What is love?
The dictionary defines love as a strong feeling of affection, devotion, and adoration toward another person or God.
I would say that love is the ultimate bond or connection that a person can experience with another person or God. Love is the highest expression of life.
So what does it mean to say that God is love?
God’s goodness and God’s love are not all that different. The main difference is that God’s goodness is something that is inherent to Himself. God can be good without anything else existing. But God’s love has to do with relationship. God’s love is an extension of God’s goodness that goes beyond the individual into the relational. God’s goodness is a fundamental part of Himself, and His love is how He fundamentally expresses His goodness to everything else.
And just as goodness does not always equal pleasure, love is not always a walk in the clouds. Love comes with obligation, responsibility, and commitment. If you love someone you also have to work things out with them, and take care of them, and put aside your wants and desires for them. Love requires us to control ourselves, to stretch ourselves, to humble ourselves, and to give ourselves. The deeper you love someone the more you give yourself to them. You might give up a day of time to help a good friend, but you would give your life for your child. And that willingness to give of yourself is an expression of your love. So, if love is the highest expression of life, then you could say that sacrifice is the highest expression of love.
And, to be clear, we have to remember that God is not just “loving,” but that He is love. Love is another thread in the fabric of His being that weaves us together with Him. God created us because He is love, and there can be no love without someone or something to have a relationship with. In order to fully express His love, God had to create something to love - otherwise He would never be the fullest expression of Himself. And since God created us out of a pure expression of His love, He is the most worthy of being loved by us.
God is the very essence of love. So, when we experience love, we are actually experiencing God. Jesus says that the greatest commandment in the entire Bible is to love God and to love each other. Love is the main point of everything that God wants to teach us, and it is the ultimate purpose behind everything He wants us to do - because it is how He can fully express Himself to us. And when we fully love in the way that God wants us to, we are also fully experiencing God at the same time - because God is love!
As we love, fully love, and fully experience God this way, God is also able to fully express Himself. He is able not just to be good, but to be love.
But, don’t hear what I’m not saying. This dynamic of God being able to fully express Himself when we fully express love does not mean that God depends on you or me for this expression. He can express His love in many ways - He just chose us as one of those ways. He does not depend on us to express love, but He wants us to. That is why we have free will, and why love is not something you can force. God does not have to force us to love in order to express Himself. He wants us to love because He loves us, and He keeps giving us chances and opportunities to love because He is love, and that’s what love does.
There is a chapter in the Bible that describes love in great detail. It calls out the attributes of love - love is patient, love is kind, etc… And since God is love, you could also say that this chapter describes God. God is patient, God is kind… And in that chapter it says that you can have all the gifts and talents in the world, but love is the greatest, and everything else is meaningless without it. Which means that God is the greatest gift that we can possess and everything else is meaningless without Him!
And how does God express His love to us? He created us. He provides everything we need. He gives us hope and comfort. He gives us instruction and correction. He allows us to express ourselves freely. But the ultimate expression of love is sacrifice, and God gave Himself - through His son Jesus Christ - as a sacrifice for us. Jesus didn’t just die because God wanted payment for our sins, but Jesus died as God’s ultimate expression of His love for us. God came directly to us and gave Himself in the most costly way that we can understand because He wants us to know that He loves us.
The word “believe” actually stems from an ancient Proto-Germanic word that meant to “be loving.” So, when we believe in God, and we believe that Jesus died as a sacrifice to atone for our sins, we are reciprocating Gods love. And it is in that expression of love that the ultimate bond is formed between us and God. It is in our belief (our reciprocating of love) in God’s highest expression of His love for us (His sacrifice) that we get to experience the highest expression of life (His love).
Deuteronomy 7:7-8 (NLT) “The LORD did not set his heart on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other nations, for you were the smallest of all nations! Rather, it was simply that the LORD loves you, and he was keeping the oath he had sworn to your ancestors. That is why the LORD rescued you with such a strong hand from your slavery and from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Romans 5:5-8 (NLT) And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
Romans 8:35-39 (NLT)Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?
(As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”)
No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
1 John 4:8 (NASB95) The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
1 John 4:16-19 (NLT)We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.
God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first.
Deuteronomy 6:5 (NLT) And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.
Leviticus 19:18 (NASB95) ‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD.
Matthew 22:37-40 (NLT)Jesus replied, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’
This is the first and greatest commandment.
A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
John 14:31 (NLT) but I will do what the Father requires of me, so that the world will know that I love the Father. Come, let’s be going.
1 Corinthians 13 (NLT)If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.