What Is Love ?

I believe love is the genuine desire for another's well-being, and the appreciation of their fellowship.

This is not just physical well-being—one can fatten something for the slaughter and this is not love—but spiritual well-being, that they would experience the attributes that honor God and derive the positive aspects of relation to him.

This means love is not just making someone happy, or getting something out of someone; nor is it necessarily making an idol out of that person.

If one were to make love putting humanity's well-being above the holiness and glory of God, this would make love a sinful thing.

This is why you can give your body to burned and all you have to the poor, and that ultimate sacrifice still doesn't count as love—because you can do this and "not have love," according to Scripture.

The reason people don't appreciate God's love, is because God put things above the well-being of humanity in allowing judgment to happen through original sin, and they don't count that as loving—they count that as "unnecessary harm," because they want God's love to be idolatrous, they want God to put humanity's well-being above his own worth and holiness, which should never be, as God alone is the center and source of all worth.

If you are worth something to the Thing that is the Source of All Worth, you have no worth in yourself, but you have the greatest worth in the value that comes from the Source of All Value having valued you—God is the true source of our worth.

And that is why soulish affection, emotional bonding, sacrificial allegiance, and all human "good things" are still considered "evil" by Christ, and God alone is the source and author of all real love, because love is not just an action, Love is the Very Being of What God is, God is not "loving," God is Love.

In all seriousness though "Love", Godly ( Agapao ) and brotherly (Phileo) love, is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.


Deuteronomy 6:5

You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (1)

Leviticus 19:18

You shall not take vengeance, and you shall not keep your anger against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am Yahweh. (2)

Luke 10:27

And he answered and said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” (3)

(1)
וְ אָ הַ בְ תָּ

u·aebth

and·you-love


(2)
וְ אָ הַ בְ תָּ

u·aebth

and·you-love

(3)
agaphseis

agapEseis

G25

vi Fut Act 2 Sg

YOU-SHALL-BE-LOVING

I agree but that leaves the weight and "sense" of that person or thing vague. Love is a positive "value" in your sense I assume.

Let's look at one of the best scriptural instances of this and think on the weight and sense of it. The highest and most infinite love expressed at the cross.



Translation given by James White. I think it captures the original text far better than many other translations. Which is why I choose to define love the way I do.

Matthew 5:44
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

Depends  .... the word love in english is dependent on the context it is used ... ie I love pizza ..... I love my child ... the Greek is interesting because they use different words for different types of love.  Both the Hebrew and Greek languages have much more depth of meaning than the English language.


Eros, or sexual passion
Philia, or deep friendship
Ludus, or playful love
Agape, or love for everyone
Pragma, or longstanding love
Philautia, or love of the self

As some others have stated ... God's love is putting others before yourself (Agape) ... Christ crucified ... God put the entire human race before Himself providing the way for sinners to be reconciled through Him (Agape Love).

In God's reconciling work through Christ, we hear a call to extend the message of reconciliation in the home, the church, and the world.

Love is simply the word we use when we wish to communicate a certain kind of value for a person or object. When one person says, "I love you," they simply mean (or should mean), "I value you in a way different than others," and it can be a matter of hope or ideal, as in, "I want to value you uniquely." 

Biblically speaking, "love" is almost always behavioral or operationally defined. The Bible does not emphasize love as an emotion, but as action. Love is an intellectual concept (we can look up the definition in the dictionary) but an intellectual definition will never be sufficient for understanding love. Likewise, love is a somatic, or physiological, sensation. When I think of loving someone or being loved by someone, I can feel it in my body. I feel "oogy" or all warm and fuzzy . But that's not actually love; that's just the neurons firing and the muscles tensing and relaxing in specific ways when certain neurotransmitters get dumped into the system. This is the way God designed our bodies, but God did not design us to understand love merely by fleeting physiological sensations. Love is an emotion, but as we've just seen love is not just a matter of affect. Note the word "love" must be conjugated in its emotional aspect: we feel loved or loving. As is the case with the mental and physiological aspects of love, the emotional aspect alone is insufficient for "knowing" "what is love?" We cannot leave out the will. Love is a volitional condition. We must choose love, choose to be loving, to receive love. Many of us stood up in front of each other, God, family, and friends and "vowed" or "pledged" to love. Few had a clue what that entailed, and we've spent every day since then trying to make that "I do," into a reality. So love is a matter of intellectual knowledge and understanding, somatic sensation, emotional affect, and volitional agency.

But biblically speaking love is a matter of conduct most of all. Biblically speaking love is a thing we do, not just think about, "feel," and choose. 

We love because God first loved us. How did God first love us? ACTION! He hung on the cross. The second greatest command is to love our neighbor. How did Jesus answer the question seeking to identify the neighbor? By a parable that from beginning to end emphasized action. The great "love passage" of 1 Corinthians 13 operationalizes love and explains it be specific actions (the list is not exhaustive). 

1 Corinthians 13:4-8a
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.... 

Now let's put ourselves into that passage. 

Rick is patient, rick is kind, and he is not jealous; rick does not brag, and he is not arrogant, rick does not act unbecomingly; he does not seek its own, he is not provoked, he does not take into account a wrong suffered, he does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rick rejoices with the truth; he bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. rick never fails...

How are you measuring up? 

Josh is patient, Josh is kind, and he is not jealous; Josh does not brag, and he is not arrogant, he does not act unbecomingly; he does not seek its own, he is not provoked, he does not take into account a wrong suffered, he does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but he rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Josh never fails...

The passage is really quite inconvenient, isn't it?   It's quite humbling to come face to face with the reality we do not measure up to the standard of God .

Old married people have learned how important is this operational aspect of love and one of the most important things about that knowledge is we're still not done. We've learned the imperfections of ourselves, but we've also learned the imperfections of our spouses and children and in the Spirit's inspiration and empowerment, in obedience to Christ, we apply the one debt we owe another, the debt of love (Rom. 13:8). We know the flaws of the one to whom we have pledged our life and we know we don't get a day off. Whatever else it is we do in our 9-to-5 job, we have two jobs or three jobs and being an electrician, a lawyer, engineer, social worker, homemaker, etc. is exponentially easier than husbanding, wife-ing, and parenting .  


When we do love we value another and when it comes to the love we're supposed to have for our Lord and Savior and the love we're supposed to have for our spouses there can be no other. Idolatry is sin. Adultery is repeatedly compared to idolatry. They violate all claims of love and erase integrity. The human condition requires us to be vulnerable. Love is built on trust, and trust is built on intimacy and commitment. Only God knows who we really are. We spend our entire lives in the struggle to know another and be known by them, constantly hoping the next step won't hurt, and if it does, we'll have the courage to try again with that very same person who hurt us!* 

John 3:19-21

"This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God."

What is love? Love is hard.

It cannot be done correctly apart from God.