236. Is the phrase "Love is Love" true, and is God really love.

[00:00:08] Hi friends, welcome to Making Disciples, my name is Cris and I am your host. It's lovely to be with you today, hope you're doing alright, hope life is treating you well. Thank you for the feedback that you guys have been given over the last few weeks, it's been really good just to kind of hear your thoughts on some of the stuff that we have been covering, and it's great when you guys send in questions yourselves, you know, things that you're thinking about or just wanting some help in kind of reflecting on, and that's where we're going.

[00:00:38] We are today, one of our listeners, now, according to the message, they are Monkey3421, I'm sure that's not their real name, I think that's their code name, but Monkey3421 has asked a question that, do you know what, I have been wrestling with and thinking about myself over the last couple of years, so I was really grateful to the question that's been asked today, and I'd love to give you some

[00:01:08] my thoughts on this particular topic, because I've been brewing, I've been brewing, I've been brewing, so it's like, okay, so these are what I'm thinking about when I think about this particular question, so I hope that this is super helpful to you.

[00:01:23] I'm going to be very specific in answering the question, because I know when I ask this question, as I start looking at this topic, there are other questions that then come out of it, and you know, yes, but what about, how does that apply to this, what about this thing, what do you think about that, Chris?

[00:01:39] I'm going to focus on answering the question, rather than going into some of the other topics that are around it, so Monkey3421 asks the question, I hear the phrase, love is love, I feel like this isn't a Christian idea, but I don't know why, as we know that God is love, can you help me understand?

[00:02:00] And I think that's a great question, because it's everywhere, isn't it? This phrase, love is love, it's everywhere, and I hear it all the time, love is love.

[00:02:09] And it is a, I would say, it's a cultural theological idea of value that has been propagated over the last 15 years, just love is love, every value of love is every value of love, love is love, and it creates a foundation then of which people build from that idea.

[00:02:35] And I actually don't think it is a, I don't think theologically as a Christian, it can be true. In fact, I know it's not true, I don't believe it's true. And I'd love to explore why I don't think it's true, and what is the implications of it, because I think that's really helpful for us to see.

[00:02:57] So when you come up with an idea, a doctrine, a thought, you've got to ask, where does this route take me eventually? Where does it get me to? And does it get me to a place that actually is still good? And, or is it in a destructive place? Because there are things that we might say or think that sound good on the surface. It always sounds very loving, doesn't it? It's very kind, it's very nice.

[00:03:23] I don't like that. But actually, if you play it out to its furthest point, you find yourself in a place where actually your worldview ends up collapsing. It just, the whole thing collapses. So what I want to do is just take this phrase, love is love, and explore the implications of that as Christians. About, you know, what do we know about God, and what does it say about Him? So I'm going to dive in, in a moment, and just walk this through.

[00:03:52] So I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. You know, I'd love this to be a conversation rather than a one-way statement on my behalf. But I know that sometimes people don't always like to kind of come back with their thoughts on some of this stuff. But I'd love to welcome it and say, please do. I, you know, I'm always wanting to grow, reflect, and think, which means it's in conversation that we can do that. So I'd love to encourage you to have that conversation, have the conversation with me. That would be brilliant.

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[00:04:45] So just to encourage you to do that if you want to bless the podcast and those who put time into making it happen. So you'll find that in the show notes. Friends, let's jump in as we answer the question. I hear the phrase love is love, but I feel like this isn't a Christian idea. But I don't know why. As God is love, can you help me understand? Let's jump in and explore this now.

[00:05:17] So let's dive in. So culture has created this phrase, love is love. And what it seems to imply is that anything that looks like love or calls itself love, then it is love. And therefore, it has to be allowed. And I have had some odd conversations with people that tell me that they love something particular. And you start going on it, yeah, really?

[00:05:47] And some of the conversations you might have with people, I mean, as a pastor, you hear a lot of stuff. But when people start telling you that they have certain feelings towards animals, and they go, love is love. You go, is it? You know, I read a news story last year where somebody had married themselves. And when they were talked, you know, talked it through by the reporter, the phrase that came up several times in the interview was, well, love is love.

[00:06:16] And if you love yourself, then why not marry yourself? And this phrase creates a foundation of thinking that can actually leave us with the complete fragmentation of society. And, you know, what is acceptable and thought as acceptable. So I just want to explore this phrase, particularly that love is love, just as a foundational idea as a Christian. And where do you start? Well, let's start here.

