What is Love?

What is love?

Love is often defined in terms of what we “do” but I believe we need to be careful not to confuse the evidence of love with love itself.  I Corinthians 13 tells us: “¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

 ⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

 ⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

 ¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (NIV).

Verses 1-3 are clear that what we do, if not undergirded with love, is nothing.  Thus, love is not the action, love is the motivation; the heart of the matter.  Paul goes on to describe love based on the evidence of its presence, but again, he does not assume to define love here, just to describe love.

One thing we can know for sure is that love is vitally important.  Verses 8-13 explain that love is everything, the greatest thing, the only thing.

I am going to suggest that love is the presence of Jesus.  Further, I am suggesting that without Jesus, there is no love.   I am saying that love is not an action, it is His presence.  In addition, I am saying that love behaves as that presence behaves.

What does Scripture say about these contentions?  I John 4 states: “⁷Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹²No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (NIV). 

Alright, so we love each other because God’s love lives within us.  What does this love look like?  There may be a temptation, in a spirit of religiosity, to believe that means we accept everything from everyone and never confront anything or be negative about anything; however, I would ask if that is how Jesus acted in love?  In other words, we may know Jesus loved the woman caught in adultery when He showed her the meaning of grace.  But we sometimes forget He ended his conversation with her by saying go and leave your life of sin.  Was that also loving? And now I ask, did Jesus show love to the Pharisees?  He called them hypocrites along with assorted other descriptions (Matthew 23).  Perhaps that is a little tougher for us to see, but it is indeed love.  To allow them to continue in their hypocrisy without bringing it to their attention is not love.  In fact, I would call that choice the easy road, even a selfish road – it protects me and my reputation, but does not help them!

Galatians 6:1 states it clearly: “¹Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted” (NIV).   Similarly, II Timothy 2:24-26 says: “²⁴And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. ²⁵Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, ²⁶and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will” (NIV).   II Timothy continues, in chapter 4, “¹In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: ²Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. ³For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear” (NIV). 

Which is the more loving action: to correct, rebuke, encourage, restore and instruct, or to accept, avoid, ignore, allow and excuse?  Is it loving to leave someone in the trap of the devil?

We are living in a time when people do not like correction, and don’t appreciate a rebuke.  This time is predicted in Scripture, again in II Timothy, in chapter 3:  “¹But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. ²People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, ⁴treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— ⁵having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.  ⁶They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, ⁷always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth” (NIV, italics added for emphasis).  That kind of talk is often called “being judgmental.”  I contend, however, that it is not judgmental to recognize the presence of evil or the enemy’s deception.  What is judgmental is to equate someone’s nature to the presence of the enemy’s lies in them.  In other words, if I decide a person is a “bad” person, I am judging, and acting in the place of Jesus, Who is the judge of the living and the dead.  However, if I recognize that a person’s behavior is “bad” or “sin” and I confront and correct the behavior, and rebuke the enemy, I am using the discernment the Holy Spirit has provided, and I am loving that person enough to partner with God in the hope God will help them get out of the deception.  A diamond covered in coal is still a diamond; you just can’t see it for the blackness around it, and as a result the beauty of the diamond is lost, unless the coal can be chipped away.  It is love to stand with God against the enemy’s schemes, on behalf of the one you love, to help point out the coal.

A question I must ask myself is: do I love that person enough to risk their rejection, or is their acceptance of me more important to me than their best interest, maybe even their soul?  For in correcting a brother, there is always the possibility of rejection, and the rejection of the correction may take the form of a rejection of me, particularly if that person is in the middle of an enemy deception.  Jesus demonstrated selfless love in every area – with the prostitutes and tax collectors, and with the Pharisees and teachers of the law; with Peter and with Paul.  His confrontation and correction was just as much His love as was the cross. 

Proverbs 10:17 He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray.