Educated Love
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Straight to the Cross
COLUMN: Fidelity
Educated Love
by Mike Benson
From our twenty-first century perspective,
Christian love is a sensate quality.
It is something experiential; it is something that
we feel internally. Love is a warm, affectionate,
reciprocal bond that is shared by brethren.
When the apostle Paul petitioned God on behalf of
the Philippian saints, he said, "And this I pray,
that your love may abound still more and more in
knowledge and discernment" (Phil. 1:9). Did you
catch that? "... [T]hat your love [Greek, agape]
may abound ... in knowledge and discernment."
Arthur Pink, in his work, Gleanings from Paul,
made the following observation about this passage:
"The apostle longed that their love might be so
informed and their understanding so guided by
spiritual judgment and sense that on all occasions
they would be able to distinguish between truth
and error in doctrine" (209).
His point merits our attention. The modern concept
of love, in at least some segments of the church
today, is more of an emotional sentimentality (cf.
Rom. 10:2), as opposed to the informed, judicial
agape which Paul desired for his brethren in
Philippi./1 For many, love is an unconditional,
familial acceptance that overlooks, and even
ignores, objective truth. In fact, it is
frequently viewed as an acceptable substitute for
soundness of doctrine (cf. 1 Tim. 1:10; 2 Tim.
1:13; 4:3; Titus 1:9, 13; 2:1). Brethren are
afraid to offend anyone -— under any circumstance
-- and so their relationship to a brother, family
member or friend supercedes their allegiance to
divine will (cf. Luke 14:26).
While there is certainly nothing wrong with
enjoying warm feelings toward another child of God
(cf. Phil. 1:3-8; 13-14), the real basis of any
tie must be something much more tangible than the
fleeting whims of emotion. Our love must not be a
blind, unguided affection for any personality (cf.
1 Cor. 1:12), but one that is spiritually
discriminating -— i.e., an "educated" devotion
(cf. Heb. 5:14).
Give it some thought.
__________
/1 It was a "knowing" (Greek, epignosis) love that
enabled them to become better acquainted with the
truth of Scripture (The New Strong's Expanded
Dictionary of Bible Words, 1098), and it was a
"judicial" (Greek, aesthesis) love that helped
them to make proper moral decisions "in the vast
array of differing and difficult choices"
(Hawthorne, as quoted by Rogers, The New
Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New
Testament, 448).
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