Love

Years ago there was a very popular song by Tina Turner entitled, ” What`s love got to do with it?” One line in the song is this; ” what`s love but a second-hand emotion?”

In reality, that is a gross misrepresentation of the word love and yet many people may feel the same way.

We may think that love comes and goes like the wind and we have no control because love is just some fleeting feeling or passion.

What is love?

Perhaps it is easier to define if we first eliminate what love is not.

Love is not a feeling or an emotion even though it may be the effects of love. Love is not something that pleases our flesh or selfish lusts. Of course, there is a worldly, self-serving and selfish love that exists. But that is not the kind of love that God has given to us or that He has commanded  Christians to live by.

We can love money, power, or ourselves if we so choose. However, the results of this worldly love are evident everywhere we look in our world and culture today. “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” The love of self ignores our command to love others as we should and seeks our interests above all others which is in direct disobedience to the word of God which commands us to esteem others better than ourselves, and look out for the interests of others and not just our own.

How can we as Christians be known by our love when we have so foolishly patterned our love after the world? We think love means we cannot stand up for truth for fear of offending someone or risk being labeled as intolerant or as an extremist. Wicked and perverse ideologies devoid of truth and reason have dominated not only the lost, but believers. This has allowed for distorted and harmful views of what love is. To love as God loves, we must also hate what God hates. So, just as we can love in the wrong way, we can also love the wrong things. 

15″Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world-the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one`s possessions is not from the Father, but is from the world. 17 And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does the will of God remains forever. “

1 John 2:15-17

(Christian Standard Bible)

The bible has much to say about love because after all, God is love.  

There is a very descriptive passage of scripture that describes love for us so that we can know for certain what real love is. 

1 Corinthians 13 is known as the love chapter and rightly so. It is both beautiful and convicting to the reader as God describes real love.

1″ If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, 5 is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. 6 Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. “

1 Corinthians 13:1-8

(Christian Standard Bible)

The good news is that God`s love is not some fleeting feeling or emotion that is here today and gone tomorrow. No, God`s love is true and sure and everlasting. 

35 ” Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or danger or sword?

36 As it is written: Because of you we are being put to death all day long; We are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.

37  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 

38  For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing well be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 8: 35-39

1 “I love the Lord because he has heard my appeal for mercy.

2 Because he has turned his ear to me, I will call out to him as long as I live. “

Psalms 116: 1,2

“For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, just as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights.”

Proverbs 3:12

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a difficult time.”

Proverbs 17:17

…“hate evil and love good…”

Amos 5:15

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. “

Matthew 5:44,45

“No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Matthew 6:24

“For God loved the world in this way; He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16

(Christian Standard Bible)

Languages Without Love – 1 Corinthians 13:1 1862 Oct 17, 1976 – John MacArthur – GRACE TO YOU

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