Characteristics of Love; Gal. 5:14; Lev.
19:18
Galatians
Leviticus
Leviticus
19:9 NASB “Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you
shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor shall you gather the
gleanings of your harvest.” In
other words, don’t pinch your pennies. Be gracious towards those who are poor
and do not have anything. Remember that this was in an agricultural economy.
Most people worked out on the farms and it is talking about their basic
personal economy, how they handled their personal finances. [10] “Nor shall you
glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard;
you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am the LORD your God.” So
this is God’s divine plan for a welfare system. There are always going to be
the poor. This is a personal system of taking care of those who are without, it
is not a government system and not a bureaucracy set up in order to take care
of them. There is a bureaucratic framework for this in the second tithe which
was national and taken up in order to take care of the widows and the orphans. But
here it was a personal issue where a certain amount of the field was left to
take care of the poor. So that is one illustration of impersonal love. The
second is in v. 11 NASB “You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor
lie to one another.” This was for the protection of private ownership of
property. [12] “You shall not swear falsely by My
name, so as to profane the name of your God; I am the LORD.” This
refers to treating God’s name lightly and swearing by His name and then telling
a lie. [13] “You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor
rob {him.} The wages of a hired man are not to remain with you all night until
morning.” In other words, don’t go out and try to take advantage of other
people and see how you can screw them out of all their money. A man was to be
paid at the end of the day; money was not to be kept to earn a little more
interest. Generosity with other people is an aspect of grace orientation. Furthermore
there was to be a certain amount of respect for all men, even those who have
physical deformities. [14] “You shall not curse a deaf man, nor place a
stumbling block before the blind, but you shall revere your God; I am the LORD.” Notice
the connection between respecting God and respecting man generally. Why? Because man is made in the image of God. Even though that
image has been somewhat marred we are to treat all men with a certain level of
respect whether believer or unbeliever, whether they are good or bad because
they are created in the image of God. [15] “You shall do no injustice in
judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you
are to judge your neighbor fairly.”
In summary what we see here
is that love is defined as an absence of mental attitude sins and an absence of
what we might call discourtesies, and an absence of taking from other people
what is rightfully theirs; and respecting privacy, property and truth. Love at
this point in Leviticus is pretty simple in the way it is defined. In other
words, in the Old Testament when they did not have the filling of God the Holy
Spirit this was the best they could do. Because they didn’t have the dynamics
of the filling of the Holy Spirit and a completed canon of Scripture they were
limited as far as they could go. But notice how it changes when we get to the
New Testament.
There is a level here that is
missed in the Old Testament, it doesn’t seem to come to the level of
expectation that we see in Luke 6 and later on in the epistles. In Luke 6 we
have Luke’s account of the sermon on the mount. This
primarily focuses on how things will be in the Millennial
kingdom. The reason for this is because when Jesus came—“in the fullness of
time,” Galatians 4:4. Paul uses that same phrase as a title for the Millennial kingdom, so we know that it is a dispensationally pregnant time—at the beginning of this
dispensation there was a shift because now in terms of requirement there was
the personal presence of the Messiah who was announcing a kingdom. He is
preceded by John the Baptist and John’s message was to repent for the kingdom
of heaven is at hand. So there was new revelation that the kingdom was at hand.
But what happened? Halfway through Jesus’ ministry it becomes clear that both
the leadership in
In Matthew 5-7 and in Luke 6
this is at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus is announcing what the
standard procedures and policies will be in the Millennial
kingdom. Even though that is a direct interpretation it has an application for
this age because it helps us to understand in the church age what it means to
love others. Luke
Then we get another example. Luke
Luke
Contrast: Luke 6:35 NASB
“But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and
your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He
Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil {men.}
Luke
John 13 further ups the
ante. John 13:34, 35 “A new commandment
I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you
also love one another.
That brings us to
understanding God’s impersonal love for mankind. Personal love is when there is
affinity between the subject and the object. But in the case of God, He is
perfect righteousness and we lack perfect righteousness. We are sinners and
what the righteousness of God condemns the justice of God rejects, so that God
could not have personal love for fallen creatures. There is no affinity between
our negative righteousness and His perfect righteousness. So God has to love us
with impersonal love or unconditional love that is based exclusively on His
character. His character is absolute righteousness and perfect virtue. His love
for us is based not on anything we do or who we are, it is based on His
character and on the work of Jesus Christ.
What are the
characteristics of that impersonal love? It is expressed most clearly at
salvation. Remember that man is hostile to God, he is at enmity to God, he
rejects God, and he is continually taking advantage of every provision that God
gives him.
1. From eternity past God made a plan to solve the problem,
so we see that His love is initiating. God’s love took charge of the situation
to provide the perfect solution necessary to restore the relationship that was
broken by Adam’s original sin.
2. God’s impersonal love is aggressive. It asserts itself
with confidence and boldness.
3. There is humility. Jesus did not seek His own personal
glory but He took on the attitude of a servant in order to do whatever was
necessary. This included the incarnation, limiting His attributes in time—voluntarily
restricting the independent use of His attributes while He was incarnate,
sacrifice, and the undeserved imputation of human sin, and He received in His
body on the cross the imputation of every single sin in human history.