What Is Love?

What is love? A lot of people think they have a great definition of it. Love is what you feel when you eat pizza, right? We love pizza! No. We do not love pizza. We love people. We like pizza.

So what is love – really? How do you know if you love someone? What about if someone loves you? I think my parents have a wonderful idea about what love is. They have been married for thirty five years if my math is correct. (Correct me if I am wrong there!) They are in love. How do I know? Because: they give everything to each other. They always seek to please each other. They help each other. They make sacrifices for each other. I think that is love.

Love is what God has shown the world. Love is sending Your only Son to die to save the lost. Love is giving up everything to reach someone. Love is risking the world’s hate and anger to break the boundaries. Love is telling someone – in this case the world – that they are sinful, wrong, stupid and have no hope to get anywhere close to God on their own. That is love. Love is blunt. Love is truthful. Love doesn’t sugarcoat, or pretend it is okay. God doesn’t. And God is love.

^“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” – John 15:13. Love is being willing to die for someone. And this doesn’t count if you say, “Yeah, I’d die for them as long as it is a painless death.” I mean, you have to be willing to DIE for them, no matter how painful, how hard, how horrible that death is. That is love.

Jesus died for us. Jesus is love.

“And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another.” – Romans 15:14. Love is telling someone they are sinning, that they are wrong. That is love. Love is going to someone when it is awkward and hard and giving them the facts, even if it will make them hate you.

“The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” – 1 Timothy 1:5. Love is pure. You can’t call anything sinful ‘love’. That is something else.

Love is courageous, because love is pure and love is being willing to die, and love is being truthful – all of which take courage. Love, therefore, is courageous.

Love is hard. It is hard to be pure. It is hard to be willing to die. It is hard to be truthful.

Love is a choice. You can choose whether or not to love someone. It is a conscious or subconscious decision. You don’t ‘fall in love’; you make a choice to be in love and to stay there. God decided to love us enough to send Jesus. He didn’t have to. Maybe as Christians we forget that. “He had to because He loved us. He wouldn’t have been able to live with Himself if He hadn’t.” No, God chose to love us and to save us. It was His own, conscious decision. It was His choice. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8.) God sent us His love when we were nothing more than sinful waste, broken things that, if we’d been in procession of ourselves, we likely would have thrown in the trash for our malfunctions.

Love is kind. It is hard to understand how this works, since love is also truthful. But when you love someone, you desire to make them happy. You are kind to them, because you love them. Love is giving someone half of your chocolate bar when you have been CRAVING it all day. Love is giving someone you love the last bit of the ice cream. Love is putting yourself at the very end of the line, and putting everyone else – even the people you don’t like – first. Love is caring. Love is generous.

And love is faithful. When you love someone – really, truly love them – you won’t ever leave them. You won’t get ‘bored’ with them or their habits or ways. When you really love someone, you stick with them. You never let them go. You get into their lives, invade their personal ‘space bubble’ and you look out for them even if they hate you for it. You do everything you can to make sure they are happy. And you never, ever leave them alone – even when they want to be. Why? Love is faithful. Love doesn’t leave people to themselves when they need help.

“God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?” (Numbers 23:19)  

Love is what God is, what He has shown and what He has done. It is his being, his actions, and his words. Everything that God does radiates his love. If we strive to be like God, we will learn to love like God.

I have a whole lot to learn. I don’t always love like I should. It’s hard. It’s painful. I still get a million and two things wrong every day. I can’t love like God. On my own, it is impossible. But I am not on my own. God lives IN me. “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:25) I live in Him and He lives in me. That is the only way I can please Him and I can live like He wants me to live. Otherwise, I fail, all the time, over and over.

Mandy

P.S. I’d like to let people know: if you have anything to add to my articles or saw something wrong and would like to let me know, you can always use the comments place below. I am always willing to learn!