Skip to main content

Love Is Love?

             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. (I John 4:16)

I seem to like to gripe about definitions. As a friend put it, “words matter” to me. Today’s passage is a great example. I’ve defined “love” before. If you’ve been alive over the past decade, you’ll have encountered some statement of “love is love.” Is it?

When you ask people why they love someone, you may hear things like “He makes me laugh,” or “he makes me feel good” or even “chemistry.” Would the people who made that claim say that they love that person like they love their favorite food? Would they love that person the way they love their pets, parents, siblings, or children? Would they stay in love with that person if he/she said, “no sex until after we’re married?” There are at least four words for love in Greek, so is all love the same? Clearly, it isn’t. Sometimes, love is acquisitiveness, greed, ambition, or lust. Sometimes, “love” means submitting to manipulation. “If you loved me, you would…”

  If, as today’s passage stipulates, God is the definition of love or the exemplar of it. If love is love, then no love can be love – according to the Bible- unless it is consistent with God’s behavior. So, let’s put this in really nasty terms. If your beloved cheats on you, multiple times, and you don’t forgive, you don’t love. That doesn’t mean you necessarily end up together with that beloved, but that can be a result. If your relationship is about your enjoyment at your beloved’s expense, it’s not love. If, in short, your “love” is what the world calls “love,” it probably isn’t love. If you are willing to break your marriage vows, it's not love.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listen To Him

              The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him . (Deuteronomy 18:15)           Today, we switch from Jesus’ claims of “I am” to prophecies made about Him. My Bible platform is starting in Deuteronomy. I’d start in Genesis, where we would learn that the one who would save us would be a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15), of Noah (by default), Abram and Sara(Genesis 12:1-3). Isaac (Genesis 17:19), Jacob (Genesis 25:23), Judah (Genesis 29:8), and David (II Samuel 7:12-16). There were also references to a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). In addition, there were prophecies about when and where the prophet/Messiah would be born and what would happen to him.           Of course, naysayers will claim that Jesus’ life was retrofitted or reverse enginee...
Post a Comment
Read more