Society has no doubt perverted the meaning and description of what the Bible calls love, while at the same time many believers also fail to understand the entire matter from a Biblical perspective.
Before we can love another believer properly and according to the Scriptures we must first learn to properly love the Lord. When asked, Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul, all thy mind, and all thy strength. To simplify that we could say we are to love Him and His Word and our obedience to His Word above anything or anyone.
Without being asked Jesus added to His answer and said that the second greatest commandment is to love thy neighbor as thyself. For the most part believers do not have a problem with that when it comes to being kind, friendly, etc.
What some fail to realize is that sometimes love means separating from those who have a rebellious, unrepentant, divisive attitude. By unrepentant I mean they know they are wrong but are unwilling to do anything about it, and many times that is accompanied by an attitude and an attempt to pull others alongside of them to back them up.
The Bible says "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth". Clearly love at times requires such actions. The Bible speaks of marking those that cause division and avoiding them, it talks of rejecting an heretic(something or someone that causes division), it talks about severing fellowship with a believer who has an unrepentant attitude, not even to eat with them.
Of course, these actions are NEVER to be done to hurt someone, but rather the Scriptures are clear that when we have to take such action it is for their learning and for a time for them to come to understand that their actions are wrong.
Taking such a step like this should never be easy but rather painful, it should cause our heart to ache for such a person from whom we may have to disconnect with, yet if we love them we must understand what the Scripture tells us to do and then do it. By taking such actions we #1 Prove that we love the Lord our God above anyone and anything because we are obeying His Word and #2 that we love the person from whom we are separating from.
Pastor Kelley 3/6/2018
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