What is Love?

You might be thinking, “Isn’t love an emotion?” That may be a common way we understand love. But I don’t find God to understand it in this way.

Let’s look at the two greatest commands ever given and see if we can better understand love. These are listed in both Matt 22:26-40 and Luke 10:25-28.

To sum up, the two greatest commands ever given are to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. We are also told that all other teachings and commands are based on these two (Matthew 22:40) and that this is what must be done to inherit eternal life (Luke 10:28).

Love, as God refers to it, cannot merely be your emotions, since you use them (the heart) to love. Indeed, it can't be any one of the aspects mentioned in isolation. Because it takes all of them, your entire self, to love.

And I don’t think Jesus was saying that all the teaching in Scripture is based on emotion, nor that being emotional is what must be done to inherit eternal life.  

So, what is love? It is: First and foremost, the choice to accept a relationship with God, then a commitment to that relationship, and then a willful follow-through on that choice and commitment by doing whatever is required by them to grow that relationship.

This involves our thoughts, actions, emotions, and desires; it involves our entire being, or it is not love. And this choice of a relationship with God involves choosing the same with our fellow human beings.

I also find that this focus on relating to God and growing in him underlies all Scriptural teaching. And, as Jesus says that eternal life consists in knowing God the Father and himself (John 17:3), and that we have to love, or we don’t know God (1 John 4:8), I find that it is indeed what must be done to inherit eternal life.

This choice, commitment, and follow-through is what we mean by love when we discuss the Christian faith. It is an integral part of the lens through which we view Christian faith.