Love is... (Introduction)

My wife and I have been married for a little over twenty years. I remember just after we got married, when we returned from our honeymoon, that I suddenly realized I didn’t know how to love my wife as God would have me love her. I remember praying in our small apartment in Troy, New York, and asking God to teach me how to love her. That prayer began a 21 year journey through the scriptures learning what the Bible has to say about love.

My first revelation was that I lacked the required love to be a loving husband. God commands husbands to “Love your wife,” yet human love falls far short in both capacity and quantity when compared to God’s love. When we try to love people out of our own supply of love, our supply quickly runs out. This is especially true in a marriage. During the “honeymoon” period our love seems boundless and it is hard to imagine ever fighting with each other, but in time our selfishness and self centeredness reappears and overshadows out love for one another. In ourselves we lack love for each other, but not in God. John reminds us that, “God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:16) If God is love and God abides in us, then love abides in us. In ourselves we may be insufficient to love others as we ought to, but in God we have an endless supply of love. God not only placed His Spirit in us but He has also placed His love in us. Because God’s love abides in us, we are able to love one another with a Godly love, an unconditional love, and a love that is never ending. This ability to love with a God like love is one of the distinguishing characteristics of a child of God. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:7-8) Without God it is impossible to truly love someone. Apart from God we cannot fully understand what it means to love, but once we are introduced to Him who is love, then love is released in our hearts and we are able to love one another with an unconditional love.

My second revelation was that I did not know how to express my love to my wife in a way that would be meaningful to her. While there are many books that espouse the benefits and necessity of romantic love in a marriage, romantic expressions of love comprise only a small part of marriage life. Even worse, an understanding of romantic love did not help me understand how I should love others besides my wife. There is only one person I can express my love to in a romantic way and many other relationships where a romantic expression of love would be terrible inappropriate. King Solomon said, “Better is open rebuke than love that is concealed.” (Proverbs 27:5) It is one thing to love someone; it is another to be able to express that love to them. Love must be expressed to be communicated and it must be expressed in a way that communicates love to the other person. I remember the story of some friends of ours. Every year, on his wife’s birthday, the husband would buy his wife cloths, thinking it would communicate to her how much he loved her. However, his wife did want cloths, what she really wanted was a new vacuum. She would have gladly given up all the clothes to get her new vacuum. The husband thought he was communicating love but he was missing what she really wanted.

Fortunately, the Bible has a lot to say about how to communicate love one to another. In 1st Corinthians 13, Paul outlines some of the ways that Godly love expresses itself. These expressions are not limited to a husband and wife but can be applied to all of our relationships. If we learn these expressions of love, then the people we care for will be able to experience our love and will know that they are loved and cared for. Over the next several posts we will be looking at 1st Corinthians and what it has to say about love.

David Robison