“All You Need is Love”

I Samuel 15-17

Saul is rejected; David is anointed and two of the great truths in scripture explain it.  The first truth is found in chapter 15:22, “Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord?  Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.”  What is the preeminent command of the Lord?  Love God with all we are and love our neighbors as ourselves, Matthew 22: 36-40. Our life of obedience which trumps all our religious exercises is to live a life of love. 

The second truth is found in chapter 16:7, “…for God sees not as a man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

And there’s the reality.  To love out of religious duty or any other duty, is just so much “burnt offerings and sacrifice.”  Love must be who we are not what we do.  Man is incapable of producing that divine love in his heart.  God, through His Son Jesus the Christ, is the only Author of that love. 

Here is perhaps the greatest “blog” ever penned.

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophesy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.  When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then fact to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.  But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I Corinthians 13