{"id":8155,"date":"2023-01-23T03:02:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T03:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8155"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:13","slug":"lovers-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8155","title":{"rendered":"LOVERS OF &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0In the Apostle Paul&#8217;s list of how too many people are in these last days (found in the opening verses of 2 Timothy 3), he acknowledges that humans by nature are lovers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But our love is often disordered.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Five times Paul uses a construction for men being &#8220;Lovers of&#8221; something. In Greek these new words are formed by using &#8220;phil&#8221; (love) as a prefix.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to Paul, there are 3 things that misguided people end up loving that they shouldn&#8217;t.\u00a0People become:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Lovers of themselves = <i>philautoi<\/i><\/li>\n\n\n<li>Lovers of money = <i>philargyroi<\/i><\/li>\n\n\n<li>Lovers of pleasure = <i>philedonoi<\/i><\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And when these things take first place in the heart, it is impossible to simultaneously become what we <i><b>should <\/b><\/i>be:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Lovers of the good = <i>philagathoi<\/i><\/li>\n\n\n<li>Lovers of God = <i>philotheoi<\/i><\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is easy to judge another person as living a life caught up in misdirected love.\u00a0 Now and then, though, it is good to pause and question the direction of <i><b>our own<\/b><\/i> <i><b>loves<\/b><\/i>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0In the Apostle Paul&#8217;s list of how too many people are in these last days (found in the opening verses of 2 Timothy 3), he acknowledges that humans by nature are lovers.\u00a0 But our love is often disordered. Five times Paul uses a construction for men being &#8220;Lovers of&#8221; something. In Greek these new words [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8156,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8155\/revisions\/8156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}