Giving love (doing good for others) is the highest command and the key motive behind the efficacy of the Spiritual Gifts. This philosophy of giving away love is called the pursuit of love. The lifelong pursuit of love is the sum of all Scriptures.

While the primary definition of love is "being obedient to God and doing good for all people" (2 John 1:6, 1 Thessalonians 5:15, Revelation 2:4-5) there is also an element of emotion buried inside love. That element of emotion is sometimes called "affection" or "fondness."

Love, of course, is not synonymous with affection, for love is much bigger than that one emotion. Love is first and foremost a choice, a choice to do good for others, even our enemies, after which affection may or may not follow. Still, affection is often one component part of the larger whole called love.

In Deuteronomy 10:15 we find that love and even the element of love called affection are both choices, acts of God's will.

As a practical implication of this doctrine--the doctrine that love and affection are choices--the common complaint that "the love has gone out of our marriage" is suspect and probably inaccurate. A person decides who to love and of whom to be fond. Some people are truly easier to love than others, however, once a marriage covenant is made (or rather, once a person has purposely chosen to enter into a marriage contract) they have declared their intent and commitment to be loving toward their selected spouse for a lifetime. "Falling out of love" with one's spouse is a veiled way of saying "I have decided to stop being loving to my spouse and have also decided to walk away from the agreements I made on the day when we married."

Often, people confuse lust with love or affection. This is a grave error. Lust is a desire, a desire that entices and can never be sated. If the person who lusts entertains and contemplates that desire, allowing it to carry him along, he is tempted by that lust. Lust, when one consciously decides to act on that desire, results in a sin (James 1:13-15). This is not so with love. Love always deliberately considers what actions are best for God's glory and are best for one's neighbors. Lust cannot do this, it is merely a desire for getting pleasure from that which one can not or should not have. Lust must be forcibly put out of mind while love must be intelligently nurtured in the mind.

Love, and the actions of love, do not simply happen. Love must be made to happen. Love is a choice. Affection and fondness are emotions that can be chosen, and often follow along after one has acted in love toward another.

Similarly, loving one's enemy is an act of one's will. A conscious choice. Perhaps the sub-component of "affection" is not active in such love, but the aspects of love that extend goodwill, kindness, and good deeds to one's enemies are more to be desired than affection and must be put into action.

To love is to "do good" for the one loved. Even the enemies of God, those whom He hates and who hate Him, to those very same enemies He extends such acts of loving kindness as providing the same sunshine, refreshing rain, food, and air as He provides to those whom He loves. In that sense, it is fair to say that God loves His enemies (for He does good to His enemies) while at the same time He also hates them, their lack of faith, and their evil deeds.

Indeed, if God chooses to love, He can also choose to hate.

Yet, even though He hates the souls of the wicked, His enemies, He extends to them love in the form of life and the good treasures of this Earth. His mercy and love ranges so far as to patiently endure the acts and the mocking of the wicked so as to ensure that all His elect--even those of His elect who are still sinners and are still at enmity with God--have time to answer His call and repent.

If God is willing to shed mercy on those who hate Him, and if God loved the unlovely and the sinner, and if God performs acts of loving kindness even to those whose souls He hates, ought not we, as Christians, love in like manner? [Oh, how I do wish that I were able to live as one who is known as someone who genuinely loves, yet, I know just how desperately far I am from that goal. Praise God He is patient and merciful toward me, a sinner saved only by His grace.]

Finally, it must be noted that "everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." The unsaved are full of various affections, but affection is not love and so should not be confused with, or mistaken for, love. Love is the act of doing good to others, even to one's enemies. Love is the motive to build up and edify others. Love is obedience to Christ. Love is the sum of all Scriptures and all prophecies. Brothers and sisters, we ought to love one another in deed and action.

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Love is the biblical philosophy which commands men to engage themselves in the lifelong pursuit of intentionally doing good to one another and to glorifying God. Love is the sum of all Scriptures.

