GOD'S HOLY LOVE: INTIMATE

Recently I’ve written two blogs on God’s holy love guided by two Hebrew words for love found in the Old Testament: hesed meaning steadfast, loving kindness and covenant loyalty you can depend on, and aheb meaning practical love reflecting personal commitment and responsibility.  God’s holy love is both steadfast and dependable yet also practical and responsible.

God’s holy love is of a third kind found in the New Testament we may know best, agape.  God’s agape love is unconditional and self-giving, sacrificial and other-centered.  It is more than friendship, compansionship, family love (phileo). It is love seeking ever increasing intimacy with God.  Agape love is deeper, purer, and transforming.  It is the kind of love that is pure and purifies when implanted in the hearts of those whose obedient faith seeks the infilling of the Holy Spirit.  It is obedient love  given over to God and others living life in the likeness of Christ to the glory of God.

Hesed, aheb, and agape are three words used in the Bible to capture the essence of God’s love and may be used as descriptors of God’s nature, the essence of his holy love.  His love for us is steadfast, dependable, and never changing.  It fails not.  His love is personal and intimate.  He cares for you and me.  In response to His love, he desires our love in return to him, for him, and to others.  His love is unconditional, other-centered, self-giving, and sacrificial. 

Amazing love how can it be

That Thou, my God, should die for me?

- Charles Wesley

O Love that will not let me go,

I rest my weary soul in thee

That in thine ocen depths its flow

May richer, fuller be.

- George Matheson

GOD’S HOLY LOVE: PERSONAL COMMITMENT

In my most recent blog, I discussed God’s steadfast love.  The Hebrew word for it is hesed meaning loving kindness and covenant loyalty.  God is absolutely faithful in his love for us.  You can count on the sustainability of his love.  The other Hebrew word for love that we find in the Old Testament is aheb which is more commonly used meaning practical love reflecting personal commitment and responsibility.  It is the practical love we observe when one cares for the other.  One of many examples in the Bible is the love between Ruth and Naomi when Ruth says –

Where you go, I will go.  
Where you lodge, I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people 

and your God my God.

Where you die, I will die – 

There will I be buried.

Ruth 1: 16 & 17

Aheb is the word used by God speaking to Moses when he describes his love for Israel, a love so great that he desires them to be holy after his likeness.  God’s love is an expression of God’s character and his desire that they love him and others as he loves them in the most practical, relational way as individuals and as a people.[1]

Isn’t God’s aheb love what we desire for ourselves and for our children, friends, and neighbors.  When we see all the sin and suffering in the world, we desire the aheb of God to wash over humanity in the most practical, relational ways and bring joy and peace to this troubled world.  It is a loving, personal commitment of thanks, praise and obedience to God in all we say and do, and commitment to the wellbeing of all others, the whosever that God loves and for whom Christ died.

Hesed and aheb love, steadfastness with personal commitment, is the essence of the love of God for us and for all the world.  Thanks be to God!  The third and final love of God that I’ll talk about in my next blog is one you are likely most familiar with, agape love.

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[1] Dr. Alan Coppedge, “Holiness and Love,” in High Calling newsletter of the Francis Asbury Society, March-April, 2015, www.francisasburysociety.com