“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”
1 John 4:16
Recently I have been really exploring what it means to love in a Christian sense. After much thought, two main points stick out. The first is that Christian love is not about feelings. The second is this idea: Can one know what it is to love?
Let’s begin with the first (more obvious) point: Christian love is not about feelings. With the way love is portrayed in mainstream media, it is easy to understand how love is primarily perceived as a feeling, generally along the lines of fulfillment. When the phrase, “I love you” is used, especially in a moment of intimacy, it comes across as, “I am feeling so fulfilled by you”, which can also be applied to one’s profession of love to an object or thing. This is not a wrong perception of love, however when this understanding of love pervades or even replace how love is supposed to be understood in scripture, the consequences of this corruption can be catastrophic.
This may seem hyperbolic and pedantic on the details, but details are ignored at our own peril. A primary example of this perception of love is when we state, “God loves you” to another person. If one were to interpret that as God having feelings towards you - God being in love with you - it becomes tempting to think about that as God’s promise of making you feel loved, possibly leading to the idolization of feeling peace, feeling safe, feeling protected, etc. This can lead to us asking God to pamper us so we don’t have to contend with the hardships of life because He “loves us so much”. This makes us weak and entitled, so when things don’t go our way, we become bitter towards God - maybe He doesn’t even exist. With this perception of love be a feeling, “I love you” is only said in a relationship when things are going well.
So what is Christian love? I think the following verses give an idea of what it is, or at least what results from love:
“Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”
1 Corinthians 8:1-3
Christian love builds up. In this light, it becomes much easier to understand the commandment to love God and the one like it - to love our neighbours, which is to build up God and the one like it - to build up our neighbours. God’s love for us can be understood as: God builds us up. Understanding that God builds us up, it becomes easier to accept that life is not going to be easy, sometimes even tragic. But through overcoming these hardships, our strength, our character grows. This understanding of love is the kind that allows one to say “I love you” in any condition in a relationship, through the good times and the bad, because love is not a feeling, but a commitment to the building up of the other.
Now that I’ve clarified my understanding of Christian love, there is the second point to contend with: Can one know what it is to love? Or in other words for myself: Do I even have the capacity to know what it means to build up? Here’s how I landed on this question: It is very easy to criticize existing traditions and structures and be impassioned by my own ideas and ideals. If I had my way, if I had the power, I could make things right. This is the knowledge that puffs up. It is pride. The opposite is a position of humility - that I don’t know enough to make things right. And applying this thought towards loving my neighbour is what prompted the question: do I even have the capacity to know what it is to love? Maybe what I think the loving thing to do is to make my neighbour feel safe, or feel happy, or maybe it’s to challenge their way of living because I think it’ll help them grow. Maybe it is proselytizing to them about my understanding of love like I am doing with this post because I think it’ll help them grow. How can I tell what the loving thing to do is?
Let’s revisit the previous passages:
“Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”
1 Corinthians 8:1-3“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”
1 John 4:16
After much consideration, in light of these passages, my current position is this: I can pre-meditate and strategize on the best way I can love someone, but in each moment God is the one that reveals what it is to love, and this entails living in truth which I’ve explored in my other post on truth. We love by intently listening to God and express the reality that he lays before us, even if it goes against our own knowledge and our traditions. This is about sacrifice - can we sacrifice something as important as what we think is right and true when God starts signalling to us another path? Are we aware when we become puffed up in our knowledge?
So how does God communicate to us so we can express the reality he reveals? Now that’s a challenge to explore. It is each individual’s own journey with God through faith, seeking him with all earnestness and honesty on an ongoing basis. There is no final knowledge to grasp the ways of God - he cannot be contained in our desire of systemization, but we can begin to have a relationship with God once we submit to and acknowledge his authorship of our lives.
The revelation of this relationship with God is God’s grace through the ministry and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, so that we are able to know love, so we can humble ourselves, sacrificing our pride and our knowledge to seek God - who is love - through prayer, and we will know the truth, know what is the right path that builds up, through the guiding of the Holy Spirit, and with faith to enact these convictions, we love - to the glory of God, the manifestation of the Word.