Affection, being both a choice and an emotion, is but one small subcomponent of love. Love's larger whole is comprised of deeds focused on doing good to others for their sake.

Yet, love also envelopes an entire range of other emotions. Just like good deeds, emotions involve the use of our hearts, minds, and physical strength, while assuming that our emotions are ruled by, and dedicated to, loving others.

One way to think of emotions is in the role of motivators. Emotions motivate us to action. The Holy Spirit uses our human emotions to give us the energy to convert biblical principles into physical action.

For example, we see someone crying in sorrow over a loss. We apply our minds to Scripture and realize we are to strengthen the knees of the weak and steady the hands of the feeble (Job 4:4, Hebrews 12:12), encourage the depressed (2 Corinthians 7:6), and sympathize with the sorrowful (Hebrews 10:34, 1 Peter 3:8). Therefore, the Spirit enables us to spend our emotions on the sorrowful by weeping with them when they weep (Romans 12:15).

Similarly, anger over a sin imposed against a brother Christian or against God can give us the physical energy-rush to act while at the same time the anger temporarily dulls us to the potential dangers and the public outcry that might come with defending one's brother or publicly standing up for God. Jesus, in anger, through the vendors out of the temple by making a whip and driving them away.

All emotions are useful as motivators to take physical action. Each emotion enables different mental and physical abilities.

But even anger must be properly channeled and controlled. Love is that control. Anger must not be acted upon without first asking, "What actions would love for God and love for man take in this situation?" Love for God compels us to act on our anger, but to act without doing anything sinful (Ephesians 4:26). Love is the doing of only good to another while being perfectly obedient to Christ's commands. Love glorifies God while doing no wrong to another, even when one is angry.

Emotions can be spent selfishly for oneself, spending them on one's own pleasure. Or, emotions can be spent in loving service to God and to others. As motivators, they enable righteous action, but they can also be wasted just to make ourselves feel good.

Zeal. Zeal is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm charges our bodies and enables us to work in the service of God and others, or, enthusiasm can be entirely funneled into sensations of feeling good with no beneficial outcome for others. When someone is zealous during a Christian rock concert, they may jump up and down, scream, and cry tears of pleasure for the wonderful sensations that the music brings them. That is an example of wasting zeal on one's self, spending it on pleasure.

Yet, zeal for God and zeal for fellow Christians results in good deeds that benefit the saints on behalf of God's glory. We become people zealous for good deeds, if we are people of love.

So then, whether you are zealous (enthusiastic), or whether you are rejoicing (reflecting zealous gratitude back to God), or whether you are sympathetic and sorrowful, whatever your emotional state, channel that energy through your mind so that God's Spirit may use the Scripture to motivate you to love and good deeds.

Do all the will of God in the strength of Christ for the sake of the gospel to the glory of God, including, using your emotions in the service of love.

Card games often have something called a trump. A trump card, when played, automatically beats all other cards. This powerful card is the ultimate dominant card in the game, nothing beats it and no one can question or counter the trump.

Christians have created three verbal trump cards by which to outplay anyone who might speak a truth to them in love. Why are trump cards desired? Some people do not desire to hear the truth, especially truth that they may find unpleasant, even if it is meant for their own benefit. So they carry these three trump cards with them, ready to slap them on the table at the slightest hint that uncomfortable truth may be displayed.

Sadly, all three trump cards are inventions of man, alchemized from abuses of Scripture. Trump cards do not exist in the Scripture, and all Christians are expected to pay attention to the truth. Nonetheless, these trump cards often prevail.

Also known as "The Tyranny of The Offended," the hurt feelings card can be played at virtually any time for any reason, or for no reason. If someone attempts to correct your theology, you can just say, "You're hurting my feelings by accusing me of having wrong theology." Immediately, this places the original speaker on the defensive, even implying that the original speaker is sinning with his words, for after all, they are words that have injured another person's feelings.

