More recently, I wrote a very personal series on love and obedience.  For a large part of the series, I was venting my disgust about some of the common misunderstandings about love and obedience held by people I know.  Here’s an excerpt: 

While obedience is the primary way we express our love to God, it is not the same as love.  Love is essentially a motive; it is a verb.  If I were married, I am to love my wife as Christ loved the Church (Ephesians 5:25).  For every Christian, Christ Himself commands that we are to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44).  In each instance, love is used as a verb; not a feeling.  While Disney, Miramax, Chinese soap shows/movies and popular radio will tell us that love is a noun, something that we fall into… Scripture again paints us a completely different picture: love is something we do.

As a motive, love is that which prompts and guides other verbs and actions.  For example, I love my enemies first by forgiving them of their harmful actions toward me, and then by seeking their welfare in appropriate ways.  The verbs here are forgive and seek.  Love always needs other verbs to give it hands and feet, for by itself it can do nothing.  This is clearly seen in 1 Corinthian 13 where the noun love is used by Paul as the subject of a whole list of action statements.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

While this passage is too often misused for romantic relationships, the context in this passage is to the Christians in Corinth; the message about how to love one another is about people within the Body of Christ, that is followers of Jesus.  In relating to brothers and sisters in Christ, we are to be patient, and kind.  We are not to envy, and not to boast, and so on.  It is genuine love that drives us bear all things, to believe, to hope, to endure.

To do all these things is to be obedient to Him; and being obedient means we love Him.

Moreover, it is love that gives validity to any of our actions and makes them acceptable to God.  We could choose to seek the welfare of our enemies so they’ll be nice to us and not harm us–but such is manipulation, not love.  Hence, love for God is the only acceptable motive for obedience to Him.  This love may express itself in a reverence for Him and a desire to please Him, but those expressions must spring from love.  Without the motive of love, our apparent obedience may be essentially self-serving.

After writting this series, I realized that I myself had a long way to go in loving and obeying God.  In failing to love others, I failed in obeying God; in failing to love God, I failed in serving others obediently.

Anyways, check out the rest of the series here:

Love and Obedience: part 1, part 2, and part 3.