But the fruit of the Spirit is love…. Galatians 5:22-23
“Love will keep us together.” “I want to know what love is.” “How deep is your love.” “I love you just the way you are.” “You’re my endless love.” “I will always love you.”
We could do a whole post on song lyrics about the word “love” and still not begin to plumb what love really means. Shakespeare wrote books of beautiful sonnets about love, but they didn’t capture all of it. Songs, poems, even blogs are great for scratching the surface, but these don’t do much more than superficially give us a taste of what love means, what love is. For that, turn only to the Bible:
Let all that you do be done in love. – 1 Corinthians 16:14.
And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. – Colossians 3:14.
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. – John 13:34-35.
Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. – Proverbs 10:12.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. – 1 Corinthians 13:13.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16.
The greatest expression of love came at Calvary; you must have known we’d end up here. In truth, all honest conversations about love must end up at Calvary, because that’s the ultimate expression of love. God subjected His Son, the human person of the Trinity, to the humiliation and agony of death, out of pure love. He did it so that people He created, who mostly didn’t love Him, could have the opportunity to live in perfect love with Him forever. After all, “greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13) because “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Just last week, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter celebrated their 76th wedding anniversary. President Carter attributes it to love, to loving each other enough to resolve any disagreements before each day ends and to do so out of love for God and for each other. In any time, that’s pretty amazing. We’d all do well to learn and follow their example. Paul might agree.
In two thousand years, thousands, maybe millions, of songs, poems, verses, movies, plays, and stories have been written about love. They’re all a good start. But if you really want to know what love is, you need to get to know Jesus because only He is the perfect embodiment of it.
For further reading: Galatians 5:22-23
Lord Jesus, You are perfect love.
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