“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:7-8

As believers, we desire to live godly lives, to become more Christ-like. We know from Scripture that one attribute of God is love: God Is love. God loves His son. When Jesus was baptized to begin his ministry, God spoke from heaven: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). And we know that God loves His creation: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Love is one of God’s communicable attributes, meaning that while God IS Love, he also commands us as his children to love. In fact, Jesus says that the greatest commandment God has given to us humans is to love God and to love each other.

There are many claims to true love. Love stories, romance, sacrificial love. We may claim to love our homes, our country, our flowers, our chocolate cake, the book we are reading, the car we are driving. But what is love, really? Love certainly can be described as a feeling, but true love is more about what we do than how we feel. In fact, many times love may be described as what we do despite how we feel. For example, love is making dinner for your family when you are dead on your feet from exhaustion. Love is caring for someone who is sick when you would much rather be sitting in your recliner watching television.

True love is a verb, the object of true love is a person, and the motivation and empowerment for true love is God. Galatians 5:22-23 tells us “…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control….” What this means is that the only love that matters to God is love that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and motivated by our love for God and gratitude for what He has done for us. Therefore, if we want to please God and imitate Christ, we will prayerfully seek to make every thought we think, every word we speak, and every action we take be done with pure motives to be pleasing to God and for the benefit of the person with whom we are engaging, with no thought of selfish gain. And it means that we also behave this way toward those who are not able to repay as well as toward people that we do not like.

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

I do not know about you, but all this seems great, but humanly impossible. How can we ever be this loving? The only way is by focusing on the One who is Love. So, the way we show love in a God-honoring way is:

1. Make God the priority in our lives; make it a priority to worship Him, praise Him, thank Him, and continually seek His will. King David set an example for how he praised God with his thoughts and speech: “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you” (Psalm 63:3).
2. Pray for the Holy Spirit to guide you, to give you wisdom and discernment, and to empower you to do God’s will. Then you can be confident that you are loving in the way that pleases God.

Paul tells us all about love in 1 Corinthians 13. At the end of the chapter, he pronounces this remarkable statement: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). He does not mean that love is more important than faith or hope. In fact, those are all equally important. What Paul means is that of the three, only one is eternal. Faith is what God requires of us to achieve eternal life. Hope likewise is our confident expectation of eternal life with our Father in Heaven. Once we have passed into Heaven, faith and hope have done their jobs, so to speak. However, we will continue to love in Heaven; therefore, in this context, “the greatest of these is love.”

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19).

In Christ,

Judy