What is Love?

What is Love even? I was actually asked this question the other day by a student who was working on their capstone project for college. I wasn't exactly sure how to answer this question. Love means so many different things to so many different people.

Are you talking about romantic love?

Brotherly love?

The love/hate I have for my students which some days is more hate than love cause I just want to punch them in the face?

Or are you talking about ultimate love?

The love talked about at every wedding when the pastor reads from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8?

Or the love talked about in 1 John 4:7-21?

So many people go through their whole lives searching for love. Searching for something to fill the hole that is in their lives. So many people look at the pain and suffering in this world and question how God can even exist in the midst of such heartbreak.

And then there are people like me who wonder if love is even in the cards for them. People like me who wish that someone would love them and want to spend the rest of their lives with them. It's crazy how much love drives the things we do.

But then I sit back and look at the people around me. The people who actually do love me. I sit back and look at the opportunity I have to show love to so many people. The students that I get to show love to on a daily basis.

So what is love? What does it look like? Honestly, I think it is all of this. It's putting someone else's needs in front of your own. Love is a daily, minute by minute, second by second recognition and consequent action of thinking of yourself lower than someone else.

It's the over-used 1 Corinthians passage.

It's 1 John 4:7-21 that says:

7 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

13 And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. 14 Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. 16 We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.

God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. 17 And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.

18 Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. 19 We love each other[a] because he loved us first.

20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer,[b] that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? 21 And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.[c]

It's romantic love. It's brotherly love. It's the love/hate relationships I have with my students.

Love just is. What more do we need then that?