When someone uses the "you're hurting my feelings" trump card, they are usually sinning. Love does not get its feelings hurt by others (someone who loves is not provoked to anger or to hurt feelings -- 1 Corinthians 13:5). Love easily covers over such imagined "offenses" (Proverbs 10:12, 1 Peter 4:8). Worse, such a person intentionally does not want to hear the truth, again indicating they lack love because someone who loves rejoices when the truth comes out, not when the truth is suppressed (1 Corinthians 13:6).

When giving a public teaching about how legalism is an unloving practice Jesus hurt the feelings (offended the sensibilities) of some Pharisees. His own disciples brought it to His attention that His words were offensive. He did not apologize. In fact, Jesus turned back to the Pharisees and said, "Yes, and the Pharisees are also blind heretics who lead the people astray." (Matthew 15:14)

Hurting someone's feelings by telling them the truth kindly, and in love, is not a sin, nor even an offense for which an apology or restitution is required. It is the responsibility of the hearer to regard his own heart and evaluate the truth of statements heard. If the statements hurt the hearer's feelings, it is an indication that his own heart is not right with God. One who loves the speaker is not offended when the truth is spoken, and is not provoked to anger by the truth or by the speaker, and if he is, he immediately covers over the offense in an attitude of love.

Emotions are God's mechanism by which He uses His Holy Spirit to turn circumstances and His Word into vital action within each of us. Being sinned against makes us angry. Watching others sin against God makes us angry. Angry enough to take action. It surely made Jesus angry at His fellow man--"[Jesus] looking around at them with anger" (Mark 3:5a)--the word anger here meaning "violent and wrathful passion."

That the one speaking the truth is temporarily angry or passionate does not give the listener a trump card or some kind of excuse not to listen. He may not say to the speaker of uncomfortable truth, "Sure, what you say may be true, but since you're angry you're the sinner and you have to repent of your anger and your angry tone of voice before I will listen to you."

Some Christians have made an art form out of verbal manipulation. They commit genuine sins against a patient person over an extended period of time (maybe even years), then, when the one who has been sinned against for so long is motivated to respond to yet another sin (perhaps motivated by his righteous anger), the sinner pushes all the right verbal buttons coaxing the person to raise his voice in long-coming frustration. Then the sinner calls public attention to the patient man's "obvious anger problem" so as to excuse his own sin while actually causing disgrace to fall on the patient man. That is a wretched, sinful, and improper form of manipulation.

Whether spoken in anger or not, the truth is not to be ignored. A man of passion speaking truth for the benefit of another, even speaking a rebuke, is speaking in love and is not "trumped" by his passion, emotions, or even tone of voice.

Titus 3:10 tells us to avoid a factious man after two warnings, and then have nothing to do with such a person.

Any Christian who has come out of a cult, legalism, or a church where the elders are dictatorial or "lord it over the flock" understand how this passage is improperly leveraged against students of God's Word. Any person who offers an interpretation of Scripture that differs from those who would be the authorities in the church is unceremoniously labeled "a factious man" and is shunned. Not "disciplined" so as to seek his repentance, but shunned, so as to cut off the man from contact for all time with the "faithful." In "discipline" the goal is the restoration to fellowship of the sinner following his repentance; in shunning the goal is permanently withdrawing communication with a troublemaker.

Yet, Titus 3 is not advocating shunning. Nor is it even advocating disciplining someone who holds a different interpretation of Scripture. It is a warning that someone who creates a true faction, who advocates splitting the church membership and actively works to rally the remnant around some kind of new doctrine (usually named by him or for him) is to be formally charged by the church under the rules of Matthew 18. Such a person is a schism-maker, a faction-builder.

Such a person is not intent on sharing God's Word for the benefit of other Christians. They are intent on creating a following after their own novel precepts and unique philosophies. They are often recognizable by their siren call to all believers that only those who adopt their label are fit to be called Children of God or to see the Kingdom of Heaven. As label-bearers for "the cause" or "the movement," they eventually split from their churches and join themselves to others who are obsessed with the study of the faction-maker's body of work.

