TCN's Biblical Journey April 18th

Today's reading is 2 Chronicles 19-23

Which love?

In chapter 19 we see the prophet chiding Jehoshaphat for helping the northern Tribes of Israel who were in rebellion against God. The question asked is should you love those that hate the Lord? The problem comes when we see in the New Testament a command to love our enemies. SO, is God changing his mind or is something else going on?

God isn't changing his mind. Love in Hebrew is a broad term like it is in English. I love neighbor and I love my wife, but I don’t treat them the same. I could give other examples, but we know that love carries different meanings depending on the content.

To make this clearer I want to point out that this exact spelling of the word love is used one other place in the Bible. In Proverbs 20:13 it says, “Do not love sleep or you will grow poor; stay awake and you will have food to spare.” We should all realize that God designed us to sleep. Sleep is a vital part of our lives yet here Solomon says we shouldn’t love it. The meaning is clear, sleep shouldn’t have a special place of honor nor should it be looked at as something more important than everything else. Do we have, if I can use the term, a relationship with sleep? Yes, but it can’t be the focus of our lives.

Here God isn’t saying that we shouldn’t love people in the way God speaks of in the New Testament. What we see is Jehoshaphat didn’t reach out in love in order to bring the knowledge of God to Ahab but in order to build a military alliance. The problem is that Jehoshaphat isn't in the proper relationship with Ahab and is trusting this alliance rather than trusting God. The “love” that Jehoshaphat had was one of the love of an ally not the love one has for a lost soul. This is the "love" God is against, not the love for lost people. 

Photo by Adrián Tormo on Unsplash