Love

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, so it seems appropriate that I have been thinking about love lately. My husband are going through the book ‘Real Marriage’ by Mark and Grace Driscoll and that’s got me thinking about love. I see marriages falling apart around me, again thinking about love. Just what is it? There are a few descriptions we have used to describe it over the lifetimes of humans, but they all seem to fall short. Is it a feeling, an action, a choice? We think we are enlightened in changing how we look at love, thinking we have it all figured out, but really we only know a fraction of it.

First, ‘love is a feeling’. That sounds archaic. We debunked that long ago and replaced it with other, seemingly appropriate descriptions, but it still stands. We ‘fall’ in love simply because we feel something for another person. We divorce because we don’t feel love for the other person anymore. We abort because we just don’t feel love for the ‘thing’ growing inside of us. This idea still permeates our society in how our girls dress, and our many reasons for hurting and abandoning others. In telling a child that ‘Mommy doesn’t love daddy anymore’ as the reason for a divorce, we are teaching our kids that love is a feeling that comes and goes and set them up for a life of attempting to elicit feelings of love in others. It is a futile attempt, because lust, affection, and sexual arousal are all feelings, love is not.

Second, ‘love is a choice.’ Nice, but not really accurate when it comes to our human interpretation. That implies that it’s okay to choose not to love someone else. Yes, it sounds really good when you say you choose to love someone else, ‘in spite of…’, however choosing not to love someone is a lousy excuse to end a relationship. But we are not called to choose to love. 'We love because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

Third, ‘love is an action’. Okay, but actions can be misconstrued and manipulated. And in our imperfect version of love that can turn nasty as one person acts out love while the other does not.

So again, what is love? First of all, it’s a command. In several places in the Bible (Lev 19:18, Matt 19:19, Matt 22:39, Mar 12:31, Mar 12:33, Luke 10:27, Rom 13:9, Gal 5:14 and James 2:8) we are commanded, not suggested or given a choice, to love our neighbors as ourselves. It is called the greatest commandment. He was not just telling Israelites to love other Israelites. He was saying love EVERYONE as you love yourself. We love ourselves very much, there is no denying that. Jesus reiterates it, reinforcing the fact that it wasn’t just for Jews, but for all to love all. He also goes so far to say to love our enemies. Yes, those who hurt us, those who hurt others. Hitler, Musolini, Jeffery Dahmer. How do we love others as we love ourselves? Humility. Romans 12:3 says not to think too highly of ourselves but to have sober judgment of ourselves. So we love others as a measure of how we love ourselves, then tone it down a notch to think more highly of others than we do of ourselves. It is summed up in the ‘golden rule’ or as I like to call it, Matt 7:12, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you.‘ Treat others as you want to be treated. You want to be loved, love others.

As demonstrated by Jesus, love is also sacrifice. John 15:13 says that laying down your life for your friends shows that you love them. Jesus sacrificed his life to show His love for us (Rom 5:8). It doesn’t mean that we need to die to show love for others, but we do need to sacrifice. Sacrifice ourselves. Our desires, needs, resources, happiness, frustrations, etc for the good of others. Doesn’t sound appealing does it? Sounds hard. Think of others first, sacrifice what we want to make others happy? Is it any wonder people focus on themselves and work to make themselves happy, abandoning those things and people that don’t. Love is HARD. But it doesn’t have to be.

1 John 4:8 says that GOD is love. God. Not feelings, not actions, not choices, not our hopes and desires. God. He embodies it. He expresses it. He fills us with it. He sacrificed because of it. He allows us to go through difficult things because love means not letting us wallow in the muck of our current selves. Love means hoping for the best of who you can be. He says to ‘Be Holy as I Am Holy.’ Holy is God. Love is God. Be love as He is love. BE love. Don’t feel love, don’t do love, don’t choose love. BE love. God is spirit and God is love, therefore the Holy spirit is also love.

Love does require choice - a choice for God, to let Him dwell in you. Love does require action - sacrificing our desires to let His love shine through. If God is in you, love is in you. If God is not, you are doing love on your own and that means it plays by your rules and will never satisfy. It is a counterfeit of love.

Love is not complicated. It’s God.