It’s Time to Celebrate Love – But What Is Love, Really?

Today is Valentine’s Day, also known as the day for love. Red and pink hearts, bouquets of flowers, boxes of candy, shimmering jewelry, and even engagement rings will dominate – all in the name of love. But when all is said and done, do we really understand what true love is?

 

Our culture insists love is all about emotions, warm, fuzzy feelings we get when looking at that “special person.” It’s discovering your “soulmate,” finding “chemistry,” or as Hallmark romance movies put it, the “magical” moment when you realize that “he’s (or she’s) the one.” We “fall in love,” but people often fall out of it, too. Maybe love should have seatbelts to keep us from falling? 

There is nothing wrong with romantic love. Thankfully, my wife and I have enjoyed that for more than 47 years, and as they say about fine wines, love can get better with age – if you’re willing to invest the time and energy to keep it alive. Sadly, too many people aren’t so willing. Rather than experiencing a love strong enough to endure hardships and adversity, as well as joys and good times, their relationships wind up in Cupid’s junk yard, faint remembrances of what could have been.

 

Books written about love can’t be numbered. There are all kinds of “experts” out there claiming to know how to find and sustain love that works and grows. There’s one book, however, that I believe surpasses them all, one that’s passed the test of time – thousands of years, in fact.

 

That book is the Bible, that amazing collection of 66 books (39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New), written by dozens of different authors but with one consistent, unifying theme: That God, the Creator of all that is, was also the originator of love, starting with Adam and Eve and continuing to the present day. The Scriptures, we might say, are His comprehensive love letter to humankind.

 

The kind of love found in the Word of God, however, is quite unlike anything we’d see on “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette,” or any of the other “lust American-style” productions. The love demonstrated in the Scriptures is more about giving than receiving, selfless rather than selfish, unconditional rather than conditional, and sacrificial when necessary.

 

We see this in what’s perhaps the best-known verse of the Bible, John 3:16, where we’re told, “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.” When God gave His Son, Jesus Christ, it was not only for a cameo appearance. It wasn’t just for Him to serve as a role model, although He was that. 

 

It was so that Jesus might Himself provide the greatest gift of all, dying to pay the ultimate price for our spiritual freedom, becoming what theologians call the "propitiation" for our sins. As Romans 5:8 declares, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

 

As the Lord told His closest disciples not long before going to the cross to be crucified, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12-13). Why would the God of all eternity take on human flesh and willingly surrender to an excruciating death – becoming the one and only atonement for sin – unless motivated by a love beyond anything we can fully comprehend?

 

I’ve cited it before, but 1 Corinthians 13, called by some “the love chapter,” describes love in ways you won’t find in the “love” reality shows or the romance films. It declares that “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). 

 

When you think of love, do terms like patience, kindness, humility, consideration of others, slow to anger, forgiving, truthful, protecting, trusting, hopeful and persevering come to mind?

 

For many of us, those aren’t loving adjectives that immediately pop into our thoughts. But they should be. Why? Because when we cultivate and embrace a love like this then, as the passage continues, “Love never fails…. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:8,13).

I hope you’ll be spending this Valentine’s Day with the person – or people – that you love. And I hope your love for them, and their love for you, is more like that of 1 Corinthians 13 than the counterfeit for it depicted in the fantasy worlds of Hallmark and The Bachelor.