The great love deception; human love condemning divine love

by David Leach
(Temecula, Ca)

What is divine love? 1 Jo 4:8 …God is love

It isn’t that God has love as an attribute, no, God is Himself love. His very nature is love.

Who then has this divine love and therefore can divinely love others?

Since God is love, whoever has God has love; whoever has more of God has more love:

1 John 4:7-8 …Love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God (is currently in spiritual fellowship with Him). He who does not love does not know God (is currently separated from Him), for God is love.
God is love, therefore love is of God – meaning for any love to operate God Himself must be present, because there is no love apart from Him, for He is love. God does not impart love separately from Himself, for He is love. He imparts Himself, then there is love. In order for love to be actively present in my life I must have been born of God (born again of love) and I must be currently in spiritual union with Him (with love). This requires my will to be in submission to Him. He alone is love; I cannot love unless He loves through me. And for love to increase in my life God must increase in me; for love is of God.

How do we receive God and therefore receive divine love in order that we can love?

God communicates or imparts Himself, and therefore His nature of love, in two ways:

1. As we believe with our hearts His living words that His Spirit brings personally to us.
Jo 1:1-12 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (and is God)…As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:
1 Jo 2:5 But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him...
Jo 17:6-26 (Jesus) I have manifested Your name…for I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them…And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them. (but not all receive His word)
John 5:38 But you do not have His word abiding in you…
John 5:42 But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you.
God is love, and the word of God is God, therefore the word of God is love, always.

2. As we submit to and receive, by faith, the Holy Spirit to rule over us in our hearts:
Rom 5:5 …The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit…
Gal 3:2 Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? (hearing with the heart God’s promise of the Spirit and believing it)
Acts 5:32 …The Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him.
God is love, and God the Holy Spirit is God, therefore the Holy Spirit is love, always.

How do we love God and how are we to love one another?

1 John 4:19 We love Him because He first loved us.
We have no love until we first receive God’s love by receiving God. We receive God when we first believe His words. Our love for Him increases as we believe more of His words and we receive His Spirit to be our Lord. Our love is then shown by our obedience:
1 John 5:3 This is love for God: that we obey His commands... NIV/TEV

Now we can fulfill Jesus’ first and great commandment – to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, all our soul (will), all our minds (thought life) and all our strength. Because we are loving God entirely with the love with which He first loved us. It is only as we fulfill this commandment that we are capable of fulfilling the second which is that we love our neighbor, relative, friend and stranger as ourselves. In what way are we to love them?

John 13:34 (Jesus) A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another;
as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
How has God loved us? By imparting Himself, He is love, to us, by His word and by His Spirit. How do we love one another? By living in God, who is love, and therefore living in love. Now we will be continually obedient to love’s will and we will increasingly manifest the characteristics of God’s love described in 1st. Corinthians Chapter 13. And since this love of God is always reaching out to impart Himself, we will be led by love to pray for others, including our enemies. And, by His Spirit of love, to speak God’s words that are in us, which are His nature of love, to anyone who will let God love them through us.
1 John 4:16 ...God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
Eph 5:25-26 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church…with the washing of water by the word,

Sin is the opposite of divine love – so, love came to deliver us from sin and our sin nature.

1 John 4:16 ...God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
1 John 3:5-6 He (Christ) was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him (in love) does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him (is not now in spiritual union with love).
God is love. This is love; that we obey what love wills. All sin is disobedience to God, to love, and therefore sin is the very opposite of love. Jesus, the above scripture says, came to take away our sins, including our sin nature, in order that we could live permanently in God. And so, living in love, be enabled to truly love one another. But part of us hates this:

In love, in God, there is no sin; love wants to free us from sin – but our sin nature fights it.

If we have been born again you and I have two natures, a reborn spirit or heart where the beginning of God’s or love’s nature resides; and our old human nature or flesh where the nature of sin, the opposite of love, resides. These two natures of ours are separated by our will or soul, by which we decide in which of these two natures we live. As His child God wants to impart more and more of Himself, love, to our new inner man and grow us up spiritually; and to permanently free us from the influence of our sin nature.

Because as long as we remain alive to our sin nature our will or soul is at risk of being taken captive by it, which if un-reversed can lead to our eternal destruction. God or divine love has made provision in Christ for us to die to our sin nature or flesh, but needless to say our flesh, where human or carnal love resides together with sin, will oppose being died to.

Rom 8:8 Those who are in the flesh (living by sense and reason) cannot please God.
Rom 8:13 If you live according to the flesh you will die…(because that’s where your sin nature is, and sin always disobeys God and un-remedied it results in spiritual death).
Rom 6:6-7 Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him (Christ), that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin (if he just believes this).God, divine love, wants us to die, in Christ, to our carnal flesh or sin nature. But our flesh has its own version of love, its called human or carnal love. This human love is so inferior to divine love because it is very selective who it loves, it is given on the condition it gets love back, and it can be quickly withdrawn if it is offended or it finds someone better to love. Although it is flawed, this love, born of the flesh, driven by emotion with self-serving motives, will question, judge and condemn divine love’s efforts to free it or others from sin. That’s why higher love needs us to die to our flesh with its lower love, to end this conflict.

If we die to the flesh, how can we be sure of living continually in God and in divine love?

John 6:56 (Jesus gives us the answer) He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in me (continues to live in me) and I (continue to grow Myself) in him.
Jesus, when known after the spirit, is the word of God (John 1:1). To eat His flesh is to eat God’s words with our hearts, by believing them as His Spirit daily brings them to us:
Jer 15:16 Your words were found, and I ate them…
Ps 34:8 Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good…
As the life of our natural flesh is in our blood, so the life of spiritual flesh, the word of God, is in the spiritual blood. And the spiritual blood is the Holy Spirit. And to drink this spiritual blood continually is to walk in continual submission to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
1 Cor 12:13 …And (we) have all been made to drink into one Spirit.
Rom 8:14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. Jesus’ words “Eat My flesh and dink My blood” in order to live in God; while repulsive to our natural senses, are a sweet revelation to our spirits. They summarize the answer given on page one to the question: “How do we receive God and therefore receive divine love?”
But since we can’t stay living in God until we die to our sin nature, love shows us how to:
Col 3:3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (and can now love).