Everyone has their own ideas about what “love” means. I can across an old email recently entitled “What children say about love.” Some of them are very insightful:
- When you’re born and see your mommy for the first time, that’s love
- Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other
- Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and talk more.
- Love is that first feeling you feel before all the bad stuff gets in the way.
- Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.
- When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis, too. That’s love.
In our lives as followers of Jesus Christ, one of the essential ingredients is love. Love must be part and parcel of a being a disciple.
Ephesians 4:1-3 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
The kind of love we are told to share involves
- Humility – not thinking more highly of yourself than you ought, but thinking about the other person
- Gentleness – not running over others in an overbearing way, even when you have their best interests at heart, but a gentle nature that is concerned how you are perceived by others.
- Patience – our lives should be marked with a willingness to wait for others
- Bearing with one another – our love leads us to join others in good times and bad
- keep the unity of the Spirit – the love we are to show wants to be united with others in faith
- Bond of peace – our love should desire to live in peace with our fellow man
Going back to that list of what children said about love, there is one more that came off of that list that you should hear:
- God could have said some magic words to make the nails fall off the cross, but He didn’t. That’s love.
It was love that led God to send His Son into this world. It was love that caused Jesus to be born as one of us. It was love that led a perfect life that would be credited to your account. It was love that led Jesus to be crucified in your place. It was love that held Jesus on the cross for you. The almighty God had more than enough power to not only come down from that cross, but also to obliterate all those who stood around mocking Him and questioning His identity. It was His tremendous love for you that led Him to stay on the cross for your sake, to pay for your sin. That love is what enables us to be forgiven children of God, confident of our salvation. That love is also to be our example and the pattern we follow as we live our lives for Jesus.