That any Christian should assign the label "factious man" or "divisive" to another solely on the basis that such a person speaks an uncomfortable truth to them is simply unconscionable and is being very unloving.

There is no valid Trump Card which gives a hearer a free pass to avoid hearing truth. One whose feelings are hurt misunderstands the very basic elements of what it means to love someone. One who retreats behind such tactics as name calling and accusations of "you're too passionate" or "that's a divisive thing to say" when the truth is spoken to them lack love of the truth and have no love for the speaker.

Speaking the truth in love is always for the benefit of the hearer. The truth edifies, even if it hurts. It builds faith, even as it compresses the ego. Ultimately, the truth yields all that is good in growing the fruits of the Spirit within a person. But only if the person is willing to hear.

What is the greatest love possible? You might be tempted to quote John 15:12-14. And you would be right to do so.

For a man to lay down his life for his friends is the greatest love one human can have for another. Yet, even within this passage is a hint of what God values as the highest form of love that a man can have for Him: you are God's friends if you do what He commands.

Recently, one man incorrectly concluded in his book that obedience to God is not love nor is it even the definition of love, but merely the evidence of love. If love were nothing more than a nebulous ethereal feeling, an emotion of affection welling up spontaneously, then one might be justified in saying obedience plays no part in defining love. However, biblical love, as God defines it, is an act of our will, a set of choices we make that we will act upon. Biblical love makes our affections and our emotions subject and subservient to our conscious intent and the influence of the Holy Spirit within us.

This is love, not simply an evidence of love, but this is love: that we live our lives in obedience to Christ's commandments. Love requires action or it is not love. Therefore, acts of obedience define love and not merely the evidences of it.

If laying down one's life for his friends is the greatest love one man can have for another, then Christ is our example of the greatest love.

Jesus was our example of humble servitude to God. We are to have the same attitude which Christ presented to us as the perfect example, an attitude of humility in service. Our goal is to please God in all that we do, not to please ourselves. God is pleased when we are humble enough to love Him obediently, sacrificially.

Two men exhibited sacrificial love in the extreme. If the greatest love is give one's life for a friend, then how great a love is it when a man offers to give up his eternal life in exchange that others might be saved? Both Moses and the Apostle Paul attempted to barter away their salvation (their eternal pleasure) in exchange for the salvation of the Jews.

Surely God has graciously explained to us what we too must do to imitate Christ's humble attitude of sacrificial service.

Spiritual Gifts do not become "spiritual" until one uses the talents bestowed on him by God to work in the service of others. In other words, until one serves and edifies the church, he has not exercised his spiritual gifts. This is duty, using one's body as a living sacrifice of love to serve Christ and His church.

Sacrificial love extends to wives and husbands, just as it does to serving the rest of the church in an attitude of humble servitude.

To understand Ephesians 5 is to understand that Christ gave up His life on Earth as a sacrifice for us and that we are called to do the same. Wives must be subject to their husbands just as the church is subject to Christ. How is the church subject to Christ? Is it in loving obedience? Is not "obedience" a key element in the word "love"?

Husbands are to love their wives in the same way that Christ loved the church. He protects the church from sin and from harm, He provides for the church, He listens every time the church prays, He nourishes the church, He is an example of sinless leadership.

Love sounds like hard work. It is. Yet it is also a light burden compared to the alternative. Imagine love without the sacrificial quality. Imagine love without obedience or humble service. In other words, love stripped of all that makes it love becomes hollow affection, like a tree whose core has rotted, producing no sheltering leaves, ready to topple--an image without the substance.

Love without the qualities of obedience, humble service, and sacrifice is not truly agape love at all. And when agape love is replaced by empty affection, the tree falls during the first hard wind, the good is gone from it, no one is edified, no one is protected, and no one will know we are Christians. No one can see affections but everyone can see the intentional acts of service generated by willful and sacrificial love.

