One statement that irks me says something like this, “Love is a decision – decide to love today.”<\/p>\n
Really? And we know this for sure<\/em>?<\/p>\n What drives me nuts about statements such as this is they are commands. If love is simply a decision, then I can love anybody at any time. Right? Right<\/em>?<\/p>\n But can I truly love on demand? You are certainly a better person than I if you can love on demand. I can’t do it.<\/p>\n And this is where the Gospel steps in. John 4:19 tells us “We love because he [God] first loved us.” And John couples this great truth with “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”<\/p>\n And this is good news. I can only love when I see that I am as unloving as they come, yet God in Christ first loved me! And this is my motivation to love others. When I see that God has loved me and demonstrated this great love for me in Jesus on the cross, I can love others because the Spirit of love indwells me and loving others becomes a fruit of the Spirits Gospel-applying work in my life. (See Galatians 5).<\/p>\n And then I can love God and love others upon which all the commands hang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One statement that irks me says something like this, “Love is a decision – decide to love today.” Really? And we know this for sure? What drives me nuts about statements such as this is they are commands. If love is simply a decision, then I can love anybody at any time. Right? Right? But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[58,68],"tags":[212,303,304],"class_list":["post-899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gospel","category-love-of-god","tag-fulfilling-the-law","tag-loving-god","tag-loving-others"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3hM8I-899","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}