You can take the time to set the stage, to prepare your mind and heart to appreciate the short simple definition I'm going to give you here. Or you can jump right to the point if you must Skip the first page introduction.
It seems that few people recognize or appreciate what love is. Surely there are few enough books out there where you can read a concise answer that shows you the prriority of what defines love. Most of what is written misses the point under a tangel of leaves, confusion and ignorance.
The reason for my writting all this background of common experience is to help untie your mind from whatever tangle of misunderstanding or lack of order may exist so you can understand what love is. Bear with me just a page, please.
What is love? How do you define it? What distinguishes love from something else?
I've read more books on love than need be counted. Big books by philosophers, skinny books, all kinds of books talking about love. Children can be given lots of books on love. Parents and teachers may want to teach their children what love is. Teenagers want to know. Adults through up their hands too often in frustration of life saying "If I only knew what true love is, maybe I could do it. Maybe I could keep it in my life.
The problem is people can't very well do love when they don't know what it is. Most of the books tend to give endless lists of various things and ways to do them. A recent phamplet for teenagers suggested twenty pages of different attitudes such as patience, kindness, affection, and on and on and on. When it got through, the kid was left with a long laundry list of things to do, and it seemed kind of open ended, like the deal wasn't finished. It was just a partial list.
Others quote the Bible and give lists of things to do like from First Corinthians chapter thirteen, the famous love chapter. Or they go to the Song of Solomon or they get into the differences between divine love, brotherly love, sibling love, and male female marrying kind of love. Again list after list has been made and yet the reader seems to feel no sense of closure, no sense of finality that he can get a handle on love.
Compare it to a tree. Leaves and fruit are produced endlessly. Those are the kind of things that you can never count them all.
Anytime you find yourself with an endless laundry list of things that seem to fit a word, then you can know that you don't have the definition. Instead of a definition, you just have a list of many things that the word does.
I asked you before, I'll ask you again. Do you know a test for love? Can you satisfy yourself with some short defining statement by which you can test love? I have written all this to set the mind in a place where an operational definition of love can be appreciated.
That is love!
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, ... John 3:16
He came seeking our good. The apostle Paul wrote by the Holy Spirit that love does not seek its own (gain, good, or comfort, ...but instead, love seeks the other's good).
Jesus sought our good. And He called that the good of God. He did the will of the Father for our sakes. He sacrificed Himself. He poured himself out to serve us and give us what we need. He became the sacrificial lamb of God.
If love were an eagle then it would have two wings to fly. Those two wings would be seeking the other's good self-sacrificially. When I see those wings flying, then I know I have seen divine love. And all else that flows from such love is good.
Husbands, when you seek to please your wife, are you loving her? Or could it be that sometimes men seek to please just so they themselves can gain something from it? Such motives are for self, not for the other. They are self-seeking when they seek to please for their own good. When a man does a deed so he will be esteemed, then he has not done it in divine love.
You can go on endlessly making comparisons. I believe you will always be able to find that anything else you might say about love can be shown to flow from the idea of self-sacrificially seeking the other's good as unto God.
Now we come to another thread in the tapestry that ties together with and strengthens the first. By the mouth of two or three witnesses shall a thing be established.
Remember when Jesus was asked what the great commandment was? He answered, "This is the great commandment. Hear, O Israel. Thou shalt love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the second is like it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. " Another scripture tells us, "Do all things as unto God and not as unto men." Well that's easy enough to understand if we realize the significance of the greatest commandment of all. Once we love God with all our heart and strength, there is no strength or heart left for anything or anyone else; therefore we would have to first give ourselves to God and then unto those whom He directs. Then we do His will wholeheartedly unto others as unto Him. And it is all one to God. We cannot love God and not love our neighbor. And we cannot truly love our neighbor without loving God. We love God because He first loved us. Remember that. Apply the principle with others. Now we come full circle in the understanding. Jesus did what He did for our sake, and He did it because it was the will of the Father. He and the Father agreed. They were one in point and purpose.
So those actions of seeking our good, and seeking self-sacrificially were one with, extensions of, coming out from God who is love. They were ordained and motivated by the love of God, and love toward God. Those actions were born in total love toward God and then manifested themselves toward man.
You might say, the eagle is the divine love of God in your life, and such love flies on the wings of (1) self-sacrificially (2) seeking the other's good (as unto God.)
If you prefer a three fold definition of divine love, since there are three in heaven that bear witness (1 John 5:7 KJV) we can say it this way:
DIVINE LOVE IS MANIFEST IN OUR LIVES WHEN
We pour that love sacrificially out of ourself as it is supplied by God, looking to Him for the provision of whatever it takes, just as Jesus looked to the Father for grace to endure the cross for our sakes.
God's Provision for Us
Jesus' Pattern for Us to Follow, or another way to say it, The Way for Us to Live.
(2) endured the cross (willingly, gladly, without murmurring or complaining, as unto God)
(2) despising the shame (unless we despise the shame that the world puts on us, we would quit. Be impressed deeply on your heart with the notice that scripture describes here three major components of how Jesus did what He did. One of those that the Holy Spirit explained was "despising the shame". It must be important to do. It was for Jesus. It still is for us today. Jesus Christ, the Same, Yesterday, Today, and Forever.
and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Home Page back to the cross page
Ask yourself this question. What did God do? God is love. So if I can see what He did, clearly and in focus putting first things first in priority of understanding, then I should be able to see what love is!
God is love, and He manifested in the flesh seeking our good, self-sacrificially.
Think about it. He did not just think about it. He manifested the desire of His heart to seek our good. He did it in the flesh not just in His thoughts. And He sacrificed all without murmurring. He paid the full price to buy for us what He saw we needed.
He sacrificed Himself for our good.
1. Self-sacrificing
2. Seeking the other's good
3. As unto God
Hebrews 12:2 Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who
(1) for the joy set before Him (the joy of seeing our salvation,see all of Isaiah 53)