[00:06:45] This slogan or phrase, friends, I would argue it suggests that all forms of emotional attachment or desire are equally valid and good. But I would argue that it removes love from its moral and spiritual foundations. So this idea that love is love, what it's doing is removing itself from the foundation of a moral and spiritual foundation

[00:07:10] and actually placing itself where it basically says that any form of desire is equally valid and good and it's okay. And therefore, I'm going to use an example. If I've fallen in love with my pet, then why shouldn't I love my pet? Why shouldn't I have a relationship with my pet? You know, why shouldn't I marry my pet? Why shouldn't I marry myself?

[00:07:32] So you end up in this odd place where this slogan has removed from our thinking a moral and spiritual foundation to our understanding of love. And it's a little like saying food is food. When you say food is just food, you're ignoring that some food nourishes the soul and some food poisons the soul. Some food is not good food.

[00:08:00] It's not what you need in your body. Other food is good. It's healthy food. It's food that will bring life and bear fruit. And so to say food is food is like saying to love is love. Not all loves are equal. And I think that is a really interesting idea that's riddled within the Christian faith. And really then we have to ask the question, what does the Bible understand as love? So let's go to some biblical truths then as we think about what is love.

[00:08:30] So 1 John 4 8 says this, God is love. God is love. I think to just back up a second, to really understand that God is love. We have to understand that God is in his very nature three persons in one. Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

[00:08:56] And that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are the same substance but are three different persons. And that they, this is the Godhead, are equal. But yet they have a relationship that makes them distinct. And that in the Godhead, these three persons love each other.

[00:09:23] And if you understand that the Trinity is a loving relationship of three beings, then love is at the heart of the universe. Before creation even started, love existed and God loved. And this is one of the unique things about the Christian understanding of God and love. Love is that when God created the world, he didn't so because he needed to receive love. Or that he needed to give love.

[00:09:53] Because God already was love. God was already in a loving relationship between the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. They were experiencing this love. And therefore creation is the overflow of that love. If God isn't a Trinitarian God, isn't in relationship, then God couldn't love himself. And therefore needed to create the world so that that God could experience love for the first time. Therefore God isn't perfect.

[00:10:18] It's only when we see God as a Trinitarian God that's in unity of a relationship between three that love each other, then we can see that God is whole, is perfect, that he has everything that he needs to exist and to be love. And then we're an overflow of that love. We're an experience of that love. So therefore God is love because he's living in relationship. What it doesn't say is love is God. Love is God.

[00:10:46] And this is crucial because it anchors true love in God's character, not human feelings or desires. So God is love. Therefore God gets to define and shape what love is. If you say love is God, then God is shaped by our interpretation of love. So God is then changed by how you perceive love to be.

[00:11:13] So this phrase love is love, then people attach it to, well, God is love. Therefore love is God. And then you end up in a really strange place where people think actually God is a strange thing, a desire that's in the world. No, God is more than just a desire or a feeling that's in the world. Love is not God. But God is love. And that way around is really important.

[00:11:42] It's a theological thought that really is worth pondering on what that means. So God is love. Then love is shaped by God. If you say love is God, then God is shaped by our interpretation of love. And I think this is where society's got really confused around love and around God. What we've done is we have self-defined love. And then we've said, well, God has got something to do with love.

[00:12:12] So love is God. And we've flipped it around. And therefore, we can dictate what God says love is. And that's where we have then made ourselves God. And that's a dangerous place to be. So human interpretations and feelings about love would then define God.

[00:12:33] Essentially making God subject to human definitions and experiences of love rather than the other way around. And I think this is where we really need to get to in thinking about what do we mean when we say love is love. We are defining what love is. And then we're defining what is acceptable in love or what we think is permissible in love. So by saying love is love, we're basically saying anything can go. Anything can go.

[00:13:02] Anything is permissible. Anything is allowed. And I think that that is a problem. That is a problem. Because then when we start looking at then who God is, God ends up being formed and shaped around our distortions on what we think love is. So what does the Bible say about love? Romans 12.9 commands it says this. Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil.

[00:13:32] Cling to what is good. So there are four friends. According to Romans 12.9, real love has this moral discernment and boundaries. There's a defining of boundaries around love. And that boundary, love must be sincere. Hate what is evil. Cling to what is good. So love is more than love.

[00:14:02] Love is actually a good thing. And we therefore have to discern what the boundary of that good thing is. Let's now turn to 1 Corinthians 13 verse 6. And it says about love here. Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. In other words, authentic love aligns with truth, and it aligns with righteousness.

