What is Love?

          Love, a word we use so often, and yet I wonder if we know what love truly is. This is a question that I have been asking myself for years, but for too long I was looking in the wrong places, I was looking for a set of rules that showed what love is. The definition of love is not found in a list, it is found in a person, Jesus Christ. Now that sounds extremely cliche, and overly simple and I admit it is not nearly as simple as that, while at the same time it really is just that simple. See I was looking for love in a definition of a word, but love is defined in the actions of Christ, in His life and His death. So often we associate love with an emotion, and to some extent it is, but it is so much more than that, it is far greater than a good feeling, or the butterflies in your stomach, it is a choice. We think that love is being willing to die for someone when true love is being willing to live for them. True love doesn't make a one time sacrifice, true love makes a daily sacrifice, considering the person you are loving and their needs above your own. Love does not have to consider others, love gets to consider others, it is a privilege, not a duty.

         True love gives everything expecting nothing in return. Christ lived a perfect life, and died a horrific death, not because we could give Him anything back, but because He loved us. We cannot give Him anything, any good we have is from Him and as such the love He displayed in His life and death was purely out of love because we can bring Him nothing. In the same way our love should be because of His love. We are incapable of truly loving others until we have first experienced His love, His love is the ocean, we are the rivers and streams that can only carry love to the world if we are being filled with His love. We cannot love our neighbor if we do not first experience His love, and then love Him back, it is only connected to Him that we can begin to love in the truest sense of the word, for in being connected to Him we begin to become like Him, and He is love.
       
       Now I said that true love is considering the needs of others above your own, and that is true, but true love is not being consumed with others, true love is being consumed with Christ.  Love does not mean that I go out of my way to avoid offending you, love means that I care enough about you to speak the truth, hopefully in a non-offensive way, but the Gospel is offensive and is the most loving thing I can share with anyone I encounter. Far be it from me to ever be offensive in myself, I pray that the only thing that has the potential to be offensive would be the Truth of Christ, not the "truth" of my own making.
 
    So what is love? "Love is patient and kind, love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on it's own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (1 Cor. 13:4-7) This list is not a list for the sake of having boxes to check off, this list is a list of the attributes of God. God is patient and kind, God does not envy or boast, He is not arrogant or rude. He does not insist on His own way; He is not irritable or resentful; He does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things He is love, love is not God, and God is not defined by love, but rather love is defined by who He is.

"By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35)