Welcome! Friday, March 29, 2024 | Login | Register
   
Bible Study: Loving God
There are so many who pass off Christianity as God doing all the loving. Not true. It’s not even for God to do all the forgiving. The Bible tells us in the gospels to “love the Lord thy God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength. This is the first commandment.” But it doesn’t stop there.  The Bible goes on to say, “And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  There is none other commandment greater than these.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
God loves us more than we will ever know.  He forgives us when we come to him with humble hearts and repent.  But God also expects us to love our neighbor.  He expects us to forgive our neighbor when they sin against us.  Peter asks Jesus in Matthew 18:21, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? till seven times?  And in verse 22, Jesus answered “I say not unto thee, until seven times: but, until seventy times seven. We are always to love and forgive our fellow man. Why? Because God first loved us, continues to love us and continues to forgive us so that we may become more like Him and one day live with Him in Paradise.
It is a command from the Bible to love the Lord. It is also a command to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  In Deuteronomy we read, “Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; and repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face.”  God does not play.  He says what He means and He means what He says.
“The Lord preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy.” Psalm 145:20. If we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, loving and forgiving our neighbor will take care of itself.

Printer-friendly format