God Is Love – A Basic Theology of Love for New and “Old” Followers of Jesus
God is love – and this basic theology of love shows how He freely calls us to choose to follow Him, love Him back, and show that love in action.
(Acts 17:11: Please learn to do your own Bible studies like this one – here.)
A basic theology for new and “old” followers of The Way – Jesus Christ.
God Is Love
He therefore lovingly, freely calls us to voluntarily choose to follow Him – to do love – with our whole heart, life, mind, and strength.
God is love. God is forgiveness, and grace. God has given us free will. To freely choose to love and to freely choose to believe and receive the goodness, forgiveness, and love of God is our decision. God will not force us to do anything, for violence, force, and manipulation are against true love.
Therefore, God loves us fully and freely, and asks us to choose if we will love Him back. Part of love is also healthy boundaries, and part of love is also to do what is loving. Just agreeing mentally to love is not real love. True love takes action – and shows love.
Jesus did that for us on the cross. Truth is also part of love. Lies are not loving. Injustice is not loving. No healthy boundaries is not loving. So, God is also loving truth.
Being a believer, a follower, an apprentice of Jesus is then about loving, love is truth, and love and truth are proven in action. The greatest action of love and truth are seen in Jesus, who is God.
He took our sins on Him on the cross, so we have no sin on us (justification by faith) and when we freely choose to receive His love and forgiveness, there is nothing that separates us from the love of God, the Father. He now calls us to follow Him.
All He was, did, and said was full of love, truth, forgiveness, life, light, goodness, and justice.
He calls us to – out of knowing His stable eternal love for us – out of seeing that what He is, does, and says is love and truth – He calls us to choose to hear His words, see His life as it is written in the New Testament, and choose to obey Him, Who is love personified.
We believe Jesus is alive today, is the same as He was back in Bible days, and is our Master and we are His apprentices, His followers, His disciples – exactly as He called disciples to follow Him back in the time He lived on earth.
Therefore, Jesus often talked about the importance of not just hearing what He said, but doing what He did – obeying Him – for our own good, for the good of others, and for the good of our friendship with Him.
The Bible – a Love Letter From the Heart of God
God has given us a love-letter, the Bible. It’s a gift from God which is there to serve as a practical manual for life in His love. It will help us understand our identity, the world, ourselves, the enemy, our tasks, and of course, God Himself – and all His wonderful love, truths, wisdom, light, life, creativity, thoughts etc.
Prayer – the Great Call to Intimate Friendship With Father God
Spending quality time with the Father in the “Secret Place” is the non-negotiable forever foundation to a healthy life as a follower of, a learner from our best Friend and Master, Jesus Christ. It is the reason for our existence – the very meaning of life. God created us for us to freely choose to be best friends with Him – for we see His love and choose to live in it.
What Does Jesus Command Us to Lovingly Do – Based on Already Being Fully Loved?
- Fellowship with Him – and with other believers. So we meet with God and pray – and we meet with the family of believers – and we build learning friendships with other believers and we receive leadership and give leadership to others – by receiving what others have from God and give what we have to others.
- Read and do – for what He was, did, and said – is love, truth, and truly sets us free to be all He says we can be.
- To give this life, love, freedom, and truth to others.
- To serve, to lead, to take initiative, to take responsibility for ourselves – that we live for Him, because He both lived, and died for us – to give us life.
- Freely we have received – freely we give.
Two Sentences of Jesus to Learn for a Lifetime
It’s a lifelong learning of following these 2 sentences by Jesus in the Bible:
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20
“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:28-31
And it includes all the exciting details of Mark 3:13-15, Matthew 10 and Luke 9 to 10:23 – which describe what Jesus in love commanded His personally trained followers, those who chose to be His disciples and who chose to follow, do, and obey His love and words, to do (see how to go out and do it).
To read positive life changing and selfish life breaking teaching – see All Bible Studies of Peter Skov of Action Christianity. Let God lead you to what to engage with first.
And here is my YouTube course on the very minimum foundations of normal discipleship.
