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Introduction

Steem morning greetings to the beautiful Cameroon community and especially to @mundifranklin who is the stimulator of this post I'm about to write today. I read this guys post about love and each time I read it referred me to scriptures. You can get his post HERE. Please make sure you read, upvote and comment that post. On my part, I'll try as much as possible to keep it simple and scriptural about love.

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Little review

My brother said

Love is a poison,Pick your poison and pray it doesn't kill you, then sip it with lots of joy in your heart.
@mundifranklin

Love indeed is a poison and I remember in my toxicology class where our lecturer taught us about a well known toxicologist called Paracelsus
His law was,

"All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison." source
-Paracelsus

So truly as he said, nothing comes without adverse effects if the dose isn't known.

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What is love?

I have read so many definitions of love from many sites and dictionaries and they are all wonderful but personally I don't think love is a feeling or affection. Love is sacrifice and obedience, you can't define it on a basis of feeling.

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Love is Sacrifice

John 15:13
[13]Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

For a man (you and I, men and women, husband and wife) to love one another he must sacrifice. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross was the ultimate of all love, the same sacrifice was shown by God in john 3:16

John 3:16
[16]For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

When you love, you sacrifice, you don't feel. You might have ego, pride, contemptuousness etc... But once you love, you forget about all that, you sacrifice those things because you love. If God only felt for you but and I, i don't think he would've sent His only son as sacrifice perhaps He would've just sent angels with perishable blessings just as humans now define love by the flowers and money one can offer.
Apostle Paul speaking to the Ephesian church said,

Ephesians 5:25
[25]Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

He was addressing the husband's because they are most taken over by their pride and ego and for you to truly love, you can't be egoistic, you can't be proud. Husband's can respect but for them to love genuinely they must sacrifice a part of theirself for their wives.

1 Corinthians 13:4
[4]Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

The KJV(king james version) defines love as charity and explains it as it is in the original Greek lexicon. All the attributes given to love there is sacrifice. And if we don't sacrifice as I earlier said, we don't really love.

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Love is Obedience!

John 15:10,12
[10]If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.
[12]This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

Jesus Christ speaking to his disciples began first by saying If you keep my commandments, you'll abide in my love because He himself has kept His father's commandments and he abides in His love. My dad always says, "obey before you complain" i never understood this until I had to ask my little sister to stop making friends with certain people coz I knew the effect of such company would likely destroy her and she denied. But it is this same girl who always texts me saying i love you Bobo. i asked myself what kind of love does she have then?
To the glory of God, she stopped seeing those friends and showed me a proof of her true love for me. Most times we just utter words we don't know because of the familiarity of those words in the society. If she didn't obey, then the love she claimed having for me was vain.

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Jesus Christ had to tell his disciples that he had obeyed his dad's commandments to abide in His father's love and he is giving us that same love that we should also abide in Him and give the love to others. The bible goes further in

Ephesians 5:22,24
[22]Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
[24]Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

We understand that submission is a sign of respect, obedience and sacrifice. I would've loved to go deeper into this but can't because it's quite bogus. In a nutshell, the wives (bride) are called to submission to their own husbands that means obeying without complaining of anything just submission.
We live in a world where the woman claims to often know more than a man, child of God I'll tell you that it's the same submission issue that led Eve become the head of the family when Adam wasn't yet dead. If you are a bride, you have to submit to your husband. And this applies not only to women but to men too. Remember we are all the bride of Christ and he tells us indirectly here that we should submit to Christ ❤️
Christ himself said, If you love me, obey my commandments

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Conclusion

Love is love only if obedience and sacrifice are captured within the circumference of its ambience.

1 John 4:8
[8]He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

GOD IS LOVE

Thanks for reading and I hope you were blessed with this. God bless you, Shalom ❤️
CC:
@rexiano
@rosita-nkefor
@craxywriter
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