Ep. 23 | The Biblical PRACTICE of Love
Speaker: Jesse Turkington
Summary: A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). So... what does this love look like?
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Music created by Chad Hoffman
Artwork created by Anthony Kuenzi
Jesse’s Personal Notes:
Galatians 5:13-15
Pt. 2
Introduction
Hey, welcome to Pickled Parables! My name’s Jesse.
So, as it turns out, I might have lied again. I thought we were going to sail through this last part of Galatians but we are stopping to smell the roses.
Last time, I said we only had a couple weeks left with our series in Galatians but as it’s turning out, there’s quite a bit left to explore.
In the last episode, I presented the Biblical understanding of love as it is referenced in Galatians chapter five. This time, I want to talk about the Biblical practice of love. This is the natural next step from our last topic.
So, I would encourage you, if you haven’t listened to the previous episode yet – go back and listen through it because it will be real helpful for today’s lesson.
So with that little heads up, let’s take a look at the Biblical practice of love.
Galatians 5:13-15
Galatians five, thirteen through fifteen is a crucial point within this larger passage.
It’s acting as a reminder, like a knot that ties a bunch of loose ends together and it offers a call to action.
It says:
For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Galatians 5:13-14 ESV).
Now, an important component that’s weaved through these verses is the Biblical understanding of love. This isn’t a generic lovey-dovey feeling; this is a specific sacrificial love that comes from God. And that’s something we looked at in the last episode, but now for this lesson, I want to look at the Biblical practice of love.
Because it says: Don’t use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love … serve one another.
Now, quickly, just to frame the context for you – this is a letter addressed to a group of churches in the ancient region of Galatia (Asia Minor). So when it says, serve one another, it’s talking about people within those churches.
So, that’s the immediate context for these verses. And take note how Paul, the guy who wrote this letter, addressed them. He called them brothers.
This is a masculine noun in the Greek but it also allows for women within a group of people. Kind of like how we say “guys” today. Right? Kind of like, “Hey guys, what’s up?” That could be addressed to both men and women.
In the King James version, it’s translated to “brethren” which kind of carries that idea with it. Similar synonyms are like comrades, members, colleagues, associates, buddies.
This is addressed to the members of the churches.
“Brothers and sisters, within the freedom that you have been given, willingly submit yourselves to each other and serve each other out of an abundance of love.”
That’s how I would say it.
So, then Paul moves to talk about the love of neighbors. Next he says,
For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
According to Paul, this one command sums up the entire Old Testament law. And it’s very similar to what Jesus said during His earthly ministry.
As it’s recorded in Matthew chapter 22; it says:
But when the Pharisees heard that (Jesus) had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:34-40 ESV).
Now, Paul simply states that the heart of the law is fulfilled through loving your neighbor as much as you’d love yourself because you will never love your neighbor as much as you love yourself until you love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.
The reason for that is because it is only through the love that God provides that we will ever be able to love anyone sincerely other than ourselves.
I want to pause on this thought for a minute. This goes back to understanding Biblical love.
Now, people are able to experience things like affection, attraction, desire, and they can develop a personal care for others. All of this can be done without the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Why is that?
Well, as people who are made in the image of God, we were made with love in order to receive love and dispense love. This is something we are designed to do.
However, because of our inherent change through sin, we have become marred in our reflection of God. We are still image-bearers, we’re still made in the image of God, we’re just kind of messy, selfish versions of that now.
This is why love, at least in the English language, has become really complicated yet also very broad. It lives in this [yo͞oˈbikwədəs] ubiquitous area where it just means happiness. But it’s a little bit more than happiness. It’s the fulfillment of personal desire.
Now, just to add another layer to this, there are physical and psychological reasons as well. Most of which are meant to signify or give example for something that God what’s us to understand or experience.
As Jesus told Nicodemus in John chapter three:
If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things (John 3:12 ESV)?
It’s clear from Biblical examples that God establishes earthly practices in order to effectively communicate heavenly truths.
Examples of this are like becoming a parent for the first time. A lot of my friends are fathers and they have all told me about the moment that they held their tiny newborn child. They all talked about how something changed in their mental makeup and they could not describe the affection, the protection, the care and the personal desire that they had for this little person that no one else in the world could possibly have.
This moment of experience speaks to how God the Father cares for His children. There is no way we would be able to understand the way that God loves us without having something that would let us experience just a little bit of it.
Another example is marriage. Even sex within marriage is a foreshadowing of Christ loving the church. Because within this intimate moment between a dedicated man and a committed woman, there is no greater way to describe the feelings of ecstasy that God has for you.
The example of a husband and a wife having the most intimate experience that people can have points to the relationship that Christ has with His church (His bride).
Now, these examples, when practiced correctly, are wonderful, wonderful things. But when they are misused and become distortions of what they were meant to represent, they become abominations before the Lord.
If a father neglects their child or abuses them, if he doesn’t build them up with support and correction the way he should, he is misrepresenting the Lord in a horrible way.
If a couple abuses sex and replaces it’s meaning for personal fulfillment, they are misrepresenting an incredible moment that is meant to strengthen a marriage and they are plunging themselves into a darkness, distorting what marriage and sex are supposed to foreshadow.
Love, from the Biblical sense, has been taken by mankind and distorted to mean – temporary fulfillment, physical stimulation (let’s make love); it means personal fulfillment.
We have taken the love that we were made with and we have redesigned it to be a feeling of personal fulfillment.
This is why God’s law was necessary. Because yes, we were made in the image of God and we have the ability to foster affection, and we are able to create relationships and have care for people but it comes from a sinful, failing love that we have created.
We are inherently sinful people.
But God’s law showed us something different. It was a self-less love. It was an entire worldview that didn’t fit within this world’s mindset.
