Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.- Matthew 22:37.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. And love never fails-1Crorinthians 13:4-7

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.-1 John 4:7-12

What is Love?

Love is not selfish,
Nor is it vain.
Love nurtures joy,
It does not inflict pain.

Love is not jealous,
Does not try to keep score,
Has no need to be vengeful,
Is never proud at its core.

Love is eternally patient,
And incredibly strong,
Does not reduce problems
To who’s right and who’s wrong.

Love celebrates truth,
Blossoms in hope,
Is faithful and just,
Is endless in scope.

Love creates miracles
When allowed to prevail;
Love is the essences of God.
And love never fails.
©Linda Troxell

Love, we use that word a lot. My brother loves his car, my aunt loves her dog, my sister loves mocha lattes and my daughter loves the color blue. What do you love? Do you love your home, your kids, and your yearly vacations? And what does that mean, what does it mean to love?

Dictionary.com has 28 entries for love. By listening to the language used in our culture, I would have expected the first and primary definition to be something like To like someone or something intensely. But, it turns out, that definition is number 17: to have a strong liking for; take great pleasure in i.e. to love music. However, the other 27 definitions all speak of feelings, affection or sex.

The most exhaustive definition of love I found was in Webster’s Dictionary of 1828. I often look words up in this dictionary when I am doing Bible studies because Daniel Webster was a devout Christian and his definitions reflect the Christian morality and outlook and seem more relevant to the Christian’s way of thinking. Mr. Webster’s dictionary has 9 entries for love. These definitions also center primarily on feelings, affection, and sex. The first one is very long and it begins with: In a general sense to be pleased with; to regard with affection, on account of some qualities which excite pleasing sensations or desire of gratification, It goes on for 11 more sentences and ends with a scripture: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Matthew 22:37.

In the larger culture, the word love is so overused in describing our feelings for almost everything, it has been rendered meaningless. Alternatively, it is boiled down to a syrupy romantic feeling that causes warmth in the pit of our stomach and a chill up our spine while “exciting pleasing sensations or desire of gratification.” According to Hollywood and Hallmark, being in love causes us to have weak knees; it puts our brain in a fog and it causes birds to sing louder and flowers to bloom brighter. Romantic movies and Valentine’s Day cards tell us, love, defined this way, fuels every little girl’s dream of the perfect wedding and every man’s fear of commitment. It is part of that myth called the American dream.

But seriously, most of us include falling in love as part of what we expect from our lives. Typically we expect to go to college, fall in love, get married and have children; maybe not always in that order, but still, those are the typical assumptions most of us make. So, my guess is that no one reading this would take exception to the definitions of either dictiorany.com or of Daniel Webster. It is pretty well established that love, be it intense feelings of caring and commitment to another person or more frivolous delight with a place or a thing, is about feeling. Everybody agrees right? Well, not everyone. I disagree.

Yes, I believe that love can involve intense feelings (from here on I will be speaking of love for another person). Yes, I agree that love includes caring and commitment. But I believe that all of the definitions we’ve considered, as well as our cultural perception of love, leave out the most important elements of real love; that it’s a choice, a responsibility, and an action.

We don’t fall in love, it is not like a pothole we fall into or a cliff we fall over. We may fall into a strong attraction or even lust, in the sense that we may not have been looking for it or have seen it coming. And this may leave us very vulnerable to the extremely strong pull of lust or attraction. And they can definitely cause that warm feeling in the pit of our stomach or the brain fog which has been ascribed to love.

Unfortunately, this strong pull of lust or attraction is what is labeled love by our culture. But that is not what love is. Real love is a choice we make and a responsibility we accept. And unlike lust or attraction, when the pleasure of love ebbs, we do not walk away from the responsibility we’ve accepted.

Part of the confusion for those of us who are English language natives is that in English there is only one word for love. We use the same word to say we derive great pleasure from chocolate ice cream as we do to say we are devoted to God. We are stuck with the same word for two very different feelings. However in Greek, the language of the New Testament, there are four words for love allowing for much better clarity of feelings.

The Greek language has one word for each of four kinds of love. There is Godly love, agape; the love for a friend, Philo; the love for family, storge; and erotic love, Eros. Now, having four different words certainly helps in differentiating between loving your spouse and loving your mother, loving your best friend or loving God. An important distinction because each of these loves differs in important ways.

But each share important aspects as well, for no matter which kind of love we consider, all of them require a choice, a responsibility, and action. Anybody who has ever been married, ever been part of a family, had a best friend or sought a relationship with God can attest to the fact that we cannot depend on feelings of love alone to maintain a successful relationship. Having a relationship, no matter what it is, requires some level of choice to agree to it and responsibility and action to maintain it.

We have to make an initial choice to begin a relationship, with the exception of the family relationship, which we are born into. And we must continue to make that same choice every day in deciding to stay in any relationship, even one with our family. Because, each relationship comes with a responsibility for actions which are in the best interest of the relationship and those who are a part of it. Admittedly this is a dry and clinical view of relationships which are so much more than just choice, responsibility and action.

However, all of these elements are vitally important in maintaining a relationship. And they aren’t difficult to achieve on good days when we feel love and warmth toward those with whom we are in a relationship. But on those days when we aren’t feeling that love and warmth when we cannot say for sure we even want to be in the relationship, those things still need to be done.