Today's headline in the online news read: Al-Qaida Calls for Holy War Against Israel. So, what else is new?

When Abraham was called by God to father a new nation in the land now called Israel, Abraham became impatient that his first heir was not yet born. Abraham "solved" his problem by impregnating a woman who was not his wife. That woman gave birth to a son who became the father of all those we call Arabs today. And that same son hated Abraham for what he had done to his mother, and that same son had his own sons who also hated the offspring Abraham eventually had through his rightfully married wife, and many Arabs today continue to hate all Abraham's non-Arab descendants (those which comprise the nation of Israel).

Tiny Israel is but a pinprick of a nation compared to the numerous and vastly larger, wealthier nations which surround her. And all those nations which surround her are homelands for uncounted millions of Muslim Arabs who follow the ways of Islam. Hatred abounds for Israel (Abraham's offspring via his wife) among that vast population and huge land mass which surrounds her.

Of course, it must be noted that most of the formal governments of these Arab homeland nations are not officially hostile toward Israel anymore. However, many of these same nations appear to freely sanction, harbor, and support immense freelance terror organizations who have but one goal: destroy Israel and any country that would assist her. What a sad irony of history, that the descendants of one of Abraham's sons wishes to utterly kill off all the descendants of his own half-brother, also a son of Abraham.

Al-Qaida is one such terrorist organization. It is not a government, nor is it a country. It is merely a group that formed itself together just to launch terrorist raids in the hopes of some day removing Israel (and all Jews) from the planet, while also dissuading other nations from helping Israel. Al-Qaida once prospered in Afghanistan under the protection of the Afghan government until the US-led alliance of nations militarily removed the hostile Afghan government and hunted down the Al-Qaida terrorists for killing three thousand souls in the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon.

Hezbollah is another such terrorist league. The countries of Lebanon and Syria give Hezbollah protection and allow it to organize and carry out paramilitary strikes against Israel from their borders. Hezbollah purchases expensive and powerful weapons on the world arms market (using donations it receives from rich sympathetic Arabs) and daily fires rocket and missile attacks into Israel's civilian cities from behind the protection of Lebanon's border.

Many of Hezbollah's bases and munitions centers are reportedly "hidden" in the basements of Lebanon's civilian apartment complexes , schools, mosques, and hospitals under the assumption that Israel would never fire upon such targets. Largely, Hezbollah was correct, until Hezbollah began taking Israeli soldiers captive and carrying them back to Lebanon. Israel invaded Lebanon both to recover their soldiers and to break the cycle of the daily missile attacks. The government of Lebanon may cry foul at being invaded by Israel, but no one takes such comments seriously given that Lebanon permits and encourages terrorists to own and fire such lethal ordinance at neighboring countries from within their own country.

Hamas was also a terrorist organization with but one goal: destroy Israel and remove the Jews from the Middle East, returning the land of Israel to Arab rule and Arab occupation. After Israel graciously granted some locally-born Arab peoples land inside their tiny nation of Israel on which to establish a new independent state called Palestine, the Palestinian Arabs voted to elect Hamas as the new government of Palestine. Needless to say, this act of betrayal against Israel has resulted in additional unneeded bloodshed. Hamas, now the official governing body of Palestine, continues to operate as a terrorist organization within the very borders of Israel, planning and carrying out bombings of civilian population centers. No one can hope to believe that Israel will continue to allow a terrorist organization to function with impunity inside their own country. It is only a matter of time before Israel forcibly removes Hamas from Palestine and, thus, from Israel.

Is Israel's invasion of Lebanon as part of their effort to recover their missing soldiers and to stop the daily missile attacks against their civilian cities the beginning of the end times or the start of the tribulation? Maybe yes, maybe no. But how should we as Christians live in light of these events?

Why does God seem to delay the coming of the end of time? So that all His elect may be saved via the preaching the cross to those who are yet still in their sins. Make the most of your time, for you know what the will of the Lord is.