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On this episode of Real Israel Talk Radio – Season 2, Episode 69, Program Part 5 – the biblical definition of love – we are going to continue with a look into 1 Corinthians chapter 13 of the New Covenant, a teaching that is often referred to as "The Love Chapter."

According to 1 Corinthians chapter 13 and Paul’s teaching chapter on love, it is not something that can be earned, merited, or deserved and it is certainly not only for Jews or another specific national people group. Love is for all if we choose to first receive it. 

The love that is referred to in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is not what we think it is. Far too often, we read those words of Paul and come to the conclusion that it is up to us to show actions of love and, of course, there it is in the thirteen verses of 1 Corinthians 13, right? That the love represented here is to show us when we fail to love and when we fail to make the grade as it's expected of us!  That's generally what most people think. However, remember that Paul was a Jewish scholar of his day and with this, he studied in Hebrew and in Aramaic and he knew the linguistics of the languages that he grew up with. Consequently, he certainly had to know that in Hebrew and Aramaic, we would never say, "I have love" or "I do not have love." What Paul would have known from his mother tongue of Hebrew/Aramaic is that "there is love to me" or "there is no love to me." In other words, love is something that is given to us or not given to us from the divine source of love. Paul knew that it is impossible for any of us to manufacture or generate love unless unless it has been put into us from outside of ourselves and this is a driving principle found in the thirteen verses of 1 Corinthians chapter 13.

If we are forced in any way to generate our own love rather than to receive it as a gift from above, the result will be complete failure along with plenty of guilt and shame to go along with it. Why? Because when we are born into this world, we do not come naturally “wired” to give, which is the essence of what love is. Rather, we naturally come into this world “wired” to first receive before we can even think to give leading us to the principle that we cannot give of something that we do not possess. 

On this episode of Real Israel Talk Radio, we will look at 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verses 1-2, which will give us a definition of love that will surely define all that we read about in the New Testament.

Join us for this week’s podcast on Defining Biblical Love - PART 5 from 1 Corinthians chapter 13 with Avi ben Mordechai from the outreach ministry of Cominghome.

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