble. Any hate that is administered by any group, or by any person, is from the devil. It may be administered by a bloodthirsty war-lord; it may be administered by an abusive family member; but it all comes from the devil. And make no mistake: whenever we administer any works of the devil, we become the servants of the devil. As the Apostle Paul solemnly warns us in Romans 6:16:

Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

Jesus assures us in Matthew 6:24, No one can serve two masters. Yes, God created us and called us to master every other element of His creation. But He also told us in no uncertain terms that we ourselves are always to be mastered by the agape love of God.

V1  Deuteronomy 6:5

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

 

V2  Ephesians 5:25-32

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. (This is what Adam said in Genesis 2:23. Paul goes on to quote what God said in Genesis 2:24) For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: (It was a great mystery until God revealed His eternal purpose in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ) but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

 

V3  1^st Corinthians 7:12b,13 ... 16

If any brother hath a wife who believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. And the woman who hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?