29/03/2026
March 28, 2026
What Love Truly Is
The word "love" has been stretched in so many directions that it has nearly lost its shape. It is poured over infatuation, sentiment, affection, and duty alike — as though all feeling were love and all love were merely feeling. But the Bible is God's truth and our standard, and it draws a very different picture.
Sometimes the clearest way to understand something is to begin by defining what it is not.
Love is not the flutter in your chest when you see someone who attracts you. That is chemistry — beautiful in its place, but not love. Attraction is the kindling; love is the fire that burns long after the kindling is spent.
Neither is love piety. A person can keep the most rigorous religious disciplines and still be utterly without love. The Apostle Paul makes this point with striking force:
"And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing." 1 Corinthians 13:3 NKJV
One can give without love. One can serve without love. One can even lay down their life without love. Generosity, sacrifice, and devotion are not synonyms for love — they are acts that love may produce, but they are not love itself.
SO WHAT IS LOVE?
God is love. This is not a minor doctrinal detail — it is the anchor of everything. Notice the Scripture does not say "love is God." That inversion, seemingly small, opens a dangerous door. Those who reverse the order end up making love their god, and then any indulgence they call love becomes sacred to them. But it is God who defines love; love does not define God. He is the source, the standard, and the substance of it.
"This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the payment for our sins." 1 John 4:10 GW
Love, at its origin, is not a response — it is an initiative. God loved us before we were lovable. That is the nature of true love: it moves first, it gives freely, and it costs something real.
And this is how it expresses itself:
"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 NKJV
Read that list slowly. There is no mention of warmth, of chemistry, of emotion. Love is described entirely in terms of behaviour — what it does, what it refuses to do, what it endures. It is not a wave that washes over you; it is a posture you hold.
LOVE IS DIVINE
Here is a truth that may be unpopular, but it is the clear testimony of Scripture: love, in its fullest and truest sense, is divine. It does not originate in human nature — it flows from God. This means that a person who has not been born again may be responsible, honourable, and dutiful — and these are genuinely good things — but they cannot walk in love as the Bible defines it. Not because they are less human, but because this love is beyond human origin.
"Dear friends, we must love each other because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born from God and knows God. The person who doesn't love doesn't know God, because God is love." 1 John 4:7–8 GW
This is both a high calling and a great gift. We are not asked to manufacture love — we are asked to receive it from the One who is love, and let it flow through us to the world.
PRAYER
Dear Father, the source and very essence of love — let my heart overflow with love for You and for Your family. Let what flows from me not be performance or duty, but the genuine love that only comes from knowing You. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
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