Taught by God to Love

A Day in the Life

“But concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.” — 1 Thessalonians 4:9

There are days when I read a verse like this and feel both comforted and exposed. Paul tells the believers in Thessalonica that they are “taught by God” to love one another. The Greek word he uses is theodidaktoi—literally, “God-taught.” That phrase arrests me. Love, according to Paul, is not merely a moral duty or a social expectation; it is a lesson taught directly by God Himself. This kind of love is philadelphia, brotherly affection rooted in shared life in Christ. It is not sentimental. It is covenantal.

When I look at the life of Jesus, I see what it means to be taught by God to love. Jesus loved the fisherman who misunderstood Him, the tax collector who betrayed his people, and even the disciple who would deny Him. He loved not because others were easy to love, but because love flowed from His union with the Father. “God is love” (1 John 4:16). The Greek word agapē there does not describe mere emotion; it describes self-giving, steadfast commitment. Augustine once wrote, “Love God, and do what you will.” He did not mean that love excuses sin. He meant that when our hearts are formed by God’s love, our actions will reflect His character.

The Thessalonian church had already begun to practice this love, yet Paul encourages them to “excel still more” (1 Thessalonians 4:10). Love is not static. It matures. It stretches. It grows in difficult soil. I think about how often love feels unnatural to me. Perhaps you have known what it is to grow up in a home where affection was scarce. Or maybe you have been wounded deeply, and your heart hardened to protect itself. The study reminds us that love does not always come freely because of sin. And that is true. But the gospel does not leave us there.

Paul had already told these believers that God would “increase and abound in love for one another” (1 Thessalonians 3:12). Notice the source. It is God who increases love. The Christian life is not a self-improvement program where I grit my teeth and try harder to be kind. It is a transformation where the Holy Spirit forms Christ’s character in me. As John Stott observed, “Love is not a sentimental emotion but a practical commitment.” That commitment becomes possible when God supplies what we lack.

In the life of Jesus, we see this divine enablement embodied. When He encountered the woman caught in adultery, He did not condone her sin, but neither did He crush her. His love was truthful and restorative. When He washed the disciples’ feet in John 13, He demonstrated that love stoops. He knew Judas would betray Him, yet He washed his feet. That is love taught by God.

If I am honest, there are people I find difficult to love. Perhaps you do as well. The question is not whether love is required; Scripture is clear. The question is how. Paul’s answer is that God Himself becomes our instructor. Through the Holy Spirit, He reshapes our reactions, softens our defenses, and multiplies our capacity to care. The Spirit of God takes the truth that “God is love” and makes it experiential in our relationships.

Sometimes the struggle is not whether we love, but how we express it. You may care deeply but feel awkward putting affection into words. You may serve tirelessly but rarely say, “I love you.” God understands that limitation. He is prepared to teach us expression as well as intention. Love may look like patient listening, a handwritten note, a prayer whispered over someone’s name, or forgiveness extended before it is deserved. In each case, the source is the same: God’s love overflowing through us.

In a culture that often confuses love with affirmation of every desire, the biblical vision is more insightful and enduring. Biblical love seeks the good of the other in light of God’s truth. It refuses to abandon righteousness, yet it refuses to abandon the person either. As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good.” That ultimate good is conformity to Christ.

Today, as I consider a day in the life of Jesus, I ask myself: where is God teaching me to love more deeply? Perhaps it is within my own family. Perhaps it is in the church. Perhaps it is toward someone who feels like an enemy. The promise of 1 Thessalonians 4:9 is that I am not left alone in the effort. The same God who commands love supplies it. The same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead dwells within me to empower obedience.

If you are struggling to love someone, do not withdraw in frustration. Bring that name before God. Admit your limitations. Ask Him to teach you. Ask Him to cause His love to overflow. He is the authority on love. And He delights to train His children in what reflects His own heart.

For further reflection on Christian love and spiritual growth, consider this article from The Gospel Coalition: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/what-is-biblical-love/

As we walk through this day, let us remember that love is not self-generated; it is God-given. And every difficult relationship becomes a classroom where God Himself is the teacher.

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Love Comes to the Loveless

https://youtu.be/d-uhzBKV_D4

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

Sermons on love are commonplace; this sermon being no exception. From weddings to funerals, from Easter to Pentecost, from Sunday to Sunday, one will encounter some religious and spiritual reflection on love. In fact, one could argue, most sermons probably end on a note that emphasizes love in one form or another. Why all this emphasis? Because we don’t get it.

I don’t blame the audience; I blame the people teaching on love. Too often love is spoken of as a feeling no different from the feeling of comfort, something that is nice and cozy. When speaking of God and God’s essence as love, it’s just mentioned that “God is love” without following up explaining what that means for fleshy meat creatures here on planet Earth. Or, someone will say, “God loves you,” without making it known through their deeds causing this love to remain abstract. People aren’t given love as the substance of action; rather, they are given love that is oil through fingers desperate to hold on to anything and grasping nothing.

As I look around, I feel that we love the idea of love, we are in love with the word, and we love the way it makes us feel when we say it or hear it said. However, in general, we encounter and are more oriented toward lovelessness than love. In a world built on the virtue of austerity, love—real love, the type of love that speaks and does—seems a costly extravagance of energy, energy we don’t have being caught in perpetual hyper-vigilance while swimming in a sea of chaos and confusion. Love is too risky; we are too vulnerable. It’s better to lose love than to lose in love.

