Understanding the word Love

Psalm 47:1-9

“Clap your hands, all peoples!  Shout to God with loud songs of joy!
 For the Lord, the Most High is to be feared, a great king over all the earth. He subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet.  He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves. Selah   God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.  Sing praises to God, sing praises!  Sing praises to our King, sing praises!  For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalms!  God reigns over the nations; God sits on his holy throne. The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham.  For the shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted!”

I exalted you, is not a word used often and maybe one should ask why?  I have never told a man in my 77 years on planet earth you are exalted above all others, not my dad who I loved and respected, not any of the pastors, or athletes I’ve known, why?  It’s a word set aside for only one, God is the only one I’m to exalt. 

Why then should God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, be given such a title?  Let’s begin with an exceptional, word “Love” we were designed with a need to be loved, take a baby and show it no love and there is a good chance it will die.  But you and I need love, and we also need to show love.  I’m not talking about the kind a sixteen-year-old tells a young girl he has for her in the back seat of his car, no his desire is to get his needs met at her expense, that is not love.

What is love?  Shall we see what Scripture tells us about the subject of “Love”?  “ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.   Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.” (1John 4:7-12)

When I set out to write this paper, my mind was set on the many attributes of God, but as I began with Love, and God is Love, and the gift of Jesus is the greatest gift humanity has ever seen, God alone is to be feared and exalted!

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice