Valentine’s Day is approaching quickly. It’s the time of year when the word “love” is thrown around like candy, and for good reason. Who doesn’t want to be loved by someone? 

Still, in our world, love is most typically associated with a romantic feeling. It can also denote a happy feeling, as in, “I love….” The world is associated with all kinds of positive feelings and emotions. Yet, how does this word go over if someone is feeling angry, suffering, or in deep emotional pain?

Isn’t there more to “love” than a feeling? How should we respond to the statement, “God is love.”

Throughout the Bible, God has many attributes ascribed to Him in the form of nouns. He is holy, righteous, merciful, and yes… love. A noun is what something or someone is, it’s not an action. So, what does this noun, love, really mean when the Bible says, God is love? 

It’s one thing to say that God is loving; it’s quite another to say He is love. Yet, for untold millions of people, they don’t see the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as love. They use human thinking and emotions to define or deny Him based on their negative personal experiences. 

They would say that if God was love, why are they struggling or suffering? If God is love, then why are bad things happening to them?

I’ll get to that in a moment below.

In our English translations, we miss something regarding this word. We have only one word that requires a specific context to understand what is being communicated by the New Testament writers.

Let me explain…

The New Testament was written in Greek, which in this case, is much more precise in its terminology. There are three words in the ancient Greek language for love that help us understand its meaning:

• Eros – Romantic love; erotic desire; intimacy, infatuation with beauty.
• Philia – Brotherly love; friendship, affectionate regard for and loyalty to friends, family, and community, requiring virtue, equality, and familiarity.
• Agape – Unconditional, self-sacrificial love for others and people’s love for a good God and others.

Now, can you see how the original language in this case makes it very specific what Jesus or the Gospel writers were communicating at any given moment?

In John 3:16, one of the most famous passages in all the Bible, it says “God so loved the world… 1 John 4: 8 and 16, God is called “love.” In this instance, John uses the word agape in the verbal form of the noun.

He’s saying this is a self-sacrificial God. As such, He is prepared to do the most loving thing possible, to do the most incredible thing possible, to re-establish a relationship with humanity — including you and me.

The writers of the New Testament were not defining a God based on how humans love. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the very definition of self-sacrificial love.

Let’s return to the previous questions above…

If God is love, why are there horrible things happening in the world — or more specifically, to me?

God is holy (it’s His character) and righteous (it’s the action that flows from His holiness), and He created Adam and Eve for a relationship. When they defied God’s holiness and ate from the tree in the Garden of Eden, it was an act of rebellion. Sin (which is the opposite of holiness) entered the world. In sin, we are separated from the love of God.

The Bible tells us in Romans 3:23 that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Sin also results in death (Romans 6:23). It’s an inescapable reality. The consequence of our sin results in anger, suffering, and pain… and even death. 

“Yet, while were sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Later, Paul tells us that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ (Romans 8:38-39).

Jesus didn’t have to do that! He didn’t have to enter into the world that hated Him. He didn’t have to hang in excruciating pain on the cross. He didn’t have to endure the worst kind of pain in denying Himself and taking all the sins of the past, present, and future upon Himself and for the first time be separated from the Father and the Holy Spirit. 

Instead, out of His character, out of His love, Jesus died on the cross, descended into Hades for three days, was risen from the dead, and ascended into heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father.

Jesus did not have to love a world full of self-centered people throughout history and time that wanted nothing to do with Him. Yet, He sacrificed Himself anyway. He shows us that love cannot be compelled or manipulated if it’s genuine. 

Here’s the final point I want to stress.

Sacrificial love (agape) is not a feeling, that comes and goes and is subject to many factors. 

Mark 12:30 quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 – “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The next verse quotes Leviticus 19:18 – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus then says, “There is no greater commandment greater than these.”

Self-sacrificial love is a choice and a commandment from our Lord. “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). He initiated the sacrificial love, and our sacrificial love back to Jesus is our response. 

If you read Jesus’ words and 1 John 4 and 5 in this way, it changes how we see God’s love for us. It ought to change our response to Him and towards one another. 

So, as you think about love this Valentine’s Day, I pray you’ll see love in a different light. Sacrificing for one another as God did for us is the kind of love that is lasting and eternal, it’s not fleeting.

I’ll have more to say leading up to Valentine’s Day regarding romantic love and the push-pull of sacrificial love. Can you guess which one is more important to virtually any relationship?

Blessing to you,

Father Don