You see, understanding the law helps us understand love.
We were enemies of God. And even those who were not enemies, per se, would frequently find themselves running away in rebellion. Our sinfulness was revealed and people became aware that no one could stand without condemnation before the Lord.
Biblical Examples of God Loving
So, the law helped reorientate our understanding of right and wrong and it introduced righteous love. Or you could even call it godly love.
As I stated before, it’s clear from Biblical examples that God establishes earthly practices in order to effectively communicate heavenly truths.
One of those examples highlights this righteous love in an incredible way.
Out of God’s desire for relationship with mankind, He would often partner with prophets in order to correct nations and offer redemption to those who were lost.
Now, one prophet that God worked with was named Hosea. And this is what we find at the beginning of this account:
When the LORD first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the LORD and worshiping other gods” (Hosea 1:2 NLT).
God in His sovereign wisdom, worked with Hosea to set up an uncomfortable situation in order to clearly communicate His heartbroken love for His covenant people.
Hosea was faithful with this instruction and he married a prostitute named Gomer. While married, they had three children together but their legitimacy was questionable as it is said that they were conceived in prostitution. Despite that, God directly named each child, setting up a prophecy that detailed the invasion from the nation of Assyria and the fall of Samaria. It was a warning of righteous judgement and it’s explained more thoroughly throughout the book of Hosea.
The first child was a boy and God told Hosea to name him Jezreel, which means “God will sow”.
The second child was a girl and God called her No Mercy.
The last child was another boy and he was named Not My People (Hosea 1:3-9).
But in this judgment warning, God declared:
“I will make you my wife forever, showing you righteousness and justice, unfailing love and compassion. I will be faithful to you and make you mine, and you will finally know me as the LORD (Hosea 2:19-20 NLT).
“…they shall answer Jezreel, (whose name means ‘God will sow’) and I will sow her for myself in the land.
And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people’; and he shall say, ‘You are my God’” (Hosea 2:22b-23 ESV).
It’s not really detailed how it happened, but in Hosea chapter three, God told Hosea:
“Go and love your wife again, even though she commits adultery with another lover. This will illustrate that the Lord still loves Israel, even though the people have turned to other gods and love to worship them” (Hosea 3:1 NLT).
Then the most surprising thing happens in verse two. Hosea wrote:
So I bought her … back for fifteen pieces of silver and five bushels of barley and a measure of wine. Then I said to her, “You must live in my house for many days and stop your prostitution. During this time, you will not have sexual relations with anyone, not even with me.”
This shows that Israel will go a long time without a king or prince, and without sacrifices, sacred pillars, priests, or even idols! But afterward the people will return and devote themselves to the Lord their God and to David’s descendant, their king. In the last days, they will tremble in awe of the Lord and of his goodness (Hosea 3:2-5 NLT).
When God’s chosen covenant people chased after other gods and goddesses, God did not stop loving them even though they were condemned by His own law.
He was faithful when they were faithless, He showed mercy when they didn’t earn it and He was prepared to buy them out of their slavery to sin and receive the righteous punishment that they deserved.
God set up a hope for the future, both for His covenant people and for His “illegitimate children” … also known as Gentiles. This hope was fulfilled through Jesus Christ.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation(Romans 5:1-11 ESV).
Loving Neighbors
God loves with an unfailing, uncorrupted, righteous nature! In His holiness, He must demand justice. But he made a way through Jesus Christ to serve His justice and save His people.
This is the love we walk in! This is the love that the Holy Spirit carries into us. We’re not capable of loving like this because our love fails. It’s produced from a corrupted nature. It gets bent by selfish desires.
So how can we possibly love our neighbors with the love of God?
It’s through the work of the Holy Spirit. Listen to this. It’s rather long, but it answers this question better than I ever could. This is from Ephesians 4:17-32 –
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:17-32 ESV).
We were called to freedom brothers and sisters, only don’t use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh but through love serve one another.
Put off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and put on your new self which is created after the likeness of God and being renewed through the work of the Holy Spirit.
This is why the heart of the law is fulfilled through the commandment to love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.
Because we will never love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves until we love the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind. This is the breeding ground for spiritual renewal.
It is through this divine, righteous love that we are called to love our neighbors.
The way we interact, the words we say, the things we do, should be all for the glory of God. We should love our neighbors with the goal that they will love the Lord.
We need a mindset reset in our approach to love. It’s not to encourage unity for the sake of unity. It’s not to help people love themselves more. It’s all for the glory of God. Because God loves with a ferocity that’s unmatched.
We need to pull our understanding of love out from our cultural practices and allow the Bible and the Holy Spirit to lead us into new understandings and new practices.
This is the love that Paul’s talking about in Galatians chapter five. Within the freedom that we’re given, we should willingly submit ourselves to one another and ultimately, to the Lord.
Because if we don’t, Paul warned in Galatians 5:15 –
But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another (Galatians 5:15 ESV).
The Biblical practice of love comes by walking with the Spirit and understanding the way God loves you.
Conclusion
Hey, thanks for joining me today.
Next week, we’ll continue with Galatians chapter five, verse sixteen and we’ll work our way up to verse 26.
Next week’s passage is probably the most well-known portion of all Galatians. Paul talks about the Fruit of the Spirit and I remember as a kid, memorizing the list that he gives. It’s a favorite among many people and I’m excited to take a dive into this and share with you what I find.
If you’re still here and haven’t turned this thing off, I just want to say thanks. Your support is just so appreciated. If you could do me a favor and share this episode with somebody, that would be great. But if you just want to hog this all for yourself that totally fine too. I just appreciate you being here.
Thank you again for joining me. Until next week, I’ll catch you later.