What Is Love?

Continuing the series that starts here, it’s now time to try to work out a definition of love.

 

From the past posts, we’ve seen that love is most certainly not an emotion, nor is it something easy. We’ve seen that God’s version of love is incredibly perseverant. Now it’s time to synthesize both of these things with other aspects of love that the world has missed out on.

The most important thing here is the patience of love. It will endure suffering and pain and loss. That is true love. The unconditional true love that every Christian should strive for, but also a characteristic of the true love that Hollywood tries to portray (rather unsuc

cessfully). For love to be true, it must be willing to endure anything.

This is where the great difficulty in love also lies. Love is not always the easy choice. In a fight, the easy choice is to give up and break up. But in love, the right choice is to end the fight and continue trying to work things out. Is this easy? No. Almost never. Is it worth it? If God is the one trying to bring you two together, always. Love is perseverant. This perseverance is usually shown in the form of a commitment of some sort, the basis of relationships.

As pointed out in Paul’s letter, love is also kind. However, this is only a small part of love. Love does not always look like kindness. In the case of a drug addict, for example, the best love can be to do something that the addict would find rather unkind, like leaving. Or for a parent to discipline a child, to the child, it seems rather unkind, but as Proverbs says, “he who spares the rod hates his son” (Proverbs 13:24). Love, then, is not necessarily kind.

Classically, love is defined as willing the good of another. This doesn’t quite come close enough to expressing the full content of the idea of love. Yes, though, this is a part of the definition of love. Love does will the good of the beloved.

So far, we have love defined as the patient willing the good of another, though that love may not always be shown with kindness.

There’s one more aspect that’s required for love. Love demands some form of being returned. This being returned is called reciprocity. Love demands some form of reciprocity. If someone is showing love, it will be seen as no love at all if that love is not accepted in some form. I’m not talking about romantic love right now. I’m talking about love for a person as a friend. If that love of friendship is rejected, the lover will feel as though the loved has hurt them. This, then, is to say that to not accept the love of one is to in fact not love them. Why? Because to not accept someone’s love is to not accept a part of that person.

Another definition of love is a full free gift of self. This is where the idea of love’s reciprocity comes in. Why? Because you are giving this gift. You are giving a gift of yourself to another person and the other person rejects it. They may receive it willingly enough, but in the end, they are rejecting it. This is not just not loving somebody, this is also a lie, a very personal,

very destructive lie. This type of lie is an abuse of trust, more than a normal lie.

Let’s use an analogy to illustrate what this does. Imagine a child hands you a drawing. Now, because this is a young child, it’s a group of stick figures. If the child hands you this picture, what are you going to do with it? You’re going to take the picture, naturally. This is receiving love. Accepting it would be to put the picture on the fridge for the child to be proud of. Rejecting it would be to throw the picture away. Imagine your four year old daughter finding out that you just threw away the picture she made special for you. This is what rejecting someone’s love does.

So let’s now take a minute to outline what our definition of love is.

Love is perseverant. It will persevere through trials and hardship, and this perseverance is expressed through commitment. It’s also willing the good of another. It’s not always kind, but love will reciprocate. It’s a gift of self.

Next time, we’ll talk about what you need to feel this love.