Skip to main content

The Two Systems: A Confused Definition of Love

Image
By

A couple years ago I wrote an article called the Jehovah’s Witness training videos. The article was meant to be humorous in a sense, because there are likely not any actual training videos, but it seems that they have all watched them. We can suspect this because they all often have the same points of conversation. When you talk about the Trinity, they will use the Bible like a machine gun and shoot you with verses. The verses are always the same: Colossians 1:15, Mark 10:18… So, there is an implication that they all have the same information. There is one source from where they gather their patterns and behaviors.

Similarly, I think we can see the power behind the system of the world as well. We can see what this power is like by the tracks he leaves behind. The contrast of the two systems is really seen in Revelation 14:8. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.” John is using the word Babylon here for the system of the world. In other words, worldliness. This system of the world is what encourages sexual immorality. The system of the world encourages drinking in the wine of passion. Here, in Revelation 14, John is seeing the moment at which the system of the world is being destroyed. Those who worshiped the beast in Revelation chapter 13 and those who received the Mark of the Beast, this is their last stop on the train. This is why the third angel explains that if anyone worships the Beast and receives the mark will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, where the smoke of their torment rises forever. 

The system of heaven is found in verse 12: “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.” John is telling us what the word saints means, and he is telling us what we should be doing. Namely, that we should be keeping the commandments and our faith in Jesus. There is an extreme contrast between Babylon and the saints. I know this might seem obvious, but it seems that Christians seem to frequently have a problem realizing such a contrast. So, what are some ways we can identify the systems of the world? 

 


I think that we have a saying that points to much of it… money, sex, and power. Jesus says in Matthew 6:24, that “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” There is a clear distinction between the two systems here. Jesus is saying that you can either serve God or money. Not both. One of them will be your master. It is an interesting contrast because often people place money at the place where only God should be. In other words, in a person’s life, money is often shrouded in idolatry. When this is the case, it is the most extreme distance from the system of heaven. 

In Hebrews 13:4, the author says, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” This is likely the largest area where people misidentify their lives. Sex sells. People know this fact. Not only in producing sexually alluring marketing, but also in controversy. In other words, when people find a controversy, it is like free advertising. This seems to be one of the corrupt ways of the world as well. That they use controversy to market products or beliefs. For instance, with the issue of transgenderism, there are two sides to it. People who believe that it is wrong, and people who believe that gender is a choice. What is interesting is that there is no one in the middle ground, so to speak. It is a blood bath on both sides. This is why it is so controversial, and controversy brings in numbers. This is part of the system of the world. It is a discussion of a combination of sex and power. We know that according to Hebrews 13:4 that any sexual relationship outside of one male and one female under God is dishonoring the marriage bed. This includes (but is not limited to) homosexuals, transsexuals, and even heterosexuals who are not in a covenantal marriage—one man and one woman under God. 

Power. Jesus says a big NO to the disciples who ask for power to sit at his right hand. Matthew 20:20-23 says, “Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him with her sons, and kneeling before him she asked him for something. And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?” They said to him, “We are able.” He said to them, “You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” Again, The reason Jesus is so clear on this is because it is clear to Him what the difference is between the system of heaven and the system of the world. The mother of the sons of Zebedee and the sons themselves, were likely influenced by the Romans. They were surrounded by the Romans and became like them. 


Other Signs of the Two Systems


Vengeance vs patience. 1 Thessalonians 5:14-15. “And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.” The system of heaven tells us to be patient while the system of the world says the opposite and to seek vengeance. 

Consider repentance for a moment… Repentance is turning 180 degrees from sin and moving toward Jesus. It is moving in the exact opposite direction from the system of the world. There are only two directions. A person is either moving toward God or moving away from Him. James 4:7-8 says, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” I think the opposite is also true in verse 8, which is if you draw away from God, He will draw away from you. Consider Romans 1:25-28. The phrase “God gave them over” is found three times in a very short passage. Drawing away from God is exactly what this passage is talking about. There are only two directions. Toward or away from, and the system of heaven or the system of the world. 

