Do you love God or just love people?

Do you love God or just love people?
Really Loving Christians is the proof.
1Jo 4:20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar.

The Key point is this: Real love for Christians stems from our love of God, not our love of people.
1Jo 5:2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.

So ask yourself…
1. Do you love the God of the Bible who ordered genocide?
De 20:16 In those towns that the LORD your God is giving you as a special possession, destroy every living thing. 17 You must completely destroy the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, just as the LORD your God has commanded you.

2. Do you love the God of the Bible who is sovereign over unspeakable suffering?
2Kings 6:24 Some time later, however, King Ben–hadad of Aram mustered his entire army and besieged Samaria. 25 As a result, there was a great famine in the city. The siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty pieces of silver, and a cup of dove’s dung sold for five pieces of silver. 26 One day as the king of Israel was walking along the wall of the city, a woman called to him, “Please help me, my lord the king!”
27 He answered, “If the LORD doesn’t help you, what can I do? I have neither food from the threshing floor nor wine from the press to give you.”
28 But then the king asked, “What is the matter?” She replied, “This woman said to me: ‘Come on, let's eat your son today, then we will eat my son tomorrow.' 29 So we cooked my son and ate him. Then the next day I said to her, ‘Kill your son so we can eat him,' but she has hidden her son.”
30 When the king heard this, he tore his clothes in despair.

3. Do you love the God of the Bible who condemns people to eternal judgment and suffering who have never even heard of Jesus?


Ac 4:12 Salvation is found in no-one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."

Ro 10:14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

Ro 1:18 But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. 19 They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. 20 For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities––his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

4. Do you love the God of the Bible who ordained His innocent son to suffer and die to pay for the sins of the world?
Ac 2:23 This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.

Acts 4: 27 Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28 They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.

5. Do you love the God of the Bible who chooses only a relative few to enjoy the eternal consequences of Christ’s sacrifice.

Mt 22:14 "For many are invited, but few are chosen."

6. Do you love the God of the Bible who dispenses his mercy exclusively based on his own pleasure?
Isa 46:10 My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.

Ro 9:16 It (Being divinely considered and treated as a child of God) does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.

7. Do you love the God of the Bile who sent his son with you in mind to personally redeem you from humanly unstoppable sin and the eternal separation from him that logically follows.

Ro 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Ep 1:4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

Jo 5:24 "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.

1Jo 5:13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

8. Do you love the God of the Bible and trust him to manage everything in such a way that he receives recognition as the supreme, righteous, perfect, beautiful One?

Because it is the love we have for God that distinguishes a Christian from a humanist. It is our supreme love for God that distinguishes us from those who have a supreme love for humanity.

The difference between being wonderful, funny, big-hearted, loving, loveable people who view God as a means of comforting others, and actually being in an unbreakable eternal relationship with God… is a supreme love for God - with all heart and soul and mind and strength and yet-unresolved questions. In doubt, we turn to our experience of his love for us in Christ and trust in his love.

1Jo 4:16 And so we KNOW and RELY ON the love God has for us.

Real love for others stems from our love for God, not our love of people.

1Jo 5:2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.

1Jo 5:21 Dear children, keep away from anything (including humanism) that might take God’s place in your hearts.

Can I say at the end of it all, “God what lands in your court, is a lot of stuff I find gross and disturbing and objectionable, but what lands in my court is a bewildering quantity and quality of love, the experience of which so overwhelms any sense of doubt that I cannot help but love you.

1Jo 3: How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we (sinners) should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

Listening In Loss

Joy in loss is that internal evidence that God is real and aware and in control and good and for us and near and all-pervading.

In uncertainty, joy feels like peace.
Php 4:7 …the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Isa 26:3 You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!

In fearfulness, joy translates into confidence.
Jer 17:7 “But blessed (happily receiving invisible support and sustenance from God) are those who trust in the LORD and have made the LORD their hope and confidence.

In loss, joy is trust.
Ps 9:10 Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.
1Ch 29:12 You are the ruler of all things.
Ps 145:17 The LORD is righteous in everything he does; he is filled with kindness.

In waiting, joy becomes patience
Ps 27:14 Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.
Ps 40:1 I waited patiently for the LORD to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry.

In grief, joy remembers our consolation
Heb 6:18 We who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence (consolation KJV) as we hold to the hope that lies before us.

In suffering joy sees what cannot be lost.
2Ti 1:12 I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.
Ro 8:39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In weakness joy abides in us as strength
Ne 8:10 the joy of the LORD is your strength."
2Ti 1:8 With the strength God gives you, be ready to suffer…

And suffer we will. May God make us ready to face loss and suffer with him and for him. May we hope in him alone and be filled to overflowing with joy.