"Let All You Do Be Done In Love"

(The first in a series)

Love is a mighty broad word in our language. We apply it to everything from friends to football to mashed potatoes to God Himself. Without a clearer definition we will surely miss the point of the Bible’s teaching about love.

The Greeks had several different words for several different kinds of love:
• Eros described the physical, sensual, passionate love between the sexes—a love that tends toward the satisfaction of one’s own appetites.
• Storge referred to love of family, especially that between parents and children.
• Philia was the tender affection shared by people who have something in common—friends, family, even fellow humans.
• Agape, unlike the other three, described a love that transcends mere emotion, one that is an act of the will which seeks only the good of the one loved.

All these varieties of love have their place in human life. But it’s the last one that is most forcefully commended to us in Scripture. It is a love like God’s love toward us. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). This love moved God to meet our greatest need, in spite of our utter unworthiness, at awful personal cost. That’s the very sort of love Jesus commands us to have for one another (John 13:34-35).

While God never technically defines this love, He gives us a crystal clear picture of it in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Instead of expressing it in abstract terms, His apostle Paul depicts love in action. It may not be obvious in English, but all fifteen descriptions of love in these verses are in verb form. As one of my teachers put it, “If love were a person, this is what it would do.”

Read this inspired description of the character of love. And notice the importance placed on it (verses 1-3). If this love doesn’t motivate us, then no gift, no deed, no sacrifice is worthwhile. We need to understand it and seize it for ourselves. Without it, we can never really be like 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).