What is Love?

We’ve all heard the song. You might even start hearing it in your head in just a moment. It's the classic nineties hit by Haddaway, which asks, “What is love? Baby, don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more." Love it or hate it, the song sticks in your mind and raises an important question: what is love? And that question points to perhaps an even more important one: who gets to define what love is?

Our world is filled with opinions about love. Some say love is a feeling. Others call it comfort, like a warm cup of coffee or your favorite sweater. Still others believe love is whatever you want it to be: an idea, an expression, or something that constantly shifts with preference and culture. While these ideas may sound appealing, they simply cannot all be true. The definition of love cannot be subjective or flexible. According to Scripture, love is not first an emotion or an idea; love is a Person. The Bible tells us that God is love. This doesn’t mean that love is God, or that love is all that God is. But it does mean that true love reflects the nature and character of God. You cannot separate God from love, and you cannot define love in any way that contradicts who God is.

This also means that understanding what love is requires understanding what love is not. We cannot walk in love without clarity about what does not come from God’s nature. Love is not tolerance, because God is not merely tolerant. Love is not a feeling, because God is not a feeling. Love is unchanging, because God is unchanging…if something doesn't describe God, then it cannot describe love, because God is love.

So what is love? The answer is simple. Every attribute of God is an attribute of love. Love is honest, true, kind, patient, gracious, and merciful, because God is all these things. Love cannot be what God is not. And Jesus, the perfect image of the Father, shows us most clearly what love looks like when lived out, but we'll save that for tomorrow.

Throughout this devotional, we will explore four expressions of love, but each one is rooted not in culture or opinion, but in the very nature of God Himself. The main lesson and reminder for us on this first day of our journey is that the creator of something is the definer of that thing. God created love; therefore, God alone defines what love is. The world does not define love. Culture does not define love. Social media and politics do not define love. Even we do not define love. Love is what God says it is. And if we want to walk in love and live in love, as God intended, we must look to God’s Word for the truth, because there is no better way to understand something than to go back to the source, author, and creator of it. And that is what we plan to do.