 

In Galatians 5:19-26 Paul spells out the acts of the sinful nature, as well as the acts of the spiritual nature. The two systems are in clear view.

“Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”


"Do not conform to the patterns of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to attest and approve what God's will is--His good, pleasing, and perfect will. ~Romans 12:2


Defining Love

What does all of this discussion lead to? I think a discussion on love. A major problem in today’s world is that many people do not know what love means. I think the reason we do not know what love means is because both opposing systems use this word, and the definition of such has become lost on many people. Many do not know what love is, yet they push the word, love on everything. The word is thrown around so much that people have come to forget what it means. We hear things like, “love is love” and “I love hamburgers” and so on. People who say these things have lost the sense of what love means.

 

What is love? 1 Corinthians 13 tells us…

 

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

 

I think there is one verse that stands out against the definition that the world uses for love. This verse is that “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” Love is not the same thing as tolerance or acceptance. Think for a moment that a sick person goes to a medical doctor for healing an ailment. Probably most people today when they feel sick, they will “research” online their symptoms, and try to self-diagnose and see if they need to actually go see a medical professional. When the sick person after causing himself anxiety over his ailment, finally decides that it is time to go see the doctor, and when he gets there he tells the doctor what he thinks it is and that he is certain that this one thing is the issue, and all of his experiences and presuppositions tell him that this is what is wrong with him, and the doctor just needs to listen and write the prescription required. But the problem is, the doctor knows many things that the patient does not know. For instance, he can observe the mechanical issues with the body that is before him and see that the self-diagnosis of the patient is incorrect. Now, would it be more loving for the medical doctor to write the prescription that the patient wants, or what the doctor knows that the patient needs? Obviously, the latter. But why? Wouldn’t the doctor be unloving if he didn’t give the patient what he wanted? The thing about this is that love requires truth. It is much the opposite the way we think about love. If I offer love alone without truth, and say, like the doctor, I give the person what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear, then I would argue that this is not love. Love demands truth. Truth is required in the definition of love. It would be less loving for the doctor to give what the patient wants, because he knows what is wrong, and to simply appease the patient by giving the prescription from the patients self-diagnosis would be a lie. 

Similarly, when we have discussions with our LGBTQ friends, or anyone for that matter, we must speak the truth to them. When we cave and condone sinful actions, we are essentially lying to them. This is not love. For a person to let someone live out their life believing something false, would be unloving. I would argue that this is the opposite of love. But this is what the world does today. “You be you!” means more like, “Do what you feel is good.” The Bible says that the heart is deceitful above all things,[1] so how can we use feeling to determine what is true? The answer is that we cannot. This is why the truth hurts sometimes. Pain in true love exists. This is why it hurts when someone who we truly love and who truly loves us does something to damage the relationship. When the Doctor tells you that your self-diagnosis is wrong because it is wrong, this is love. Why? Because it is true. Sometimes, the truth hurts. But when we deliver the painful truth in love,[2] this is real love. People do not like to be told that they are wrong. But often people are wrong, and this can be painful for some. For instance, the gospel is painful for some, because what it tells us is that we are sinners. By nature, then, the gospel is offensive. But it needs to be offensive. The message from God to His people is the epitome of love, and it contains the truth. The truth is that all fall short of God’s glory.[3] The truth is that the love of money is the root of all evil.[4] The truth is that sex is a gift from God for one man and one woman in covenant with Him to fulfill our sexual appetite. The truth is that fornication is sin. The truth is that if you look at a woman with lust in your heart that you have already committed adultery with her.[5] I think that Jesus is saying here, “See how desperately you need me.” The truth is, sometimes the truth hurts, but that shouldn’t stop us from communicating it, even to our loved ones. That said, as Christians, we must also offer forgiveness. We have all sinned against a righteous God, and He offers through His love for us, the gift of Christ. Romans 5:8 says that "God demonstrates His own love for us in this: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." He took our place of punishment for our sins on the cross, and we are no longer enemies of God because of His work and because of Him. the Bible says in John 3:16, the motivation for the work of Christ on the cross: "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but will have everlasting life."   

