True Love

We live in a digital age, we have information flowing from and to us 24/7 in a million different ways. We are also free to share our opinions worldwide and susceptible to receiving and believing other people’s opinions. So what do you tell a world that has so many distorted opinions about what love truly is? 

The World’s View on Love

Now dictionaries will tell you love is a  feeling of great affection, deep care, or interest in someone or something, yet we are humans and our feelings can be fleeting. We have fickle hearts that change according to things that happen around us. We cannot reduce something as great as Love to just feelings, so then we must look at it in its absolute: Love in its complete form is God, and God is love.

 1 John 4:8… He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.

God’s Description of Love in the Bible

The Love of God is constant, unchanging, and has depth far beyond anything we can ever imagine. It is deep pure goodness that cannot be completely captured in any human words so God Himself gave us a bit of a description in 1 Corinthians 13 about the way of love.

Here’s what 1 Corinthians 13:4–8 says about love.

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

This is what love is. Patience and kindness, especially to those who hurt you. There’s love in humility and politeness even to those who are rude. Love isn’t stubborn or hardheaded, it doesn’t resent. Love rejoices in doing what is right all the time. 

Love as the Greatest Commandment

In acting out all these, you’d realize that you’re slowly fulfilling the commandments because the basis of all of them is love.

Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Romans 13:10 RSV

To love is to be good to a fault. To be good even when it hurts you, to be kind to the undeserving and without any sense of pride. 

The John 3:16 Love

A top-tier example of this love is the love who chases you and finds you to save you and bless you, even when you have no idea about it, even when you have rejected it. The Love who is jealous of you and will destroy obstacles above and beyond to get to you. The Love who lays down a majestic life, to go through pain and humiliation, to shed blood as payment for your wrongs just to get closer to you. The John 3:16 love.

For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

 No one else will ever love you in a way that exceeds this. No one else can want you more than this. And you know that if you believe this, believe in Him, then no matter what situations life may put you in, He is for you. He didn’t save you because heaven got boring and he wanted to put on a show. He saved you because he loved you and couldn’t bear to see you end in damnation no matter what it would cost Him. This love doesn’t end or fade. This is love in its fullness.

Conclusion

If you want to love, love like this. In all your relationships and wherever you find yourself, emulate this love.