No one needs to tell you what love is. All of us know what love is. I first fell in love when I was 7 – she was almost 20 years older. Miss Kennedy was the most stunning and wonderful teacher I ever had. When it comes to love every teenager is an expert on the subject.
But tell me, how would you describe love? Just try sometime to put love into words. Poets have struggled with that ever since Adam first held hands with Eve. Every day again there are songs on the radio that try to capture in words what love exactly is. Definitions of love abound – and some of them are not all that helpful: Love is a feeling you get when you get a feeling you’ve never felt before. Really…? Or: Love is something that itches deep inside where you can’t scratch it. You’re kidding…? No…! Love is much… much more than that.
One of our big problems today is that we tend to see love only as a feeling. We fall in love and we fall out of love. Love is primarily a deep-seated emotion. And then we still wonder why so many relationships break down. If love is just a feeling then you can’t help falling IN love… but you can’t then help falling OUT OF love either. When you fall IN love you get married… when you fall OUT OF love you get divorced. That’s about where we are at today in our society. That’s love according to the tabloids and that’s love according to many a TV sitcom.
Let me give you a different definition of love from the pen of the Apostle Paul. Those who are at all familiar with the Bible will know this comes from that famous chapter about love, 1Corinthians 13. Here is the Bible’s profound definition of love: 4 Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, 5 is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. 6 Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things hopes all things, endures all things. (CSV)
Did you notice that love according to the Bible is definitely not just an emotion? Maybe that surprises you. But it’s true – those fifteen different ways in which love shows itself have precious little to do with our feelings. Love… from the Bible’s point of view… is a mental attitude… it’s a commitment we make to another person. It’s an attitude that seeks the very best for the other.
If you wonder about that just read I Corinthians 13 again and notice that the emphasis is not on FEELING, it is on DOING. For example, love is kind. Kindness is never an emotion… it is something that we show in our attitudes and in our actions. Few of those 15 manifestations of love are emotions: envy and perhaps finding joy in unrighteousness – although that too is more of an attitude.
The best example of this kind of love isn’t Romeo & Juliet. The best example of love is the Lord Jesus Christ. He didn’t just fall in love with His people emotionally. He didn’t just sit up in heaven having warm fuzzies about us. No, He loved us in action. He had an attitude that wanted the very best for us and He proved that He loved us by dying for us on a cross. That’s love par excellence!
If you want to know what love really is, don’t listen to the top forty… and don’t watch the soapies on telly. Instead meditate on that cruel instrument of execution – a cross – on which Jesus Christ was hung to die. He endured that in love for us so that we might be forgiven and restored to God. It’s when we know that love of Jesus on our lives that we too will begin to love as Jesus loved – in attitude and in actions.
John Westendorp