Love

Let all your things be done with charity. – 1 Corinthians 16.14

It’s Valentine’s Day. It is the day when, to some degree, much of the world focuses on love. I realise that perceptions of love cover the gamut from self-giving love to brotherly love to erotic love, but I want to take a positive tack on the day and look at what God says about our love.

I have reading and studying about love in the scriptures A LOT lately. God has  been working on my own heart to get a grasp on what is means to really love with Christ love.

We could talk about Bible love all day. The verse above says ‘do all you do in love.’ Jesus made it clear that we could summarise the entire Law with ‘love God with everything you have and love your neighbour as yourself.’ We also read ‘let there be no hypocrisy in your love.’ Love overcomes all fear because ‘perfect love casts out fear.’

Love of course started with God because ‘God is love’ and because of ‘for so loved the world that He gave His only Son’ and we can only ‘love Him because He first loved us.’

A recent favourite love verse is ‘the love of Christ compels’ us. The point is that everything we do should be motivated by the love of Christ. Every word we speak, everything we do, every response to difficulty, every social media post, and every other action should be motivated and compelled and driven by the love of Christ. That only happens when we see people, not according to the flesh, but according to the fact that Jesus died for them.

I like Valentine’s Day. I always get a gift for my wife and my daughter. But I want the day when the world talks about love to remind me of how vital it is that I love God and love others.