 

 

“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” 1 Corinthians 13:13

 

Love is the greatest of all things, but what is love? Love is true, and truth is loving. Tell your friends, relatives, and neighbors about the true love of Christ for them, through which we find true hope, and real faith. 

 

 

 Written by Nace Howell through the grace of our Lord Jesus


 © Nace Howell, 2023 


[1] See Jeremiah 17:9.

[2] See Ephesians 4:15.

[3] See Romans 3:23.

[4] See 1 Timothy 6:10.

[5] See Matthew 5:28.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Show a Mormon the Difference Between the Mormon Jesus and the Biblical Jesus

By
I find that Mormons frequently claim that they are Christians, and that they want to be referred to as Christians, and that they have even recently sought to distance themselves from the word “Mormon.” The problem is, they worship another Jesus, and here is how to show them the difference between the Mormon Jesus and the Biblical Jesus. Before we get to that, some clarifications are necessary. Specifically, that they cannot even distance themselves from being called "Mormons."   The Mormon President Russell Nelson said,    “What’s in a name or, in this case, a nickname? When it comes to nicknames of the Church, such as the “LDS Church,” the “Mormon Church,” or the “Church of the Latter-day Saints,” the most important thing in those names is the absence of the Savior’s name. To remove the Lord’s name from the Lord’s Church is a major victory for Satan. When we discard the Savior’s name, we are subtly disregarding all that Jesus Christ did for us—even His Atonement.” [1] ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Objectivity is the Language of Heaven

By
NDErs (i. e. people who have claimed to have had a   Near Death Experience ) often report that when they go to Heaven, they frequently see and recognize people such as friends and family members. It is often also reported that when they were communicating with friends and relatives, they realized that they weren’t speaking English, but that they were telepathically speaking to one another.   It seems it would be impossible to have communication with others without learning every language that has ever existed under the sun, but since heaven is a perfect place, [1]  then communication should be perfect as well. In other words, it seems unlikely that there are barriers to communication. So, I should be able to communicate with the Apostles, upon my arrival for instance, but how? I personally only really know how to speak English fluently. My Spanish, Japanese, German, Russian, Chinese, and Latin is like that of a child, and my Greek is only in reading and writing.  If ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Dividing Line of Doctrine

By
How and Where to Make Divisions... Sometimes, I get asked “Why do you get so up at arms about other religions?” or, “Why do you pick on other religions so much?” I think the following will help you see where I’m coming from, before I spill the beans on such.   We have difficulty sometimes in discovering where to make divisions when considering where to spend our money, and who to support, where to make purchases, and where not to do such. We also often have difficulty on how to know if a church or a congregation is a place where someone can actually become saved. Like, how can we know that a Mormon is likely not saved but we can know that a regular church attender at a gospel sound church is likely saved? What is it that would make my church attendance at a specific body no longer appropriate? Both answers to these questions deal with doctrine. If a company is pushing false doctrine using their influence and power to push a heretical doctrine or teaching, this is often when the red...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Highest Virtue

By
A virtue is a trait of excellence. What is the highest virtue? It seems that based on the nature of truth, that truth itself is perhaps the highest virtue. For instance, I could say that love is the highest virtue, but then I could ask the question of whether that is true or not. If it is or isn’t true, this places truth virtuously higher than love, at least in some sense. The fact that I can question love through the lens of truth seems to place truth above love in height of virtue. On the other hand, if I said that truth is the highest virtue, then it seems that it would be loving to tell others the truth! Perhaps truth and love go hand in hand, but this also concerns the nature of what truth is.  Truth is a requirement for love, which I argue here , but is love a requirement for truth? Love must contain truth in order to be  true  love. But truth does not have to contain love in order to be true truth. Take for instance, mathematics, or numbers in general… Sometimes, t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Self-tests of Some of the World's Religions

