What Is Love, Anyway? - Grit & Grace

The importance of love is pretty well established. My deep dive on the subject began with a question: What’s love got to do with it? Well, the most excellent way of love has everything to do with it. In true Becky fashion, another question rises up to the surface: What is love, anyway?

Okay, musical interlude’s over.

“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  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 second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:28-‬31 NIV

So if love is the most important thing for me as a follower of Christ, I should know what it is, right?

Love is a many splendored thing.
Love lifts us up where we belong.
All you need is love!

I shared a few posts ago about Christian’s poetic pleading with Satine in the musical Moulin Rouge. He’s desperate for her to understand what love is.

God is love.

Forgive this small grammar nerd segue, but hopefully it’ll make sense by the time I’m through.

A linking verb is a verb that links two parts of a sentence together. Specifically, the subject of the sentence – who or what the sentence is about – is connected to the word or words that follow. It’s helpful to think of a linking verb like an equal sign, because the subject in essence “equals” what follows.

Becky is a grammar nerd. Becky = a grammar nerd.

Another way to see if what you have is a linking verb is to switch the subject with whatever words follow the linking verb, and if it still makes sense then what connects these two parts of the sentence is a linking verb.

Becky is a grammar nerd. A grammar nerd is Becky. Essentially, both are the same sentence.

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4: 8

God is love. God = love.

Taking it a step further, our linking verb test doesn’t work quite the same with this sentence.

God is love. Love is God. Both of these are not the same sentence.

I read Mere Christianity for the second time recently, and C.S. Lewis highlights what the main differences are between these two sentences. God is love = it is in God where love is found, because he is love. “The living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else.” Love is God = feelings of love, however and wherever they arise, and whatever results they produce, are to be treated with great respect – as a god.

God is love does not = love is God.

So back to our original question…

What is love?

God is. That’s where and in whom I will find it.

God is love, and in him, that love works through me as I fumble forward in love towards others.

“Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law.”
Romans 13:10 CSB

Becky is a Miami native, and has lived here all of her life. Married to her husband for over 20 years, they lead a very active lifestyle along with their three teenagers and Riley, their rescue dog. Becky loves to teach, and has had the awesome privilege of home educating her children for over twelve years. When not teaching academics, Becky loves to equip, encourage, and empower women through the teaching of her group fitness classes. Becky and her husband lead various ministries, and their family loves to serve the community through the countless opportunities provided over the past twenty years+ in their local church. She enjoys filling her "free" time with reading, writing, watching movies, and just spending time with the family. Becky has a passion for living her life with grit and grace, and encouraging others to do the same.