First off, Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Today, if any, it seems all the more fitting to write about love. If you are single or in a relationship, then you have come to the right place! Why? Because the main topic addressed in this blog is about what makes love, truly love–what love really is, and how it should be demonstrated, understood, and experienced in our lives.
If we get our foundational understanding of love wrong, then our love relationships that are built on those faulty views will crumble over time. Therefore, it is imperative that we get to the bottom of what love really is, and likewise, make it the bottom and foundation for all our relationships–especially for our most sacred one with our future spouse and the Lord.
Here is a short excerpt from John Piper’s book, “Don’t Waste Your Life”, which addresses how Western culture has fundamentally distorted how love is defined in the Bible. Piper argues that seeing God’s love rightly gives us a correct understanding of love, which enables us to love others rightly, truly, and deeply. Essentially, he shows what love is, and what love is not. Check it:
“For most people, to be loved is to be made much of. Almost everything in our Western culture serves this distortion of love. We are taught in a thousand ways that love means increasing someone’s self-esteem. Love is helping someone feel good about themselves. Love is giving someone a mirror and helping him like what he sees.
This is not what the Bible means by the love of God. Love is doing what is best for someone. But making self (or others) the object of our highest affections is not best for us. It is, in fact, a lethal distraction. We were made to see and savor God—and savoring him, to be supremely satisfied, and thus spread in all the world the worth of his presence. Not to show people the all-satisfying God is not to love them. To make them feel good about themselves when they were made to feel good about seeing God is like taking someone to the Alps and locking them in a room full of mirrors.”
To be locked in a room of mirrors when the beauty of the Alps is at hand would be a tragedy. How much more so with God, the Creator of these mountains and the purest embodiment of love (1 Jn 4)? Therefore, as far as relationships are concerned, if we deprive our relationships from the source of this Love, then how can we expect for the best? Where else, then, will ‘love’ come? (From our imperfect hearts. Which is imperfect love.)
And, if the love we express to them is solely based on our making much of them without an overall focus on the God from whom all love is derived, then are we not trapping them in a room of mirrors when they could be reveling in the glories of God? By making much of them at the expense of God, we ultimately belittle their utmost joy. Why? Because our joy is made complete in fellowship with God (Jn 14,15,17).
So, brief recap: We can only, truly love when our love is flowing from the only source of true, full, inexhaustible love—God. Thus, we can only, truly love when we (1) understand and experience God’s love as ultimately fulfilling and (2) demonstrate to others the same qualitative nature of love that God lavishes on us in Christ.
**You want sweet, lasting romance? You want consistent, faithful friendship? You desire loyalty and like-mindedness? While there might be more variables to these equations, if you take out the bottom denominator of savoring and demonstrating God’s love, then you will undermine them regardless.
God desires that we experience love to the full—but let us not forget that we were made for God first and for each other second. And when we put the second in front of the first, the power of the first will be eclipsed of its blessing for the second. Similarly, just as removing the foundation from under a building will inevitably cause collapse, so also will our love relationships fall if the love of God is removed from the base.
Lastly and essentially, to love people is to give them what is best for them. John Piper says, “the highest act of love is the giving of the best gift, and, if necessary, at the greatest cost, to the least deserving”. It would seem, in all its dimensions, that the highest possible act of love would be one that exudes the most unconditionally eager feeling to accomplish at any cost the best means of an unmerited, unconditional giving, of the greatest possible gift, to most undeserving people, from the most unobligated giver: God.
And so, love would be to joyfully show and demonstrate to others that unparalleled love and grace of the gospel–the greatest treasure in all reality–that we have graciously received. And if we neglect to root our relationships in this fertile ground—especially our most intimate ones—then we will essentially be depriving our relationships of the greatest opportunity to produce the fruits of love and joy.
Love is imaging God to one another, because God is love (1 Jn 4:19).
Love is unpacking, treasuring, and sharing the greatest gift of all—together. In fact, we would not be loving people (indeed, hating them) if we ignored or neglected to tell, show, or demonstrate to them the most eternally-weighty, life-giving, joy-producing gift, which is given and gloriously beheld in the beauty of the gospel of Christ–namely, God. It changes everything. The grace, love, selflessness, generosity, kindness, patience, peace, encouragement, and joy we find in God’s gospel to us is the only source that will vitalize our relationships and our souls.
Thus, the lifeblood of all healthy, flourishing, and vibrant relationships is one that is centrally connected to the source of all that is truly and unwaveringly good—Jesus.
“Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify You” -Psalm 63:3