By
It is fairly common for a religion of the world to give itself a sort of test for truth, since this is one question that is asked of any religion: “Why should I believe what you are telling me is true?” After all, the answer to such a question will ultimately result in followers of specific beliefs and doctrines, let alone religions, or will result in a lack of followers.  If a religion can answer this question posed by seekers and thinkers, and therefore train its adherents to be able to answer why a religion is true, this will inevitably help people believe in such, even if the claims are false. If there is no answer, this is where a religion will perhaps find more trouble for itself.  Many religions make an appeal to a higher authority, namely,  God , for the veracity of their existence and as a result, no one can question the truth from such an authority. This is correct in a sense, that  if in fact God is making such a claim, then what is said or stated is true ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Who Made God? Identifying Categorical Errors

By
A category is simply a distinct class to which something belongs… A set of objects that can be treated as equal in some way. A Macintosh apple belongs to the category, apple, and not what we categorize as an orange. Similarly, colors are in a different category than taste.   When we say, “apples and oranges” what we mean is that there has been a confusion of categories. Sure, they are both fruit, but when you examine both, there is an obvious difference. An apple is not an orange, and an orange is not an apple. Macintosh, Granny Smith, and red delicious are all apples. Navel, blood, and Valencia are all oranges. To mix the two, for instance, to call a navel orange an apple, would be a categorical error, sometimes referred to as a category mistake.      How Identifying Categorical Errors can Help with Apologetics It seems that simply learning about or being reminded of categorical errors can help us be more aware of them. We have all heard or thought of ourselves, the...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Evidence and Power of Testimony

By
What to say to People who Demand more Evidence for God. Why is there something rather than nothing? Glacier National Park. © Nace Howell, 2018. The question is, how much evidence do you require? Would Jesus have to come back and slap you in the face with evidence that He is God? It seems to me that there is a line we must draw. We do this in all other areas of our lives, so why would we treat theism any different? When a court convicts, they do so “beyond a reasonable doubt.” I would like to take a few moments to explore this a bit. But before we get to that, I want to pose a question, which is… why are you the standard? What makes you think He has to prove His existence to everyone individually? He already created the universe from nothing. In the beginning, there was a big bang. Seriously… do you believe your mom when she tells you a story about her day? Did you believe the reports of 9/11 when they were happening? Do you accept the testimony of anything you hear on social ...
33 comments
Read more

Two Problems Jesus has with the Mormon Doctrine of Eternal Families

By
Mormonism teaches that those who are married in a temple can be married for eternity. In Doctrine and Covenants 132:15–20, we find the following:   15 Therefore, if a man marry him a wife in the world, and he marry her not by me nor by my word , and he covenant with her so long as he is in the world and she with him, their covenant and marriage are not of force when they are dead , and when they are out of the world; therefore, they are not bound by any law when they are out of the world. 16 Therefore, when they are out of the world they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but are appointed angels in heaven, which angels are ministering servants, to minister for those who are worthy of a far more, and an exceeding, and an eternal weight of glory. 17 For these angels did not abide my law; therefore, they cannot be enlarged, but remain separately and singly, without exaltation, in their saved condition, to all eternity; and from henceforth are not gods, but are angels of God for...
Post a Comment
Read more

Baptism is Not Necessary for Salvation According to the Early Church

By
Let’s dive right in. The Bible says in Acts 2:37-41,    Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.   The phrase in Acts 2:38 that reads, “for the forgiveness of your sins” modifies the word repentance, not the word baptism.  See more about this Here .   What is interesting is that those who translate the above verse as meaning that baptism is a requ...
Post a Comment
Read more