2 minute read
How Well Do You Understand Love?
from February 2023
by Dr. Alan Hix
When people think of February, many immediately think of Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is often viewed as a time to express one’s love for another. However, what we mean when we say we love someone is conditioned by our definition of love. How would you define “love?” a. Strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties b. Attraction based on sexual desire: affection and tenderness felt by lovers c. Affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests However, for human beings, “love” is an emotional word that cries for expression beyond a simple definition. Let’s return to the question above: How would you define love? My suspicion is that your definition would come from your own emotional connection to the concept of love.
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The Merriam-Webster Dictionary lists three aspects of its primary definition of love.
Poetry is a common place to find expressions of love. In Hartley Coleridge’s Sonnet VII, he begins his poem with, “Is love a fancy, or a feeling? No. It is immortal as immaculate Truth.” In his Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare echoes a similar expression of the lasting nature of love: “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks but bears it out even to the edge of doom.”
From these lofty expressions by classic poets, the definition of “love” finds it poorest expression in the 1970 movie Love Story. After a lovers’ quarrel, Jenny reveals to Oliver that she is dying of leukemia. Heartbroken, he begs her forgiveness. Her response has found a continuing life in popular culture: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” This definition is a far cry from the one expressed by Coleridge and Shakespeare.
Country music fans may be familiar with Clint Black’s “Something That We Do.” He closes his song with:
I remember well the day we wed I can see that picture in my head Love isn't just those words we said It's somethin' that we do
This description of love as not just a feeling but as an action goes far beyond Jenny’s definition above. However, is this definition sufficient? Defining love only within the context of human relationships will always fall short, because a complete definition of love must include the source of love—which is God.
The Apostle John approaches the subject of love in this way: 7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. . .. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another (1 John 4:7–8, 10-11).
John helps us to see that true love is not simply a feeling or an action. True love is a person God. Genesis 1:26 declares that we are made in the image of God. Part of that image is loving as God loves. This rich understanding of love is the basis for the Apostle Paul’s description of love in 1 Corinthians 13. Here we see that love is feeling, doing, giving, sacrificing, enduring, and much more. In this moving passage, Paul gives us a picture of what it looks like to love as God loves.
On this Valentine’s Day, let us as believers in Christ commit to reflecting his image by loving as he loves.
