Love. We think we know what love is. Even if we think love has confused, hurt, and abandoned us, we still seek it. Why? We seek it because we’re created to seek it. We seek it even when we’ve been confused, hurt, and abandoned, because we confuse human love with God’s love. Human love is limited, so we’re going to be confused, hurt, and abandoned. It’s not love that has done these things to us; it’s people. And God is God, not “people.” We need to differentiate between flawed human love and completed God’s love.Under the age of 10, what was your perspective of love? How would you have defined love or known someone loved you?
What about when you were high school and/or college-age?
Now?
How do you expect your perception and definition of love will change in the next stage of your life?
God is love. 1 John 4:8 (NCV)
As we specifically consider “God is love,” let’s discover what love is, helping us to understand the character of God. Love is aptly strewn throughout God’s Word, but perhaps the most commonly referred to verses are found in 1 Corinthians 13.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, and it is not proud. Love is not rude, is not selfish, and does not get upset with others. Love does not count up wrongs that have been done. Love takes no pleasure in evil but rejoices over the truth. Love patiently accepts all things. It always trusts, always hopes, and always endures. Love never ends. There are gifts of prophecy, but they will be ended. There are gifts of speaking in different languages, but those gifts will stop. There is the gift of knowledge, but it will come to an end. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 (NCV)
If God is love (and he is), he is all these things:
Patient
Kind
Not jealous
Not boastful
Not proud
Not rude
Not demanding of own way
Not irritable
Keeps no record of wrongs
Does not rejoice in injustice
Rejoices when truth wins
Never gives up
Never loses faith
Always hopeful
Endures through every circumstance
Lasts forever
Reflect on these qualities of God. Make a note of any quality you sometimes struggle to believe. (Please recognize the Bible also says God is jealous. Without going into an in depth word study, consider jealous is used with slightly different meanings in different contexts.)
Let me assure you struggling is okay. Struggling comes from tension, and while tension left unattended can become destructive, tension leading to a progressive struggle produces growth. I encourage you to refuse to struggle on your own. You’ve considered the qualities of God’s love you struggle with the most so you can ask him to show you these qualities in real and personal ways.
God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world guilty, but to save the world through him. John 3:16-17 (NCV)
God’s love is active. Because he loved the world, he gave us Jesus, his one and only Son, to live on earth and to die an excruciating, humiliating death. Giving is an action. Love is an action. God’s love doesn’t take the easy path. He has the best conclusion in mind, but the path to that conclusion is often not easy. Don’t you think if there was ever a situation in which God would have found an easier path, he would have spared his own Son an excruciating and humiliating death? But God knew Jesus’ death was not the end result, and the benefit of your eternal life was worth the pain of the path. Next time you think you’re in an excruciating or humiliating situation, consider Jesus. God’s love is active, and he instructs us to love one another. That means our love should be active, too.
