Love

One author called the word love an “exceedingly ambiguous term”. We would have to agree: we love our favorite food and we love the members of our family, but those two things cannot mean the same thing. Can they?

Our struggle to define love is complicated by our normal source documents. One of the best dictionary-style definitions I could find is: Love is faithful and benevolent self-giving to a person. Not bad insofar as it goes, but it’s a bit sterile. And biblical writers used love in much the same way we do, so it is not as immediately clarifying as we might like.

At some point, we are tempted to ask ourselves if it even matters. Do we really need to clarify love? Can’t love remain ambiguous? Can’t we just enjoy this gift that Christmas brings us and leave it at that? Sure, we can totally receive gifts and admire the wrapping paper but not open them…a bit overdramatic, but that’s what it seems like.

Love is important to understand

Love is a really big deal and worth understanding. How big a deal?

Matthew 22:34–40 NKJV

34 But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus’ testimony is that the entirety of the Bible—or at least the Old Testament—hangs on us loving God and loving people.

Love is better understood when defined

What would a definition of love need to include?

Most of the time when we think of love, we are thinking about the emotion or feeling of love. But we know that emotions and feelings are responders. There has to be some underlying thought that produces those feelings, so our definition has to account for that. We should probably also account for the fact that love typically results in action of some sort.

Taking all of that into account, we might say:

Love is the warm feeling that usually begins with pleasant experiences, intensifies with commitment, and ignites action.

I’m not sure I love that definition but it’s workable and meets the criteria and gives us three clear elements: experience, commitment, and action.

Transition

Armed with a workable definition, we can then bounce our definition off of biblical teaching to see how it holds up.

Illumination

The Apostle John has been called the Apostle of love because it is a prominent theme in his writings. We see the relationship of God’s love for us and our love both for Him and for others in 1 John 4.

1 John 4:7–11 NKJV

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

John wrote to those he loved to encourage them to love, 7

God’s love for us

Some parts of our definition are kind of assumed in this passage, but still present.

What was God’s pleasant experience? Relationship, it is why He created us

What was God’s commitment? Again, it is relationship. We chose and frequently continue to choose to walk away from relationship with God. But He is commited to it and pursues us. We see this in the phrase “not that we love God, but that He loved us.”

What was God’s action? He “sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (Propitiation is the means whereby sin is covered.)

Our Love for Others

What is our pleasant experience? Interestingly, it is not provided by others. That is a fundamental difference in, and benefit of, Christian love. Our pleasant experience is in our relationship with God, 7-8

Any pleasant experience we have with/from others is a benefit, but it is not the basis of our love.

What is our commitment? Again, relationship. We commit to loving others because God commited to loving us, 11

What is our commitment? John does not specify that here. If we were to keep reading, we would see that he takes this element seriously.

1 John 4:20–21 NKJV

20 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? 21 And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.

The what of our commitment is left to us and the specific situations in which we find ourselves. But it very much must manifest in concrete ways.

Conclusion

Application

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