MenuBy Rev. Jeff Nickel, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Clarence
According to those who track these things, “What is love?” was the most popular religious search term on the internet in 2022 (7.48 million searches). That more than doubled the 3.35 million searches for the same term in 2019, when it also was number one.
If you type “What is love?” into your browser, you get lots dictionary definitions, song lyrics, Youtube and music videos, movie quotes, pop psychology, neuro-biological answers, advertisements, and proffered links to nefarious websites that offer substitutes for love. Google gives 14,130,000,000 answers in 0.55 seconds – about 2 answers for every person on the planet!
Buried somewhere in that morass, if you refine your search, you might come across what God says about love in the Bible (or you might go to a Bible-believing church to find out!) The Triune God has much to say about love, and much to show about it.
In the Old Testament we find God constantly exhibiting His “steadfast love and faithfulness” and gracious mercy to those whom He loves, even when they (or we) are less than loving and faithful to Him.
In the Gospel of John we find Jesus describing how God shows His love towards us: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” Christians refer to the latter part of this passage as the “Gospel in a nutshell” because Jesus summarizes the good news of who He is and why He came to heal, teach, suffer crucifixion and death, and rise again to life, all to save us.
In his first letter to the believers in Corinth, probably about 55 A.D., the Apostle Paul describes the nature of love in Christ:
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
“Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
“Love never fails. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
“So now faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.”
By so completely describing love’s divine qualities, Paul reveals our immaturity. Yet he alludes to God the Father – who knows His children all too well – and still loves us, reaches out to us with His Word, and embraces us eternally because of Jesus, who offered Himself up for us all. You can believe it!