WHAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE? PART 2
/Are you a living sacrifice? Are you renewing your mind? And are these two concepts related? In Romans 12:1, Paul urges us to do one thing (offer ourselves) and to do it in view of one other thing. “Urge” is a word that means “to beseech” and has the connotation of inviting to one’s side. Paul is beseeching us to walk beside him in this matter. And he wants us to do this “in view of God’s mercy”. Has he just shown us something of God’s mercy? Well, yes! In chapter 11:32 we read, “For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that He may have mercy on them all.” But it can be argued that chapters 9, 10 and 11 are an inset and so chapter 12 can follow chapter 8. OK …., “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God’s mercy is found at the end of chapter 8!!
And perhaps Paul here is talking about the entire letter; chapters 1 – 11. In any event, one thing we know for sure; God is merciful!! Would you agree? God is merciful. Paul then urges us to do something; “present your bodies as living sacrifices”. Earlier in this letter he says that we have been baptized into the death of Messiah. Shortly thereafter he tells us to reckon ourselves as dead (Rom. 6:4 & 11). And what was a sacrifice to be? Over and over in the Torah we see that it was to be “without blemish”. Paul tells us our living sacrifices are to be “holy and well pleasing to God”. And then we read that this is our “rational act of worship”. Yes, the word for “rational” is the Greek word “logicos” and we get the English word logical, thus rational, from that.
I’d like to have my worship of God to be logical and rational wouldn’t you? And when we consider God and His ways, shouldn’t we make sure we are not conforming to the pattern of this age but that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds?
OK, so we have made our way full circle to the start of Part 1 of this discussion, but what does all this have to do with the title, “What is the Opposite of Love”? I’m glad you asked!
Let us first take a look at love. It has been said that the most powerful force in the universe is love. I suppose that one might debate this point. But there are two scriptures in 1 John 4:8 &16 that state, “God is love”. And in my mind this would shift the balance of any debate concerning the power of love.
First a few facts about the word love: I believe we are all familiar with the Greek word “agape”, sometimes labeled as the highest form of love. The word “agape” is a noun and the related word, “agapeo” is the verb form. Together these two words are used in the New Testament some 258 times. In the five chapters of 1 John they are found 46 times and if we add to that John’s use of the words in his gospel we can add 47, plus the other two letters of John and the book of Revelation adds another 12 uses. So, of the 258 uses of these words, 105 (or about 40%) are found in John’s writings. May we conclude he placed much emphasis upon these words and leaned heavily upon them to get his message across?
We have already looked at Romans 13:8-10 which ends up letting us know that “Love is the fulfillment of the law.” Now that’s some power!
1 John 4:7-21; this whole passage needs to enter into our discussion here. I urge you to read it in its entirety. I will refer to parts of it. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love comes from God.” Might we see the renewing of our minds beginning to take place with the implementation of this directive?
“Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” Do we understand that this statement is a word of fact? This isn’t a “maybe” or a “kind of” statement. John’s is a factual statement and implies the question, “Do you know God?”
John goes on to tell us that God’s love is manifest through His Son and that His love came a long time before our love. And so, “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” Are we beginning to start to see an answer to our title question? Let’s go a little further here: “In this way, love is made perfect among us (why?), so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement, because in this world we are like Him.”
Let’s go back in 1 John to see the antithesis of this love for God. In chapter 2:15 we read, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Please note that the word for “love” here is “agape” – so we see that John has not wandered from his use of this particular word. Going on in verse 16 we read, “for everything in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the vanity (or pride) of life – comes not from the Father but from the world.”
Some time ago, I asked a gathering of God’s children, what is the opposite of love? I basically received four answers: 1)hate – this word would probably appear in a dictionary as an antonym or in other words “an opposite” for obvious reasons; 2)apathy – this is an interesting thought because as someone said, both love and hate are emotions and show forth that an individual is at least alive. Apathy on the other hand shows a lack of human interest and fits in with Jesus statement in Rev. 3:16, “Because you are neither hot nor cold, but are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth.” A person who is hateful may be persuaded to love. But a person who is apathetic has no hope; 3) pride or egotism – perhaps this would also be an obvious answer because of our venture into 1 John 2:15-16, especially the phrase, “the pride of life”; 4) fear – on this answer let me quote from 1 John 1:18, “Perfect love casts out fear”. These four answers are very good and might cause us to end our discussion here. But I find that there is, possibly, a fifth antonym of the word love and it lies in the idea of “idolatry”.
Let us look at this idea further next time.