Love

What Love Is

We use the word "love" for almost everything: a meal, a song, a fleeting mood. But the love Scripture describes runs deeper than a feeling that happens to us; it is a settled bending of the will toward the good of another. The clearest portrait is Paul's: "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not... seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil" (1 Corinthians 13:4-5). Notice how active it is. Every line is something love does, or something it refuses to do. It is patience held under provocation, kindness offered before it is asked, a heart that keeps no ledger of wrongs.

This love is costly by nature. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). Real love spends itself. It is measured by the price it is willing to pay, not by the warmth it feels. That is why Paul can say that without it, even faith that moves mountains and gifts that dazzle add up to "nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:2). Eloquence, knowledge, sacrifice: strip the love out and only noise remains, "as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal" (1 Corinthians 13:1).

And yet love is not grim duty. It "rejoiceth in the truth," "beareth all things," and "never faileth" (1 Corinthians 13:6-8). It is the most durable thing in the universe, outlasting prophecy and knowledge, and in the end, Paul says, even faith and hope hand the world over to it: "the greatest of these is charity" (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Love's Witness in the Old Testament

Long before Paul wrote of charity, God was teaching His people what love looks like. At the centre of Israel's faith stands the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might" (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). Love of God was the first and deepest call placed on His people from the beginning, the words a faithful Israelite was to bind on the hand and teach to the children.

God's own love is described with a tender, almost stubborn word, "lovingkindness," the Hebrew chesed. It is covenant love, loyal love, the love that keeps showing up. "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee" (Jeremiah 31:3). When Israel wandered, God did not stop loving; He grieved like a wounded parent and kept calling them home: "When Israel was a child, then I loved him... I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love" (Hosea 11:1-4).

Nowhere is this more vivid than in the prophet Hosea, told to love his unfaithful wife again as a living parable of God's heart: "Go yet, love a woman... according to the love of the LORD toward the children of Israel" (Hosea 3:1). Here love is poured out freely on the undeserving, and that is the very glory of it.

Love's Fullness in the Gospel

In the New Testament the long river reaches the sea. "God is love" (1 John 4:8), and now that love moves beyond description into something shown. "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him" (1 John 4:9). The cross is where the word "love" is finally given its meaning: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).

Jesus made this love the very badge of His followers: "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you... By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples" (John 13:34-35). The measure has shifted. No longer merely "as yourself," now "as I have loved you," which is to say, all the way to the end.

And this love is generative; it makes more of itself. "We love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). We receive His love and return it, passing it onward to others, never manufacturing it toward God out of nothing. Love begins in heaven and runs downhill into the world, gathering everyone it touches.

Love in the Believer's Daily Life

It is one thing to admire love and another to live it before breakfast. Scripture is relentlessly practical here. "Let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:18). Love that stays in the mouth is not yet love. It becomes real in the meal carried to a grieving neighbour, the patience kept with a difficult relative, the apology offered first, the forgiveness extended one more time.

The everyday shape of love is drawn most plainly in 1 Corinthians 13. Try reading it with your own name where the word "charity" stands: am I patient, am I kind, do I envy, am I easily provoked, do I keep a record of wrongs? It stops being poetry and starts being a mirror. Love is learned in the friction of actual people, never in the abstract.

Jesus pressed it past the borders of comfort: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you... and pray for them which despitefully use you" (Matthew 5:44). This is love's hardest frontier and its surest sign that it has come from God, "for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good" (Matthew 5:45). To love those who love us back is merely natural; to love the unlovely, the difficult, even the hostile, is to begin to bear the family likeness of our Father.

Counterfeits and Struggles

Because love is precious, it is easily counterfeited. There is a "love" that is really self-interest wearing a kind face, affection that lasts only as long as it is convenient. Set it beside Paul's portrait and it fails the test at once: it vaunts itself, seeks its own, is easily provoked, and quietly keeps the score that love refuses to keep (1 Corinthians 13:4-5). Sentiment that costs nothing and asks nothing of us is not yet the love of Christ.

We also struggle to receive love before we can give it. Many find it easier to serve than to be served, easier to forgive than to believe they themselves are forgiven. Yet John insists the order runs the other way: "we love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). When love runs dry, the cure is to return to the spring rather than to squeeze harder, to let ourselves be loved by God again.

And fear is love's oldest enemy. "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear" (1 John 4:18). Much of what we mistake for an inability to love is really fear: of being hurt, exposed, rejected, used. As we grow secure in God's love for us, the grip of that fear loosens, and we are freed at last to love without first bracing to protect ourselves.

Christ at the Center

Every thread of this theme is gathered up in Jesus. He taught love and went further still: He is love made visible. "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us" (1 John 3:16). When we want to know what love means, we are pointed to a Person rather than a definition, and finally to a cross, where, "having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end" (John 13:1).

At that cross love does its deepest and most astonishing work. "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). This is love reaching its lowest, hardest, least deserving object, us at our worst, and refusing to let go. Paul stands amazed that nothing in all creation "shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39). Height, depth, life, death: none of it can sever the bond.

And Jesus calls us to live inside this love rather than watch it from a distance, as branches drawing life from a vine: "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love" (John 15:9). To abide in Christ is to dwell in the very love that made and redeemed the world, and to let it bear its fruit through us into other lives.

Living a Life of Love

How, then, do we grow in love? We begin by receiving it. Let the truth sink in that you are loved by God before you have done anything to earn it (Romans 5:8); love given out of fullness is steadier than love wrung out of guilt. Spend time where His love is poured out, in prayer, in His Word, among His people, and let the spring refill what the day drains away.

Then love concretely. Take the actual person God has set before you today and do the next loving thing: listen, forgive, show up, bear with them. "By love serve one another" (Galatians 5:13). Love grows like a muscle, by use. Paul prays "that your love may abound yet more and more" (Philippians 1:9). It is meant to keep increasing, not merely to be maintained.

Finally, let love set your priorities. "Above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8). When you are unsure what to do, ask what love requires; it will rarely steer you wrong. A life poured out in love is never wasted, "for charity... never faileth" (1 Corinthians 13:8). In the end, when much else has fallen away, it is the one thing we carry with us all the way home.

Questions for Reflection

If you read 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 with your own name in place of the word "charity," which lines would ring true, and which would quietly convict you?

Where do you find it harder: to give love, or to receive it? What might that reveal about how you imagine God sees you?

Is there a particular person God is asking you to love "in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:18), rather than only in feeling or in word? What would the next step look like this week?

How has fear kept you from loving freely, fear of being hurt, exposed, or rejected? What might change if you let "perfect love" begin to cast out that fear (1 John 4:18)?

When you consider the cross, where Christ loved you "while we were yet sinners" (Romans 5:8), how does that reshape the way you love the people who are hardest to love?