What is Love?

What is Love? 

I’m so curious if any of you started singing in your head just now…

Actually, it’d be really great if each of us answered the question ”What is love?” the same way. And not based on lyrics from a ‘90s banger, but based on the Bible. 

The Bible says, love is a command—“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Matt 22:37). “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:39). Christians are to love one another (1 John 3:23) and even to love our enemies (Matt 5:44). Love is a command…and, I don’t know about you, but I think love is hard. Am I the only one who sometimes struggles even to love the people I love most? And yet nowhere does God say He’ll give us a pass—when we’re not feeling very loving, or when others are unlovable. 

Last week Pastor Marshall said that God’s love transforms us. So maybe what we need is to look at God’s love—maybe that will transform how we love.

• John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son…”

• Eph 5:2, Christ—that’s God’s Son—“loved us and gave Himself up for us, a…sacrifice to God.”

Did you hear the action that’s at the heart of God’s love? I’ll give you another chance to hear it, Gal 2:20, “…the Son of God…loved me and gave Himself for me.”

For God, love is not first a feeling, but an action. Love is giving sacrificially for the benefit of another. Here’s the way I like to answer the question—it’s not as catchy as that lyric some of you sang in your head just a few moments ago, but it is biblical:

This is love: I give what I have, that you need, because God wants me to, regardless of how I feel.

Of course, the key here is discerning what God wants us to do. Love doesn’t demand that we do what others want or what so-and-so would’ve done. The best place to find what God wants us to do is in His Word—God’s commands and the fruit of the Spirit are a good place to start. And just get ready, you’ll find that what God wants you to do won’t always be what you want or feel like doing. 

Think of how perfectly Jesus obeyed this command: Sinners like us needed righteousness; otherwise we would never see God. Jesus had it, and He gave His righteousness by giving His body in death, as our substitute “because God wanted Him to, regardless of how He felt.” Remember the Garden of Gethsemane? Jesus felt the love He gave before He gave it on the cross. Jesus admitted to feeling “very sorrowful” (Matt 26:38). But there was no other way Jesus could give us His relationship with God. And Jesus knew God wanted Him to save sinners by dying in our place. 

In other words, this is how Jesus loved: He gave what He had, that we needed, because God wanted Him to, regardless of how He felt. 

Here is my exhortation: Remember the Bible’s answer to the question, What is Love? I give what I have, that you need, because God wants me to, regardless of how I feel. But don’t just memorize what love is/start obeying this command in the many opportunities God gives us each day. And that call leads us to confession of how we’ve fallen short of this.