But, yet,: Advent.

Advent slips in through the back door and dares to suggest Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. The fourth Sunday in Advent solidifies the interruption to our normal, day-to-day descent into chaos and tumult, where lovelessness reigns. And I think this is why the fourth Sunday of Advent carries love with it; the fourth Sunday in Advent is the manger of Love and thus we must come face to face and contend with it as it speaks to us and illuminates our lovelessness          .

Isaiah 7:10-16

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.

Isaiah tells us that God spoke to Ahaz encouraging him to ask for a sign. Ahaz refuses. In so many situations, Ahaz’s actions would be considered upright and good. However, in this instance, God, through Isaiah, is asking Ahaz to ask for a sign. Thus, not to ask for one, not to seek one is—in this moment—disobedience to God, it is a spurning of God’s grace, it is a rejection of God’s mercy, it is a turning one’s nose up to an invitation from God to see something different.[i] Then Isaiah said:

“Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.”

God, through Isaiah, addresses Ahaz’s callousness and not only Ahaz’s but the callousness of the people of Israel, too.[ii] Isaiah is a prophet speaking to both the authorities of Israel as well as the people with whom he identifies; his love for both is palpable because it is the love of God for both. Isaiah also feels God’s pain and sorrow in experiencing and feeling Israel’s turning away (both leader and person alike).[iii] So, Isaiah is not going to let Ahaz off the hook here, and he won’t let the people either. As the leadership leads, so the people follow suit. For Ahaz to reject God’s invitation to ask for a sign is an indication of a heart that is closed to what is possible, to that new thing; it is a hard heart; a loveless heart.[iv] And if the leader feels this way, then the people do, too. They have all left God and God feels this abandonment. So, consumed by the passion of God, Isaiah must expose this hardness of heart and he does so by expressing God’s weary towards the people to expose their own agony and lovelessness.[v]

While Isaiah exposes Ahaz’s hardness of heart thus also the hardness of heart of the people, Isaiah deeply identifies with the people eager to hear and feel God among them and moving toward them. So, Isaiah prophesies a sign that God is coming to them, a child will be born to an unmarried young woman (not a young virginal girl (non-menstruating)).[vi] Through Isaiah, God promises that this son will barely come of age when Israel’s oppression will be eliminated, the land of the two kings—whom Israel dreads—will be deserted. The promise here in Isaiah isn’t necessarily the boy born to the young woman; the promise is that before he comes of age, Israel will be liberated. The promise is of God’s liberation of which this child named Immanuel is a sign that the two kings and their nations will be removed from the backs and necks of the people of Israel. This one named Immanuel reminds Israel that God is with them and that when God is with them, they need not fear any person for God is with them and God is for them and if God is for them then who can be against them? This one named Immanuel will be the sign that God loves them and is coming to take their hearts of stone (loveless hearts) and give them hearts of flesh, hearts able to and filled with love.

Immanuel. God is with Israel. Immanuel. Love is with Israel and where there is love there is neither fear nor dread. Isaiah is summoning the people back into love with Abba God, their first love, the one who loved them from the first.

Conclusion

Love isn’t something we cause ourselves to have or something we drum up from the depths of our souls. It’s a gift. It’s life. It’s God. Love comes to us. Love comes low to us, to seek us as we are, wherever we are even when we are absolutely loveless. Love takes our hand to guide us into God. Love will even come down so low that it will be born into fleshy vulnerability, among dirty animals and unclean people, in straw and hay, wrapped in meager swaddling clothes, laying in the lap of an unwed, woman of color without a proper place to lay her head. He, Jesus the Christ, Immanuel—God with us—is our Love, is our Love for right now, in the darkness of late fall, in the tumult of our lives, in the fatigue of our bodies and minds, and dwells with us transforming our lovelessness—part by part—into love. Incarnated love knowing God is with us and God is faithful.

God comes, Beloved, bringing love to the loveless.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[i] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 65. “It is not merely a suggestion from the prophet, but an invitation from God himself to request a sign.”

[ii] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 16-17. “The prophet faces a coalition of callousness and established authority, and undertakes to stop a mighty stream with mere words. Had the purpose been to express great ideas, prophecy would have had to be acclaimed as a triumph. Yet the purpose of prophecy is to conquer callousness, to change the inner man as well as to revolutionize history.”

[iii] Heschel, Prophets, 81. “…the sympathy for God’s injured love overwhelms his whole being. What he feels about the size of God’s sorrow and the enormous scandal of man’s desertion of God is expressed in the two lines …which introduce God’s lamentation. ‘Hear, then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also?’ (7:13). In different words addressed to the king, the prophet conveys his impression of the mood of God: As happened in the time of Noah and as is happening again, God’s patience and longsuffering are exhausted. He is tired of man. He hates man’s homage, his festivals, his celebrations. Man has become a burden and a sorrow for God.”

[iv] Heschel, Prophets, 208. “The fault is in the hearts, not alone in the deeds.”

[v] Heschel, Prophets, 17. “It is embarrassing to be a prophet. There are so many pretenders, predicting peace and prosperity, offering cheerful words, adding strength to self-reliance, while the prophet predicts disaster, pestilence, agony, and destruction.”

[vi] Childs, Isaiah, 66. Unmarried maiden of full sexual age (‘almāh) and not a young virginal girl

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