Love: An Essential Journey, An Essential Proof

By Larry Cochran

What does this kind of love look like? We can say what Jesus said “greater love has no man than this than to lay down his life for a friend”. Paul echoes this kind of love when he was exhorting husbands to “love their wives as Christ loved the Church”. Now there are all kinds of arguments as to the different types of love such as phileo which is brotherly, eros which is erotic, agape which is godly, and storge which is devotional. I don’t want to beat that horse on this one. I am not trying to give a long discourse on what love actually means, I simply want to explore what love really is and how it can be practical to the Christian life at all times and at all levels. As with other writings that I have this book is a journey that I want to take the readers on with me as I look to define in a clear way “Love”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781387130566

Book preview

Love: An Essential Journey, An Essential Proof

Love

An essential journey, an essential proof

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Larry Cochran

Love – An essential journey, an essential proof

Copyright © 2017 by Larry A. Cochran

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author.

ISBN978-1-365-73376-5

Printed in USA by Lulu Books

Introduction

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:13

Today in prayer, my mind kept moving back to the reality of my relationship with God and I could not shake the feeling that our relationship was mutually based on love. I love God because he first loved me. There is no way that I could ever love the way that he loved because I was dead in trespasses and sins, but there is a way to love, and it starts with me accepting that God is love and his love is the catapult for all love. In this book, I wanted to capture the love that the bible says is true love and dispel some of the myths about what love is. I am not a theologian in the traditional since or the most modern identification of the term; however, I am a student of scripture and will forever be as long as I am alive on this side of heaven. The bible is more than a gift to man to show us light, but it is light because it is the word and the word was with God and the word was God[1].

I believe that God is the word and the word is God and that Jesus Christ, the Son of God was that very word that God spoke. I believe that the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us[2]. Just before Jesus was going to be crucified for the sins of his elect, he made a statement to the disciples in the upper room. He said By this people will know that you are my disciple, if you have love for one another[3]. This would be strange but it only compiles the very words that he spoke to them at every chance he had, starting at the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said clearly that the greatest commandments were to

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself."[4]

Even when Jesus said this to his disciples, it should not have been something that they were hearing for the first time. God is completely consistent in what he has said about this subject. In Deuteronomy God said,

"And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul".[5]

There is nothing new about God saying to love him in such a strong way, but now Jesus was saying to have this very same love for our neighbors.

What does this kind of love look like? We can say what Jesus said greater love has no man than this than to lay down his life for a friend.[6] Paul echoes this kind of love when he was exhorting husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church.[7] Now there are all kinds of arguments as to the different types of love such as phileo which is brotherly, eros which is erotic, agape which is godly, and storge which is devotional. I don’t want to beat that horse on this one. I am not trying to give a long discourse on what love actually means, I simply want to explore what love really is and how it can be practical to the Christian life at all times and at all levels. As with other writings that I have this book is a journey that I want to take the readers on with me as I look to define in a clear way "Love".

As I was growing up, I had experienced all kinds of treatment, some good and some not so good. I have had some experiences that I would soon forget if I had the ability to wipe them from my memory. However, I would not so easily do such things if I had a full understanding of God’s sovereignty and God’s love. There is a very strange relationship with these two in the mind of typical human beings because we would want to believe that if God is love, then there should be no suffering in humanity at all. I tend to take a different approach to this; I say that it is the very nature of God’s love toward us that prevents him from stopping all of the suffering we see. He has an obligation to seek justice for all, but have mercy on whom he would have mercy[8]. Every time I had a stroke of so-called luck, it was not luck, it was God showing me mercy. Every time I had experiencing a time of depravity, it was God allowing my heart to harden. All of this ultimately drew me to Jesus Christ and then my seeking of love toward Christ showed me God.

As the scripture shows me, it is God who draws us to his son, but it is his son who brings us to him by way of his death on the cross. Jesus Christ mediates between a sinful man and the perfect sinless father; however, we cannot forget it was the fathers will that caused his son to be put to death so that we could enjoy this access to him. It is a very scary thought that God had to serve justice by way of the cross, but it also makes Jesus Christ statement more clear "greater love has no man than this". No one can ever exemplify the love that God has by sending his only begotten son to die on the cross for the payment of justice for things he did not do. In fact, God sent his son to die on the cross for his, then, enemy. We were enmity with God[9] at the time of Jesus Christ death and his atonement paved the way for our redemption from that death.

This is so amazing to me. I was an enemy and yet Christ was willing to lay it all on the line. Now if that is how God loves. Yes, Jesus also said to love our enemy[10]. If we are commanded to love our enemy and we are told that husbands ought to love their wives the way Christ loved the church and that we are to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. If we are told to love our neighbor as ourselves, it stands to reason that love is a pretty important thing to understand.

I would like to say that my mother and father did the best that they could with what they had, even if it was woefully inadequate by many standards, I do not love them one bit less, now that I understand what love should have looked like all along. What I am doing now is learning how to make up for the love that I did not give to them regardless of what I felt that I was missing from them. It is not our job to keep score and then repay evil for evil; as a matter of fact, we are told not to do that either. Peter said it best

"Do not