During a community engagement event to share the love of God through Jesus with people in our city, God gave my friends and I the wonderful opportunity to talk with a very smart journalist student. He was very kind, respectful, and enjoyable to talk to. At one point in our conversation, he said, “I have not thought about the source of love before.” After hearing this, I thought: “Wow, this is a profound thought, we do not usually think about the source of love. It is worth exploring.” As I started researching, I found multiple studies on love. In one of them, the researchers focused on studying the usage of the phrase “I love you.” They found that 75% of Americans say this phrase at least once each day, and it ranks among the top 401 words used in contemporary English. From this study, it is possible to say that we use the word love more than we are aware, and we may not even have a clear definition of what it is and where it comes from. Consequently, this post seeks to explore love’s definition and source from a biblical approach by answering the questions: What is love and where does it come from?
To answer these questions, this post yields to God’s self-revelation found in the Bible that He is Love and its source. To show evidence for this claim, this post will start by showing where in the Bible love is defined and its source identified. Then, it will present the general idea of opposite views; and how the biblical approach is the best answer to the definition and source of love.
First, the Bible offers a clear definition of what love is and where it comes from. Even though there are many verses on God being Love in the Bible, this post will focus on 1 John 4: 7-8: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” The Bible clearly states that God is the source of love and that He is love. Since we have been created in His image (Genesis 1: 27-28), we inherit this sense of love – that it exists and that we desire even if we have or have not experienced it from our parents.
To provide a better insight into who He is, the Bible also states that love is [the same as stating, God is]: “patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast, it is not proud, does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8). Through this verse, God helps us to know Him and understand more about Him as Love, His love for us, and the love that we must have for God and others. Receiving and giving this kind of love is only possible if we have experienced and been filled with God’s love through the Holy Spirit. This means restoring our relationship with God that our sins broke (the bad things we have thought, said, and done) by repenting, confessing, and believing that Jesus Christ is God, that He died on the cross for our sins, and that He rose from the grave (Romans 10:9).
Opposite to the Biblical Christian view, the other contemporary approaches fail to tell us a clear answer to what is love and where it comes from. Most of them successfully described ways in which one can show love, what happens in our bodies when we love, but not where we get from the idea, desire, sense of feel and being loved, loving others, and its differentiation with lust.
Due to the short nature of this post, we will provide a brief description and analysis of the biological approach to love. This approach informs us that love is associated with the release of pleasure-inducing chemicals (hormones). This biological view effectively informs us on how our body reacts to doing pleasurable activities (not necessarily activities that we love doing). This approach fails to tell us where love comes from, or what makes us love something. Since the body releases the same kind of chemicals (hormones) in a lustful activity or situation, this approach also fails to distinguish between love and lust.
Opposite to the biological approach, the Christian biblical approach defines love, provides a clear distinction between love and lust, a standard of love, a description of what love looks like, and a source that incorporates all these characteristics. Moreover, it also models and manifests love in its fullness.
The most evident way in which God manifested Himself as being Love to humanity is through Jesus. Since Jesus is God, and God is love; therefore, Jesus is love. Being God, Jesus chose to come to our unperfect, sinful, painful, and evil world in a human form (Philippians 2:8) born in a poor family from a virgin (Luke 2:24); die a very painful and shameful death on a cursed cross (Galatians 3:13); by defeating death on His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Jesus went through all of this out of His love for God the Father and us. His love is what our hearts long for. As Agustine, a converted gnostic, said: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you [God].”
Written by Camila Hernandez