Search Results: love your nieghbor
The Religionless Church of the Future
Category: Essays
Tags: Church, Essay
Topics: The Church
…to that person by sacrificing to meet that need. When sacrificial action is present, God’s love is present. When sacrificial action is not present, God’s love is not present, regardless of whether one claims to be loving or not. The love that defines Christ’s life and death, and the love…
Living With a Kingdom Consciousness
Category: Essays
Tags: Discipleship, Essay, Kingdom Living
Topics: Following Jesus
…this love as they are. “Live in love,” Paul says, “as Christ loved you and gave his life for you” (Eph. 5:1-2). Remain mindful of the fact that at this moment, and then in the next moment, your only job is to love others as Christ loved you and gave…
The Lord of Legend and Love
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Faith
Topics: Jesus: Lord or Legend
…story could be imagined in which a lover sacrificed more for a beloved who deserved it less. No greater sacrifice, and thus no greater depth of love, could be imagined than this. Indeed, this is a story of infinite love, for in this story the lover crosses an infinite distance…
15 Reasons Open Theism is TRUE (a reply to Andrew Wilson)
Category: Guest Contributor
Tags: Open Theism
Topics: Defending the Open View, Responding to Objections
…is obvious. We know from experience that trying to force (necessitate) love fails—and even if you could say that necessitated love was possible, all wisdom and experience tells us that free (un-necessitated) love would be a purer love. Necessitated love, even if it were possible, would be woefully inferior. So,…
Love That Keeps On Giving
Category: General
Tags: Love, Self-Sacrificial Love, Unsurpassable Worth
…5:8). This is what agape love looks like. As Bonhoeffer put it, “love … is the revelation of God. And the revelation of God is Jesus Christ.” Love, as defined by the one who is love, lays down its life for another, however undeserving. Agape love ascribes worth to another…
Featured Sermon Series: Scandalous Love
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: God, Greg Boyd, Kingdom Living, Love, Sermons, Theodicy, Theology, Woodland Hills Church
…and wrath. SERMON 6: Returning Love God’s love for us is overwhelming! But that’s not the whole story. As we receive God’s love we are able to return that love to God and others. SERMON 7: Empowering Love We, as Jesus followers, are called to reflect God’s love…
Does the Bible teach total non-violence?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Christian Life, Peacemaking, Q&A, Social Issues, Violence
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence
…you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from…
The Rule of Love
Category: General
Tags: Augustine, Cross, Cruciform Theology, Jesus, Love, Rule of Love
…the deepest unity of Scripture is love and that it was ultimately “breathed” for the purpose of love, which is why all Scriptural interpretation must be motivated by, consistent with, and result in love. Since God is love (1 Jn 4:8), it seems to me that it should be obvious…
Defining Love
Category: Essays
Tags: Augustine, God is Love, God's Character, Jesus, Non-Violence, Religious Violence
Topics: Attributes and Character
If God’s eternal essence is love, as discussed in this post, then we must ask: What does this confession actually mean? We must explore this question carefully because “love” has been defined in many theological streams in ways that seem contradictory to the kind of love revealed by Christ. As…
Love and Violence
Category: General
Tags: Augustine, Cruciform Theology, God is Love, Violence
What does it mean to confess that “God is love” and that we are called to “live in love” (Eph. 5:2)? One of the more common ways of understanding God’s love has its roots in the teachings of Augustine. He adamantly affirmed that the revelation that “God is love” lies…
Are We Supposed to Balance Love and Truth?
Category: General
Tags: God is Love, Holiness, Love, Love One Another, Repenting of Religion, Truth, Wrath
Image by zen via Flickr Often people say, “Yes we must love. But we must balance love with truth.” “Love has its place, but we must not forget God’s wrath.” “Love must never take the place of correct biblical doctrine.” Two points need to be made. First, if we take…
Does God Have a Dark Side?
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, Father, God, God is Love, Hell, Jesus, Wrath
Topics: Atonement and The Cross, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
…the Father “loves us,” but he “loves” in a mysterious way that is supposedly compatible with predestining multitudes to eternal fire as a way to bring him glory. He “loves” us, it is said, but in a mysterious way that is consistent with striking us or our loved ones down…
V Theology
…(SCM, 1966) 2 A. König, Here Am I: A Believer’s Reflection on God (Eerdmans, 1982) 2 P. Kreeft, Knowing the Truth About God’s Love (Servant, 1988) 2 J. Y. Lee, God Suffers For Us (Nijhoff, 1974) 3 G. MacGregor, He Who Lets Us Be: A Theology of Love (Seabury, 1975)…
What Makes the Good News So Good
Category: General
Tags: God, God is Love, God's Character, Jesus
Topics: Attributes and Character
…divine nature and will—love belongs to God’s nature, and more, that love constitutes God’s nature.”[2] In other words, since love is the essence of all that God wills, as Jesus and the authors of the NT teach (Matt 22:37), then we must either accept that love is the essence of…
Why Don’t We Practice Non-Violent Love
Category: General
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence
…love people normally extend to others and instead choose to love and bless even our worst “enemies,” we reflect God’s indiscriminate love in a distinctive way and thus enjoy a unique reward (Mt 5:46; Lk 6:32-33). Our love, in other words, is supposed to look foolish, and this, it seems…
Love and the Other Attributes of God
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, God is Love, Love
Topics: Apologetics
…perfect love. God’s power, therefore, is simply an aspect of his love, the love that is defined by the cross. When God demonstrates his love by giving up his life on Calvary (Rom. 5:8), he is, at the same time, expressing the true nature of his power. Though the cross…
The “Heresy” of Failing to Love
…We can have all the right doctrine in the world, but if we fail to love as Christ loved us, we are all “heretics.” And now I have to confess that I am guilty of “heresy.” I am. I haven’t consistently loved everyone like Christ loved me. I suspect I’m…
God’s Love and Your Freedom
Category: General
Tags: Free Will, God is Love, Love, Open Theism
…self-sacrificial love, as revealed in Jesus. Before the creation of the world, God predestined that he would acquire a people—a “bride”—who would receive the Father’s perfect love for the Son and participate in the Son’s perfect love for the Father. However, if love is the goal of creation, then the…
The Sine Qua Non of the Kingdom
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Judgment, Love
Topics: Following Jesus
…of different things, from sexual intercourse (“making love”) to affection for objects (“I love my iPhone”) to friendship (“I love my friends at the bar”) to personal affirmations (“I love your new hair style”). Thankfully, the Bible removes all ambiguity surrounding the word “love” by pointing us to the cross….
The Only Thing That Matters Is Love: The Kingdom of God (Part 3)
Category: General
Tags: Jesus, Kingdom, Kingdom Living, Living in Love, Love
Topics: Following Jesus
…says the “the only thing that counts is faith working in love” (Gal 5:14). Both he and Peter stress the absolute centrality of love when they write, “Above all,” cloth yourselves with love” (Col 3:14; 1 Pet 4:8, emphasis added). Above all! We are to wear Calvary-quality love each waking…