I have been thinking lately of love and what it is. We know that the Bible says "God is love" and so it would be instructive to look to God and the attributes of God to learn more of what love is. As a Christian I believe Jesus Christ is God…not a metaphor of God – simply God in flesh. Therefore to learn about love it would be instructive to look to Christ, His actions and attributes. Outside of Christ Himself I believe that the Bible is the most complete revelation of God’s truth…therefore I would be wise to dig deeply into it to find evidence of what love is.

 

Many people define love by how they feel. If a person’s actions toward me are undesirable by myself than they must not be loving actions and that person must not be a loving person. But love is not relative. Love is not something different for different people. Love is absolute. God is love.

 

But who am I to love? Simply put -if my love is to be modeled after God then I am called to love everybody, without exclusion. God hates certain actions (divorce, injustice), certain things (idols) but I find nothing that suggests that God hates people – any people. On the contrary the popular verse John 3:16 describes what God loves – "the world" and to what degree – to give His Son. To sacrifice what is of greatest value to Him. Not only does He love the world He desires that "all people be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4).

 

So – learning who God loves is reasonably easy, God loves everyone, without exception. Still it is challenging to understand what love is in terms of a response. What is a loving response? There are all kinds of opinions here. There is tough love that tells the truth even when it hurts because not knowing the truth has greater pain associated to it – eternal pain.

 

Even if we cannot quite figure out whether a situation calls for "tough love" or some other variant we can know what the qualities of our love should be in every situation. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 tells us that no matter what kind of love we choose to deliver in a certain situation it must be characterized by patience; kindness; without envy, boast, arrogance or rudeness. It is very important that our love is not characterized by an open or secret joy in the failure of others; our acts of love must not be irritable; our love must endure – it is not temporary. The character of our love is eternal.

 

Most importantly it is not one of those character attributes that can be compensated for in other ways. You cannot make up for a lack of love by increasing your giving. The Bible says that prophecy will disappear; tongues will disappear; knowledge will disappear; but not love – it is, like God, one of three eternal attributes mentioned in scripture – the other two being faith and hope with the qualification that love is the greatest of these three.

 

I think it is easy to forget that love is more than an act. Love is unquestionably characterized by certain attributes and therefore if we need to exercise love, particularly certain "tough" kinds of love these actions must still be characterized by these attributes.

 

I write these things not so much to preach to you but as a way to remind myself of what is most important.