Love: The Most Tired Word Ever

I was thinking and praying today about love. And I noticed a serious problem; that is, the word in itself has close to no affect on me when it is said in certain contexts. Even when I use the word in certain ways, it has lost much of its meaning. And as I thought, I considered that I am probably not the only person that this has happened to or is happening to. If one ponders the many ways the word love is used in our culture, it has no meaning in and of itself. We use it for everything: "I love ESPN." "I love tacos." "Olive Garden's chicken parmesan...oh, I love it." "I love Will Ferrell's humor." "I love my wife." "I love Jesus." "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life." How do these all go together? Perhaps we can add more phrases to the list: "We should stop talking about sin so much, I mean...aren't we supposed to love?" "Church discipline seems like such an unloving thing to do." "We don't focus on the negative here at our church, we focus on love." Indeed, these are things we have all heard from different places. So I ask, then, what is this love so often spoken of? What is its place in our descriptive vocabulary? If I can tell my fiancee that I love her, yet I can also love other, seemingly unimportant things such as a garbage disposal, what am I actually communicating? What, I ask, is love?

One could cut to the chase and quickly say, "Well, the Bible says God is love. So...there's your answer." I do not deny that truth. God is the ultimate definer of love. I bow to that and accept it fully. However, is it not also true that unbelievers (and professing Christians) press that same verse (1 John 4:8) into the faces of Christians who desire to preach the truth? Yes - I'll answer my own question - it is true. Obviously there is a difference in meaning when different people say the exact same thing. So we must get objective with our meaning of love. Therefore, we will look at how "God is love" to see what love actually is.

The apostle John, the same brother who wrote the aforementioned verse, also wrote this in John 3:36 - "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him." How can this apostle write these two different verses? He seems to be indecisive on his views of God. Is he loving John, or does he have wrath upon those who don't believe in him? Which is it? This is a must-answer question. For in the world's definition of love, these verses can not exist together, because the world's definition of love exalts man and claims that love is "making much of someone". That is, you are loving when you exalt someone and feed their self-esteem. This is why people get angry with Jesus in the Bible when he confronts sin. But Jesus is clear in John 3:36 that the wrath of God remains upon those who do not believe his Son. My...what an unloving statement. To think that a loving God would be so exclusive!

Yet, it is the most loving thing God can ever do to say such things. It is God's goal to be glorified. His ultimate goal in everything is that he would be lifted high for the world to see and be enthralled with. "How is this love and not vanity?" It would indeed be unloving, if there was something more enjoyable and enthralling than God. However, since there is not, and God reigns over the universe as supremely righteous, holy, beautiful, majestic, powerful, and enjoyable...and he seeks to reveal himself to us that we might worship him...THEN, is he not loving in that he is merely inviting us to behold him as our greatest treasure? How, I ask, is this not love? If God were to give us everything on earth and promote our self-esteem to infinitely high levels, therefore belittling himself (the greatest treasure)...would he not be the most sinister, evil, and cruel being in the cosmos? More yet, would he not be an idolater? Therefore, when God says, "If you do not believe in my Son, my wrath abides on you and I will send you to burn for eternity," as a means to reveal to us his position as God - the righteous judge - then he is infinitely loving in that he ferociously seeks for us to leave lesser pleasures and enjoy him instead. Thus, he receives all the glory by our treasuring him. And his love is amplified in that he does this in the midst of our being blind to his beauty, by slaying his own Son to atone for our rebellion.

Conclusion: "Love is living, striving, desiring, and suffering so that others will be enthralled with what is eternally satisfying; namely, the Son of God - Jesus Christ." (<--not my own quote) Love is tired in our culture, but - Biblically defined - it is most alive.