What is Love? pt.1

What we need to first look at is how love is defined by society, or what I call the world.  The world defines love as a passion or lust, when they see an extremely appealing person that they desire; they say "I love".  Then they also have a love when they admire the other person and enjoy their company, they are quite fond of the other.  Then the world has what they call "true love", this is when they have the first two types of love, the desires and emotions and feel that they will never again desire or even wish that they will want to be with anyone else again.  However, as can be seen from the high number of divorces that this "true love" as with other types of love, they are not a true and lasting love.  These types of love are an emotional love, they are not the pure love that we are commanded to have by God's Word.  The closest the world can come to the pure love that the Bible tells us to have is the love most mothers have for their child.  As close as this type of love comes, it is still emotional love and light years away from being the "true love" we are commanded to have by God^’s Word.

As we look to God^’s Word, we see that the love we are to have is not something He recommends or suggests for us to have or give.  The love He has for us to give is a love we have been commanded to do.  If we are commanded, then we can see that this pure love we are to love with and show must be an action that we MUST do.  It is something we can learn to do.  It is a change in our life, in our way of thinking, one that will affect our total being, our fundamental nature of our entire life, how we act, speak, and respond to situations around us.  God has given us a COMMAND, an instruction that MUST be obeyed, a mandate.  If the love God COMMANDED us to have was an emotional love as the world really sees the definition, then we would never be able to do as commanded, as we would not be able to love at all times as instructed, but only as we felt like.

Without pure love, love as defined by God's Word, we can have no relationship with God.  Without His pure love in its fullest meaning, we are going to find ourselves lost in this world of sin.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these." MARK 12:30-31