This is when we see that real love, so necessary to a successful relationship, is a choice to take responsibility to do the actions that need to be done in order to maintain the relationship and meet the needs of our partners in the relationship, no matter what our feelings are at any given moment.

Okay, now we’ve talked about how love is not a thrill in the pit of our stomach, a brain fog or a strong desire to be with someone. And we’ve discussed that love requires more than feeling it requires action. I really believe this is the truth about real love; maybe you do too. But we’re Christians, what we may think or feel about the truth is irrelevant. We know how to determine what is true, we go to God’s Word. So let’s see what the Word says about love.

The Apostle John spent much of his later years writing almost exclusively about love. It’s been said by some that John’s description of the nature of God in 1 John 4:7-12 is the most beautiful in the entire Bible. In this section John tells us that God is love, love is His nature and He created us because He loves and He created us to love.

Verses 7-8 tell us that love is from God, that everyone who loves, knows God. But those who don’t love cannot know God, because God is love. In verses 9-10 John tells us that God loved us first, manifesting His love for us by sending His Son to pay for our sins and give us eternal life. That in  Jesus, we are provided a model for living love. For, everything Jesus did while on earth was motivated by love, as is everything God does.

Verses 11-12 go on to tell us that because God loved us so much we ought to love each other, thereby allowing God to have full expression through that love for one another. John tells us that through the love we have for one another, God lives in us and His love is perfected through us. In verse 13 John asserts that we can know that God abides in us and we in Him because He sent His Spirit to live in us. This, John says, is God’s ultimate proof of His love for us

Now, through this beautiful scripture the Bible tells us what love is; it’s the nature of God. And it reminds us that we need only look to the life of Jesus for a model for that love in action. This is so important because we all know that God has mandated us to live as Jesus lived and that part of living as Jesus lived is loving as Jesus loved. And, as John reminds us, we must love one another to allow God’s full expression through us.

Some of you may be thinking that it’s hard enough trying to live as Jesus lived, how can you ever feel enough love to love as Jesus loved? After all, Jesus was fully divine as well as fully human. We, on the other hand, are only human.

This task would certainly be overwhelming if we had to rely only on feeling enough love to obtain the goal. But if you remember, I purposed above that love is not a feeling, but a responsibility, a choice, and an action. And, I offer Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13 to support that. This beautiful chapter alongside the Beatitudes is probably the most read of the entire Bible and shows us that love is, in fact, far more action, than it is feeling.

Paul begins this chapter by telling us that without love, spiritual gifts and Godly actions are nothing. In verses 1-3 he tells us the importance of love in utilizing the spiritual gifts and giving meaning to the acts. Without love, he says, these things would be useless. Then, in verses 4-7, Paul describes for us the attributes of real love, the kind of love that Jesus modeled for us during His time on earth.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, and love never fails.-1Crorinthians 13:4-7

In studying this chapter the first thing we learn is the importance of love in giving meaning to our charitable actions and in our ability to use the gifts God gave us. This, then, indicates that love is a responsibility. Next, we learn that as Paul describes them, 11 of the 15 attributes of love are behaviors, rather than feelings, showing us that while love includes feelings it is definitely more action than feeling.

Paul goes on to tell us, in half of his descriptions of the attributes of love, what love isn’t rather than what love is. This indicates that we can choose behavior that is loving or behavior that isn’t, revealing love as a choice and an act. This chapter clearly illustrates that more than a feeling, love is behaviors that we choose in order to do what pleases God, supporting my assertion that real love is a responsibility, a choice, and an action. I think we all agree that God called us to live a life of love as Jesus did. After considering Paul’s description of love, perhaps we can now also agree that the love we are called to live is a responsibility which clearly calls for a choice of action.

After reading Paul’s description of the sublime and selfless attributes of love, you may be overwhelmed thinking that you are responsible to manifest them. I know I was. But then someone helped me to understand two things. First, that God doesn’t expect us to do this on our own. He wants us to pray to Him to help us to love in this way. He realizes that this kind of love is contrary to our nature and our inclinations. God knows our heart, if we are asking for His help and we are sincerely trying to reach the goal He has given us, that’s good enough for Him.

The second thing is that because love is a choice, a responsibility, and an action, the behavior is much more important than either feelings or thoughts; the most important thing is not that we feel loving but that we treat others in a loving way.

For example, Paul says love is patient and kind. Well, sometimes no matter how hard we try, we will not feel patient or kind. But that should not prevent us from being responsible and making the choice to act in a patient manner and treat others kindly regardless of what we are, or are not feeling. Feeling all of the wonderful things Paul describes as love is not a prerequisite for being loving, rather, it is our reward for carrying out the actions of love regardless of how we are feeling.

In my quest to answer God’s call to live a more Godly life, including loving as Jesus loved, I am inspired by what C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity when writing about God’s help in changing our behaviors, this one being Chasity: We may indeed be sure that perfect Chasity—like perfect charity—will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself, but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still.

May God, in your pursuit of living a life modeled after His Son, grant you the gift of real love, sanctify your soul, and grace you with His peace which surpasses all understanding.

Points for Prayer and Pondering

Have you ever thought of love as purely an emotion over which you have no choice or control?

If yes, did anything you read here change your mind? If no did you find your ideas at odds with the cultural norm?

Have you ever felt that you were at a loss to find words other than love to describe your strong positive feelings toward people or things?

What are your thoughts about being mandated, and being able to exhibit, the 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love? Are you mandated, and if so, are you able?