love

We don’t have to have a sweetheart on Valentine’s Day to know what it means to truly love and be loved in return.  In fact one of the greatest gifts we can give a sweetheart or our friends and family on Valentine’s Day is our deep, loving relationship with the heavenly father.  Without it we can not fully love, at least not in the biblical sense.

It is the Holy Spirit at work in us that empowers us to love in the way Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13.  This passage is often read at weddings.  Brance and I had it read at ours.  Certainly this is the kind of sacrificial love in action that mates should have for one another, but if we look at the larger context of the passage we realize that this is specifically the kind of love believers should have for one another.

We are told in beautiful poetic language that unless we have this kind of love, regardless of any great deed we might do, we are nothing.  Nothing.  If we didn’t get how important love is in the life of the believer when Jesus gave us the greatest two commandments, Paul is sure to get our attention here.  It matters not what we do or can do, regardless of how spiritual or sacrificial it may seem, if we do not have love.

I’m often slightly amused and saddened by the way our culture defines love, especially the way it is depicted in TV and movies.  For example, Brance and I watched Taken 2 last night.  During the movie there is a scene with the father Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) and the daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) where the two of them discuss how to know when you are in love.  If you haven’t seen this movie or the first one, Bryan and Kim’s mom, Lenore, are divorced and Lenore has since remarried.  In this movie we discover that Lenore and her second husband are separated and likely headed for divorce also.

What seemed so crazy to me (and Brance) was that during this scene Kim tells her dad that her mom had tried to help her understand what it means to be in love by describing her relationship with Bryan, her first ex.  Though the movie is written in a way that makes you want the two of them to get back together, it seemed absolutely ludicrous that the mother would explain real love to her daughter in this way and that Bryan was trying to guide her also, when his own love life was dysfunctional also. What really breaks my heart in two, though,  is when I see this acted out on the stage of real life, where real people are affected – children, family, and friends.  So sad.

Love is clearly defined in 1 Corinthians 13, lest we attempt to define it ourselves.  And as our culture  shows us, and often we don’t have to look further than ourselves, we aren’t very good at it.  The kind of love we are to have, as Christ dwells in us, is one that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  Who couldn’t use some of that kind of love in their life?  The kind of love that perseveres to the end, regardless of circumstances.  We are told that it is patient, kind, and rejoices with the truth.  It does not envy, boast, or insist on its own way.  It is not arrogant, rude, irritable, or resentful.

We are told that “love never ends”.  Unlike the counterfeit variety found in magazine racks in the grocery store, this real, true, holy kind of love does not end.  It is not something we fall out of and it is not something that we can do in our own power.  When we experience this kind of love in our own life and in the lives of others, we will not be the same.  Let’s give others and ourselves the best gift we can give this Valentine’s Day – a life that is marked by the real love depicted in 1 Corinthians 13.