11/12/2021
We talk about the word “Love” a great deal, and we even say it to one another with great frequency, but by saying it, teaching it, studying it, and reciting poems and scriptures containing it, have we trivialized the true emotion and power of this word? Have we taken an emotion that is amazingly precious, given by God, and then systematically drained the true meaning from it? Is the love we once professed verbally for a spouse by saying the word “love” still capable of expressing how we feel after years of marriage, or has that “love” become something much more, something that even an hourly profession of “I love you” can’t convey? Was saying the word ever anything more than an incomplete attempt at expressing the depth of emotion we felt? We can say the word “love” a million times in our lifetimes and mean nothing by it, but if we have ever felt it, even once, we know just how ill equipped this word was at describing it.
“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:13 ESV
Pastors and theologians preach and teach about the love of God, and yet many of them have never truly experience it themselves; to them it is merely an intellectual study, or hearsay. Two people often enter into marriage claiming they are “in love”, when what they are actually feeling is something more akin to infatuation, lust, or maybe even just the need for company… not to be alone. So how do we actually know what love is, and keep it real in our lives? Are we repeating a word without growing, and glowing brighter in its meaning? Are words even capable of conveying it? To define love we must be able to define God, and we know the impossibility of that effort.
“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.”
1 John 4:16-17 ESV
Our love for one another is not separate, or different, from God’s love for us. Over time there have been attempts to separate the love we feel into categories. We say there is a love of God (agape), which is different from the romantic love a person has for another (Eros), or the love within a family (Storge), and the brotherly love of one person for another (Philia). The Greeks tried to do this by using these different words, but in English we fall back into the single word “love”. Our previous scripture (1 John 4:16-17) tells us specifically that our love is God’s love… “because as he is so also are we in this world.”
So why do we want to separate the love that God has given us from all these various, and contrived, types of love? I believe it is because we fail at them so often, and it is hard for us to face this fact. If God wants us to love our spouse just as he loves us then what does this tell us about our love for Him… can it fail, and end in divorce? If we can’t love our neighbor then what does this tell us about our love for Him… is there a situation in which we can’t love Him? If we can’t love our family then what does that tell us about our love for Jesus… is it fleeting? So we go about trying to separate the way we define our love for God from every other type of love we can imagine. The ancient Greeks used 4 words, but others have created seven, eight, and even more, sub-classifications of love in their attempts to separate their failures from their faith.
God is love…
“And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Matthew 22:39 ESV
God is love…
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,”
Ephesians 5:25 ESV
God is love…
““This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
John 15:12-13 ESV
There is no type of love that is not of God. So by saying this word, and attempting to associate it with something other than how God would have us love, do we commit heresy? I really don’t think so, but we don’t actually know God. The word love in modern society has come to mean something it isn’t…
Love is not sexual immorality…
“For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.”
1 John 2:16 ESV
Love is not transient…
“Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.”
1 Corinthians 13:8 ESV
Love is not hate…
“We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
1 John 4:19-20 ESV
As incomplete as it is, we need the word love; how else can we speak of our feeling to one another? But, we also need to understand the amazing depth of what we are conveying when we say it. We need to know that God gives us this ability, and grows us in it. The love we feel is one love, but felt in a million wonderful ways, and it is meant to be ever growing. The loving touch of soft young flesh becoming the patient love of a wrinkled hand.
Are we ready to reclaim the word love in our lives? Are we ready to apply the word love in all its manifestations to this one incredible and endless love of God? Are we ready to truly love,? If so we need to begin with the one complete experience… by loving God. We don’t do this by speaking the word, defining the word, or attempting to proclaim the word, but by opening our heart, soul, and mind to what our language, and the word itself, falls so short of conveying.
“And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”
Matthew 22:37-38 ESV
Prayer:
Father, thank you for loving us so completely; not through the Word alone, but by sending your Son Jesus Christ to suffer, die, and be resurrected for us. Thank you Lord for instilling your love in each of us, and leading us to know it is more than we can fathom… it is you. Holy, Holy, Holy, are you our God who embodies love, and abides in us to bring that love to fruition. Praised be your name for every love that we feel in our lives, but especially for the love we feel for you, and receive so fully from you. Wash us clean in the perfect love and blood of Jesus, and perfect us in this way. Shower us in your mercy and grace, as you lead us to love as we should, and find us worthy to be in your house for eternity… loving as we should… as you love us.
Rich Forbes