Yeah, Okay… so, there is something to be said about living a righteous life… but don’t do it for yourself… do it, because He loves you… that is the ONLY real reason… to give BACK to him who gave SO much to you.
Abnormal Anabaptist
Come and read what it means to be abnormally Anabaptist. It might surprise you.
God loving us isn’t the only reason to live a righteous life. As believers we need to live a righteous life because He commands us to, and obeying Him brings Him glory.
I think many know that God loves them, but the problem is that many don’t care.
And yet… why follow his commands at all if there is no love? If we don’t have any reassurance of his love for us, how do we even trust his commands as good? If we have no reassurance of his love for us, how can we even begin to trust that, when we fail (and we will, inevitably), that he will STILL be there to help us?
Yeah, yeah, yeah… commands, law, rules, yada yada…
And yet, underneath it all… is love… without it, everything else is noise.
Ponder this, also… by no means, ever, is God’s love conditional on getting the commands right. He loves us even BEFORE we get it right. While we are messed up, screwed up, horrible evil sinners, he still loves us. Even the most wretchedly evil Satan worshipper, God loves… not because of what they do, but because of what they ARE…human beings, created in God’s image.
Ponder that…
Of course He loves us. But if you look at my first sentence above, I said his love isn’t the ONLY reason to live a righteous life. In your words under the video, you say it’s the “only real reason”, and I wanted to point out that it’s not.
And of course He loves us even before we get it right….that wasn’t my point. My point is that so much of what we hear today is “God loves us”, but not enough about how we are to love Him by repentance and obedience.
But you have to start with the love. As I said… without a recognition of his love, nothing else matters, nothing else makes sense, nothing else is even possible. You have to start with his love. The “obedience” and “repentance” will only every really take root if the person “obeying” and “repenting” understands they are loved.
In other words, you CANNOT start with someone by teaching them obedience and repentance. If they don’t realize they are loved, they will not love God in return, and if they don’t love God in return, no commandment on earth will do them any good.
Yes, you start with love, that people are loved even though lost in their sins. I never denied that. Sinners need to know God loves them, then come to him and repent and as believers live obediently.
My point is that in addition to saying we should live righteously because he loves us, we need to ALSO live righteously because he commands it, and we need to show we are serious about our love for him by obeying and glorifying him.
And I think you’re missing the point. Commands mean nothing without the love. We obey the commandments, not because they are commandments, but because we love the one who gave them. Love is the ONLY real reason for ANYTHING. Obedience is nothing without love. Purity is nothing without love.
Please understand, I agree that there is a sense of being holy, of acting holy… but you cannot expect ANYONE to act holy without love because then it is not holiness, it is self-righteousness. “Look at me, I’m obeying”. Sorry, the love is the first.
Where did I say we shouldn’t have love? Nowhere! Or that we should “expect anyone to act holy without love”?? I didn’t…..you’re missing my point. I said nothing of the kind.
In my previous post I clearly said “Yes, you start with love, and “we SHOW OUR LOVE for him by obeying and glorifying him.” You must have overlooked that. It all starts with love…him loving us, then us loving him, and as the Bible says in John 14:21: “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
So, we agree…why then did yoiu feel the need to correct my post by pointing out the need for obedience? What was wrong with what I and the video had to say about eveything starting with love?
And, for that matter, starting with God’s love fo us before we were even aware that we needed it?
Because you said the ONLY reason to live righteously was because God loves us so much. I wasn’t “correcting” your post so much as adding to it. If you read my original comment, I said God’s love for us isn’t the ONLY reason to live righteously….his commands to us and our love for him are other reasons to live righteously, plus the fact that he is God and is worthy of our love and obedience.
And the only real reason (read my post again…and if you haven’t yet, watch the video) to love God is because he first loved us. Our obedience to God’s commandments is because we love him…and the only way we come to love him is because he, while we were yet sinners, loved us… it all starts with God’s love for us…obediance, grace, truth, commandments, righteousness…all the result of this courtship that comes from God’s love…yes, obedience is important…but love comes first.
It is why we worship him…because he loved us.
It is why we care for the poor, because he loves the poor.
It is why we strive for holiness, because he loved us to die for us so that we have even the HOPE of being holy.
The root, the ultimate cause, everything that we celebrate as followers of Jesus, is because he loved us first…