What is Love?

Our brother is getting married on Saturday, and the upcoming marriage has me thinking of love. The kind of love that I am thinking about is not the romantic kind, though. This post is about perfect love. Biblical love. The love that we have for family and friends. The love that we have for the hurting and those who are all alone in the world. What is love, perfect love, and how can we live it out?

We love because God loved us first. We are reminded of that in the Bible, and it is something that is important to remember as we think about love. Without God’s love, we would not be able to love. Without God first making us and giving us the chance to live our lives out here on earth, we would not be able to love. When we are filled with God’s love, we can love everyone around us in a beautiful way.

1 John 4:19

We love because He first loved us.

Love is sincere. It is real. It is not fake. Everyone has people in their life who treat them in a fake way. There are people who claim to be our friends but really only want to get something from us. Love is not fake or pretend. Love is real, it is authentic, it is honest. Perfect love is from the heart and something that is true and trustworthy.

Romans 12:9

Love must be sincere…

Love is willing to die in order to look out for others. Most of us have someone in our life who we would die for, someone who we love so much that we would sacrifice our own life for them. True love is strong enough that it empowers us to lay down our lives for others. Perfect love pushes us to give all that we are in order to look out for the ones that we care about.

John 15:13

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Love is greater than everything else. There are rules that we follow. Some of those rules come from the Bible and they are good. We should follow them. But no rule is as great as the rule to love others. Perfect love stands above all else. Living in love is more important than anything else. Out of faith, hope, and love, the greatest one is - surprisingly - love.

1 Corinthians 13:13

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Love is special and it is beautiful. Let us all cling to love and all that it is.

How can you show love to those around you this week?

By Emily Acker, co-author of No Longer Broken