Love

What is love? Is it a feeling? Or is it an attitude? We constantly hear different definitions about love from poets, scientists and philosophers over the centuries , but what does the Holy Bible teach about this? Is love really that complicated? Well, it's actually pretty simple.

(1 John 4.16) And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. GOD IS LOVE. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

In the Bible, we are ordered to be holy just like God is holy(Levitcus 20.26), and we are also ordered to imitate Him (Ephesians 5.1), so we have to know how does He love to find a true answer to this question.

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The love of God

(1 John 4.10) This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
(Hebrews 5.8) But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(John 3.16)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.

God our Lord showed us His love in His sacrifice and mercy towards us. We can only learn to love if we look up to His and Jesus' love. We are commanded by Christ himself to do that:

(John 15.12-13) My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.

We are called to be humble and merciful just like Jesus was, always willing to help and sacrifice for others, even for our enemies, because God loved us when we were still sinners and rebellious.

(Romans 5.10) For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life!
(Matthew 5.44-45) But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
(Romans 12.20) If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

The two biggest commandments are:

• Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
• Love your neighbor as yourself. (Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you.)

In the end Apostle Paul gives us one of the most beautiful definitions of love ever written

(1 Corinthians 13) If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 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. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

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