[00:14:30] So real authentic love, as understood in the Bible, is aligned with truth, and it's aligned with righteousness. Then the next thing I'd say is this. Real love, as modeled, and as we see it in the scriptures, real love, as modeled by Jesus Christ, it combines two things. Both grace and truth. Grace and truth.

[00:15:00] Now, I want you to imagine that there is a scale. On one end of the scale, you've got truth. And, you know, this is the truth of the cosmos, the way the world is built, the way that God wants the world to be. The danger is, if you focus purely on truth, then for many, it just becomes law. It just becomes this outworking of law. These are the rules. This is how it works. Get with it. These are the rules. And therefore, the next step from that

[00:15:30] is you end up with religious communities who are very much pharisaic. Law, law, law, law, law. Truth, truth, truth. It's the truth. Right. The other end of the scale, you have love. And love at the other end of the scale, the other word for love is grace. And grace is permissible. You know, in Christ Jesus, his grace is sufficient for us. So, one end of the scale, we've got the truth. And the other end of the scale, we've got love.

[00:15:58] Or you could say law and grace. It's used to the end of the scale. Now, if you focus purely on the end of the scale that talks about grace and love, then eventually what people end up doing is a very liberal understanding of society. Anything can go. Anything can go. At the other end of the scale where you've got truth, you end up with a society that's very much based on law and rules and regulations. What we see in the scriptures

[00:16:28] is there is only one person that's able to pull these two things together. So, you end up either with a society where anything goes or you end up with a society that's very rule-based and controlling. As human beings, what we can often do is swing between one end of the scale and the other. So, you find people who are very rule-based, very controlling, or you find people who say anything goes, anything is permissible,

[00:16:57] a very liberal society. Well, actually, what we find in the Gospels is that Jesus is the only person who's able to hold both truth and love or law and grace together. So, what Jesus does is he's able to hold these two things in the middle together. So, Jesus is the only one that, yes, has the law, yes, has the truth, yes, at the same time has grace

[00:17:27] and also has love. And Jesus is able to hold these two things together. And that, that is a biblical understanding of what Jesus does through his death and resurrection. Judgment is found in Scripture. Judgment is the law of God but the grace of God together. In other words, Jesus is the one that sits in the dock that condemns us and judges us whilst at the same time he is the one in the judgment seat

[00:17:56] and he is the one who's paying the debt. So, Jesus holds these two positions and he holds them together. So, real biblical love is modelled by Jesus and combines together both grace and truth. Friends, the world often offers love that's either harsh truth without grace or it's permissive truth, permissive grace without truth. It's one or the other and what ends up happening is we neither examine

[00:18:26] or reflect God's perfect love. So, God's perfect love in the Bible is one where truth and love are together simultaneous. The law and grace together simultaneously. Therefore, we can evaluate whether something is true love by its fruits. Does it lead to spiritual growth? Does it align with God's character?

[00:18:56] Does it call us to our highest selves or our best selves while providing grace support to get there? So, there is this very different understanding in the Bible of what love is. Love does not mean everything is permissible. Love does not mean everything is okay. But love is radical, graceful, and compassionate. So, biblical love is very different and the Christian

[00:19:26] worldview is that God gets to define love and tell us what love is. And I would say when God defines love, it's far more sacrificial, compassionate and kind than what the world offers. What the world's offering of love is actually very confused and actually doesn't really know what it really is. So, I want to talk about cultural confusion and God's higher understanding of love and this is where I want

[00:19:56] to end. So, let's talk about cultural confusion. I would argue what we have done in culture is we replaced godly love with a sense of emotional intensity and where there is emotional intensity we've called it love and we say anything that has a high emotional intensity is love. The problem is we can get confused by this understanding of love.

[00:20:26] Friends, I love a bacon sandwich. I love a bacon sandwich but it isn't real love that I have for my wife or the love that I have for my children or the love that I have for God. It's a different understanding of love but I have an emotional intensity to love in bacon but that emotional intensity is not love as in a sacrificial love that we find in the Bible and we often confuse romantic love and sacrificial

[00:20:55] love as well. We get those two things very confused but what we see in Jesus is a love that goes beyond mere emotion and it's a more profound sacrificial love as he gives himself for others. So what we've done is we've replaced godly love with emotional intensity. We've confused love with mere acceptance or affirmation. I think this is a really interesting one to just reflect on.

