Love Is Commanded Emotion

What does it mean to be needy? What does it mean to be alone? What do we really want from others, and how can we get it? Discovering our need to be loved by humanity is, for most of us, extremely daunting. This is because it involves the voluntary response of another at your beauty. Something you really cannot control. The need to feel accepted and affirmed is a legitimate need as I have recently poured forth in this series on community. But most live with a vacuum of deep and repressed loneliness. My gospel to you today is that this is seriously unnecessary.

My quest in this short article is to attempt to give my shot at the expensive question: what is Love? With so many people coming out now with  varieties of answers I am attempting to give my own. I specifically want to draw attention to the recent fad among evangelicals to say that love is choice. A commitment. Love is a promise to do things widely accepted as “loving”. This has been the answer most of our marriage counselors to the 50% divorce rate existing within the body of Christ. Men and women simply have no value for faithfulness or loyalty in relationships. This is a great observation and it must be addressed but i would have to disagree with this approach. It seems I hear this secret cry with little resolution across the western church, “just whatever you do, DO NOT get divorced”. It simply exemplifies the fact we have no idea what love is.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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,1 but have not love, I gain nothing.

1 corinthians 13 has largely been misinterpreted across the body of Christ. It is normally used to say that love is actions or  virtues. Although, if we start from the top of the chapter we see this view as deeply condemned. Here Paul tells the church of corinthians that love, in itself, is not your actions. In fact it is possible to give of yourself to the last ounce, and not have love! This is because love is a strong emotion and a delighting in another person. You Must feel for one another. You must delight in each other, you must gain pleasure from being with each other. If you do not, you actually need to repent.

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.

It’s ironic that paul gives a list of virtuous acts that you can do without love, and then re-presents them to us again, while telling you to do them! So what does this mean? Staying consistent with my definition of love I want to point out that this passage is not meant to be a comprehensive definition of love. It is the fruit of love. It is what it looks like. Not love itself. It is a list of what someone who is in love does. Love is the pre-requisite of these actions, not the actions in themselves.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” – John 15:12-13

Draw near to Jesus, hear his gracious words. Here even He is differentiating between possessing love (the affinity toward another) and an action. The love one possesses (passion) leads them to allow their life to be taken for the well being of the one loved. The laying down of some ones life is not the love, but the result or reaction of it.

Lets remember again why I am writing this. Today in the church there is this popular statement, “it is not about emotions”. This I am afraid is exactly opposite of what our Lord is speaking to us. Emotions Do matter. Not only do they matter, they are necessary to be a christian. and this error has not gone without it’s price. Ironically what it was meant to do is cause us to be consistent in our life in God regardless of feeling, but what is has accomplished is caused desires for “other things” to super-cede our passion for Christ and feel justified in doing so.

Going back to john, why do you think he uses this language? Why the word love, if it is not about emotion? Why not, “serve your neighbor, or treat you neighbor as yourself”? Yes, God commands an emotional involvement  and response to those around you. This is what makes Christianity so different. Every pagan people group knows how to treat one another (as did the pharisees) to some degree. These are called “manners”. What makes us different is that by the power of God we experience such an internal joy and strength and divine infusion that have the potential to feel and feel deeply even for our enemies! Oh, if we would see how far His grace would take us! How much transformation can we afford! This is the glory of the regeneration.

Why don’t we like this take on love though? Why do we cling so tightly do it? It is because it takes almost no grace to perform the externals. The external changes are doable without divine grace, says John Piper. Can you imagine communities of Christians who intentionally persue having  deep affection for one another has a primary expression of their faith? This is God’s vision for the church. Happy, vibrant, affection, on fire relationships.

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. 1 Peter 1:22

Advertisement