Have you ever thought what it means to love? Or have you ever tried to define love?

Look at how love is defined in the culture and perhaps even in your own churches. It is often defined as self-expression when someone feels as though they can express themselves fully, regardless of what that expression is, without judgment and with acceptance. Want to say no? Think about it. “They really love me, they don’t judge me for who I am.” Heard that before?

In our culture love is also similarly expressed romantically. Marriage today is based on self-fulfillment and self-realization, built on the notion that marriage to another should complete or excite us. Look at nearly every conception of love in modern movies and novels for the past 200 years or so. When that romantic love inevitably dies off, divorce comes for many. “Oh I just don’t love them anymore. They love me for who I am.” etc.

Our ideas of love are incredibly selfish.

Romantic love as we conceive it, upon which most marriages are now built, is centered on our self-fulfillment and self-realization being dependent on another person. When that idolatrous view is shattered, when we realize that our desire for fulfillment and to be fully known cannot ever be truly satisfied in another person, it shakes or even breaks a marriage.

Love is also held up as divine in and of itself, whether or not God is mentioned. “But they love each other.” “All we need is love.” etc. As though love trumps all things because, hey, the Bible says “God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

If we hope to be justified in love, our conception of love must be divine in origin. Only divine love can justify. Our love does not posses the authority to justify anyone or anything. Our love is derived, and is holy insofar as it aligns with the love of God and his righteousness.

So, circling back then, what is love? Jonathan Leeman in his excellent book The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love defines love thus: “True godly love, I believe, consists of three things: (1) the lover’s affirmation of and affection for the beloved and (2) the beloved’s good (3) in the Holy.”

1. We always begin here, don’t we? “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matt. 3:17) There is an expression of affection and affirmation there. A passion for the other. It is right to be filled with affection for those we love. However where western culture often fails is centering all love on affection alone. Doing so unmoors it from morality.
2. Loving someone involves a desire for their good. A desire for the good of another keeps in check base affection ruling the relationship. Love has bounds which center not our fulfillment in them, but in a desire for their good.
3. That good is not relative to them and what they want. Our affection of and desire for the good of another (love) is centered on our desire for them in God. The good that we want for another is the source of all love; God.

Our love for one another should be our affection for each other and each other’s good in God. We should desire holiness in each other as an act of love. If God is love and the source of all love as an aspect of his goodness, then our love for one another, if it be true biblical love, must relate to God. Truly our love should be an expression of affection and desire for God’s best for them.

Love is far from cut adrift in a sea of questionable morality. Love must be firmly anchored to Christ.

You may now be saying, “What does that mean? How can I love my gay friend or family member? How can I love my atheist Dad?”

Your love for them, practically, centers around your desire for their goodness in God. You want them to know God and be blessed in Him.

But What Of God’s Love?

God’s love for us is his affection for us and his desire for our goodness in Himself. The highest good we can experience is God. The highest blessing we can receive is himself through the person and work of Jesus Christ. God’s love for us is not unconditional. It is contra-conditional. Contrary to our sin, he loves us in Himself through Christ. Contrary to what we deserve, Christ atoned for our sin as an act of mercy and extends that atonement to all who would repent and believe by His grace. Contrary to what we deserve, not ignorant of it.

God’s love for us is not because we are awesome. We deserve hell. All of us. We are in rebellion against the one who breathed life into us. His love for us is bound up in his own character. He loves because he is love, and that love desires us to know Him. That is our good in the Holy. God is the highest expression of love because love centers on God.

Love is not utilitarian. Love is not unconditional. Love is not self-focused.

God is love, and that love has conditions. There is a hell and there are consequences to dying a rebel sinner who shakes their fist at the Sovereign ruler of all. God’s love is bound to his authority. He commands we submit to Him because that is the highest good we can experience. Himself.

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:7-12)

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I have borrowed heavily from the concepts and flow of thought in Jonathan Leeman’s book, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love. It’s a wonderful book and his argument dismantling western culture’s view love and subsequent definition and elevation of biblical love continue to have a profound effect on me.