05/11/2025
Do we know what love is, and do we understand the depth to which it should be experienced and applied to those around us? This is our contemplation today, and let’s ask ourselves if we are truly showing others the love of God and Jesus Christ as it is described in scripture and shown to us through Jesus Christ. But before we can know if we are showing it, or fully giving it, we must first know what love looks like so that we can recognize it in our lives. Scripture helps us to recognize it by describing its attributes…
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
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 13:4-8 ESV
Our ability to love is a gift from God, but it is one that we must work at perfecting. The basic attributes of love are felt the minute it erupts within us but then comes the process of adding depth to it and sometimes in overcoming the pain and suffering of its loss.
When I first met my wife, I felt an instant infatuation with her that was quickly followed by an intense emotional love. I was nearly overcome by the power of it. I knew what I was feeling was love because I had seen it before, I had witnessed it as the product of years of love in the older men and women in my family who were undoubtedly in love, and I also knew that this love would somehow transform itself, and me, over time. What I didn't know was how this transformation would take place, and that it didn't come by the passage of time alone.
Love is our greatest joy, but it is also the source of life’s greatest pain and suffering. Love can begins with a heavy dose of lust, but over time it will refine itself until what is left in the cask is an amazing wine of remarkable. and deeply satisfying, taste, color, and smell. It is a perfect wine that is hard to describe without drinking it, but once tasted, it never leaves our palate, and its experience causes us to take pause and close our eyes to all else. Love is the very essence of our lives, and our faith. God is love, and it wasn’t by accident that the first miracle of Jesus was to turn water into wine, and not just any wine, but a good and perfect wine,
“When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.”
John 2:9-10 ESV
To perfect love... whether it be the love for our God, our spouse, our children, our families, or others around us, requires work and patience in its making. It doesn't begin complete but requires all we are in life before we can complete it. When we are transformed by love, all the experiences in our lives will become a part of it. We will find great joy that comes from finding and sharing it. We will experience terrible suffering like we never believed possible. We will experience heartbreaks that shake us to the core. We will feel tenderness that exceeds all bounds, and we will make sacrifices that defy all logic and reason. Love encompasses everything we are, and all there is in life. This is why we are told that God is love, why it is so central to His Word, and why it is the core of the two great commandments...
“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
1 John 4:8 ESV
“Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”"”
Mark 12:29-31 ESV
Just as love grows within us, it can also ebb, but even so it never truly leaves us. Love unmanaged, and unrequited, can change us again and become the foundation for immense pain and hatred. This ravished love, if not confronted by our knowledge of Christ and overcome, will destroy us, crush our spirit, and diminish our faith.
“For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
2 Peter 1:8 ESV
Jesus speaks to us of adding certain things to our love. He does this so that our loves will grow into a fullness of beauty and not be twisted by the dark one into the great hatred and evil of which we just spoke. Love makes us, but it can also destroy us, and our cripple our faith which is such a part of us. So how do we resist this temptation to hate, and overcome the pain and suffering of a love lost or withdrawn?
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”
2 Peter 1:5-7 ESV
So Jesus tells us of love, and He also commands us to embrace it. It becomes one of His commandments to us, and not just the frail love of its first beginning, but the fullness of Love realized in its maturity... this is the love of God for us... the love of Christ on Calvary.
“"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
John 15:12 ESV
Love is who we are, and we are nothing without it. We can understand who God is, but we will have no relationship with Him without love. We can be attracted to our spouse, but there is only lust without it. We can have sex and procreate, but no family can be established without it. Love is the core of all our joy, sorrow, satisfaction, and regret. Love is who we are and all that we become. It is the greatest gift that God has given us, and the essence of himself which was contained in His breath at creation. Love is living as Christ lived, and it is breathing God’s breath… the breath of life.
“then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”
Genesis 2:7 ESV
Some say that our greatest gift in life is self-awareness, and our soul... but I suggest to you that even this loses meaning, and that none of life’s other moments matter without love. God’s Word tells us this… Listen…
“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:13 ESV
“And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”
1 Corinthians 13:2 ESV
Prayer:
Father, thank you for your gift of love. Thank you for loving me and for allowing me to love you in return. I would never have known you without this gift and never understood your desire in my creation and the sacrifice of Jesus. Love is a piece of you that links us together as one, and is the ingredient in salvation that is indispensable... thank you Father for this... the DNA of divinity. Jesus, I thank you for exhibiting the greatest love of all by suffering for me and offering your life on the cross to save me. Help me to love as you love me, and to follow your commandments in experiencing love. Hear this my prayer Jesus and know this in my heart Abba. Let your Word always be in my ears, and my prayers in yours. Father, Holy, Holy, Holy are you my God, and eternal is your love for me. Holy are you whose mercy and grace ride on the wings of love, and in the breath of life you have breathed into me. Help me Lord as my love becomes a rich and full bodied wine, perfect in its depth, aroma and taste. Help me to keep it righteous through the strength of your Word that allows me to resist the temptation to hate or experience anger when the world seeks to crush me and attempts to destroy our relationship by undermining my faith in love… and in you. Praised be your name Holy Father, and I give you all the glory and honor for the love you have bestowed upon me and which makes me whole, righteous, and holy… I am completed now in my joy and peace as I rest in your arms... in an eternal love that endures forevermore.
Amen, Amen, Amen!
“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
John 15:13-14 ESV
Rich Forbes