[00:21:25] What we've done culturally is we've confused love with acceptance and affirmation and therefore if you don't accept someone or affirm someone what you're doing is you're not loving. You are not loving and then what you end up doing is we flip that to its furthest point and actually we say somebody's hypocritical and then we end up saying that somebody is hateful. It is possible to not be hateful and still

[00:21:54] not accept somebody and it's possible to accept somebody but not actually love what they're doing and I think we got really confused here what it means to love people with confused love with mere acceptance and affirmation. I can affirm somebody I can accept somebody but I don't have love what they're doing but neither

[00:22:24] accept I can accept somebody and I can affirm somebody but I don't necessarily have to hate them I have to hate the choice that they've made or hate them as a person so we've done something odd there in our understanding of what it means to accept and affirm somebody else and give them dignity just because they want me to affirm and give them acceptance doesn't mean that I have to hate them so it's really interesting what we've done culturally we've swung this pendulum between

[00:22:54] you love or hate sometimes you don't have to you don't have to be one or the other you could be somewhere in between and the other thing I'd say is that this we've separated love from truth and we've also separated love from a moral responsibility we've separated love out from those things culturally so what is God's higher understanding of love and I think this is really where I want to get to how does God define love what's God's highest

[00:23:23] understanding of love so God's understanding of love is that love transforms rather than just accepts what we've done is we very much says love is acceptance but actually God's love is a transformative love so love that transforms rather than just accepts so God's love does something different God's love also seeks

[00:23:53] redemption rather than just validation so culture says if you validate me you've got to love me or to love me you've got to validate me God's love seeks redemption transformation when God so loved the world he did so by sending Jesus for the purposes of transformation so God's love redeems and God's love transforms

[00:24:22] the third thing I'd say is this God's love is a love that points to holiness not just happiness culturally we've said that love brings us happiness but God's love points to holiness rather than just happiness and the interesting thing is what we think makes us happy changes as well over time therefore we have to keep changing

[00:24:51] how we understand love culturally to change to match our understanding of happiness God's love points to holiness rather than just happiness and that holiness is brought about because love seeks redemption and love transforms so all of these things stack up together so God's understanding of love is transformative it's redemptive and brings about a holiness we are transformed and changed because of it and the fourth thing I'd say

[00:25:21] is this God's understanding of this love is love grounded in God's unchanging character rather than shifting cultural definitions culture keeps shifting and trying to define what it means to understand love and be loved whereas actually God's love is grounded in God's unchanging character God setting the agenda of what is

[00:25:51] his understanding of love so therefore friends I want to argue that yes I have a problem with love is love not all things that claim to be love actually are love they are very often more of an emotional intensity rather than a sacrificial way of living living living our lives in such a way that we sacrifice everything for the person that's in front of us

[00:26:20] that we love so I would argue love is not love in the same way that food is not food and that some food nourishes us and some food poisons us I would say in the same way in terms of love is love some love nourishes us whilst some other loves poison us they are not making us who God has designed us to be so that is my

[00:26:50] outworking of the problem of love is love I don't think every love is the same I don't think everything that claims to be love is actually love I think some of the love that you see in society actually centred more around self gratification self defining and self

[00:27:19] gratification and fulfilling my needs what I'm love love love romanticized uh idea that actually is not romantic at all it's more like animal instinct and animal

[00:27:47] desire so i i would argue therefore love isn't love not all loves are made equal and therefore i would argue that love god god has to define love not us defining love and then reading that upon god this is what we think love is and therefore god should agree with us i don't think

[00:28:10] that's the case at all i think god should set the agenda of what love is what defines love and if you want the definition of love from god then it's the heart of it is john 3 16 for god so loved the world that he gave his one and only son sacrifice that we may not perish but have eternal life

[00:28:34] that's love defined as the sacrificial outpouring of the giving of himself his son jesus that we may experience the redemption and new life found in jesus that's what defines love a sacrificial love so friends love i would say is not love love is love is not a christian concept and therefore i would challenge any one of us to ask the question well therefore are we allowing god to define what love

[00:29:02] is or are we allowing a culture that is confused by what love is to define love but also to define what god says love is and the danger is we end up with this concept in the world that says if you don't agree with me you are a bigoted person no it's not about being bigoted it's about clinging on to a biblical god's understanding of what love is so i friends i pray that you you may reflect on

[00:29:29] on some of that and you know i'd love to hear your thoughts on it if you want to come back to me on anything then yes on twitter rabbi rogers i'm also rabbi rogers on instagram and you'll also find me on facebook if you want to come back to me on any of that stuff and i'd love you to just reflect yourself on what what does that phrase love is love mean for you friends until next time grace and peace have a blessed week and i shall catch up with you soon