According to one survey, people in the US will spend an estimated $27.5 billion on Valentine’s Day this year [1]. The survey indicates that consumers plan to spend an average of $188.81 on gifts, the most popular being candy (56%), flowers (40%), greeting cards (40%), an evening out (35%) and jewelry (22%). Based on these figures, it seems that love is a lucrative business.
But there are signs other than how much we spend on Valentine’s Day that testify to the high value we place on love. Themes of love and romance figure prominently in books, movies, and popular music. One study concluded that about 67% of lyrics in every song since the 1960s have had to do with love in some form or other [2]. But this preoccupation with love predates the 60s – by far. The ancient Greek philosopher Sophocles (c. 400BC) is quoted as saying: “One word frees us from all the weight and pain in life. That word is love” [3].
“One word frees us from all the weight and pain in life. That word is love.”
Although love is a profitable and popular topic, it can easily be misunderstood. I heard once that love is intuitively simple but philosophically complex – in other words, we innately know what love is but it’s very hard to define. It’s complicated, in part, because there are a lot of ways the word love is used, at least in English. I can say I love my spouse, I love my children, I love Mexican food, I love that movie, and I’m down 40-love. These statements express significantly different meanings and types of affections despite using the same word. Adding to the confusion are the various cultural notions about love that surround us. On one hand, we’re often told that love is a powerful emotion – indeed, the most powerful and meaningful emotion there is. Others tell us, however, that love isn’t a feeling at all. Some regard love as something we control while others insist it is something that just “happens to us” as we “fall” into it. The swirling combination of these ideas breeds frequent confusion.
Thankfully, the Bible helps us sort some of these things out because it has a lot to say about love. In fact, the Bible unambiguously affirms the high value to be placed on love. John makes the profound claim that God is love [4]. Jesus taught that love is the greatest commandment [5]. Paul asserted that love is the fulfillment of the law [6]. But the Bible usually has a particular kind of love in view: the kind of love we read about in 1 Corinthians 13, distinguished by the Greek word agape [7]. Perhaps you associate 1 Corinthians 13 with weddings. While it is entirely appropriate to read it at weddings, the application shouldn’t be limited to marriage because Paul isn’t talking about romantic love in 1 Corinthians 13 [8]. The fact is that 1 Corinthians 13 has as much to say to me about how I should love my neighbor as it does about how I should love my wife. If that makes you uncomfortable, it’s because you’ve adopted an improperly restricted view of the passage.
“The fact is that 1 Corinthians 13 has as much to say to me about how I should love my neighbor as it does about how I should love my wife. If that makes you uncomfortable, it’s because you’ve adopted an improperly restricted view of the passage.”
Although 1 Corinthians 13 doesn’t have romantic love specifically in view, Valentine’s Day provides a fitting occasion to reflect on how God calls us to love one another in the first part of this well-known chapter [9]. Let’s consider its content under three headings.
The Indispensable Requirement of Love
Regrettably, the opening three verses of 1 Corinthians 13 are frequently overlooked. Paul begins with claims so staggering that we might not believe them if they weren’t in the Bible. In fact, some opt to interpret his statements here as hyperbole. He writes: “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, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
Paul begins by stressing the indispensable requirement of love. He basically says that without love you’re left with nothing, nada, zilch. Paul mentions several things that lose value in the absence of love. First, he mentions spiritual gifts in the form of “speaking in the tongues of men and of angels” [10]. Paul says, in effect, forget speaking in human tongues – it doesn’t matter if you can speak the language of the angels surrounding the throne of heaven. Without love, it’s just noise. He then asserts that if you have “prophetic powers,” the understanding of “mysteries,” and “all knowledge,” along with faith that can “remove mountains” [11], but lack love, you’re nothing. Finally, he says even great acts of service and sacrifice – contributing to countless charities, giving away all you have, donating the clothes off your back, and going so far as to surrender your body “to be burned” – these are all hollow when unaccompanied by love [12]. Without love, we gain nothing [13].
It’s critical to give proper weight to what Paul is saying here because we tend to think precisely the opposite is true. We think love isn’t that important if we have extraordinary gifts. If I expound God’s word with eloquence and accuracy, what does it matter if I’m arrogant, self-righteous, or rude? If you can answer all the hard theological questions and win arguments with unbelievers, so what if you happen to be an impatient, irritable, or unforgiving person in your personal relationships? Paul flips this thinking on its head: if I’m arrogant, self-righteous, and rude it doesn’t matter how eloquently I preach or teach. If you’re an impatient, irritable, or unforgiving person, it doesn’t matter how much theology you can regurgitate or how many ways you can shut down arguments against Christianity. It’s our love that really matters.
“It’s not our gifts, our skills, our breadth of theological knowledge, our faithful church attendance, or the flurry of activities in our ministry service or church life that serve as the distinguishing mark of the saint. It’s love.”
We may think gifts, knowledge and the demonstration of service are what mark us out as Christians but Paul says those things are personally insignificant without love [14]. In doing so, Paul is simply echoing what Jesus taught in John 13:34-35: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” It’s not our gifts, our skills, our breadth of theological knowledge, our faithful church attendance, or the flurry of activities in our ministry service or church life that serve as the distinguishing mark of the saint. It’s love. And the sobering truth is that if you’re not growing in love, you’re not growing as a Christian.
Could it be that there are ways you’re using your giftedness, your biblical and theological knowledge, or your involvement in church and church ministries to excuse or justify your failure to love?
But what does it mean to love? Thankfully, we’re not left to ourselves to figure that out. Paul provides us with an inspired description of love [15].
The Inspired Description of Love
Rather than giving us a precise definition, what we get from Paul in vv. 4-8 is a description of love’s qualities: “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. Love never ends.”
In these verses, Paul mentions eight things that love is: it is patient, kind, rejoices in truth, always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, and never fails – and eight things that love is not: it doesn’t envy or boast, it isn’t proud, rude, self-seeking, easily angered, or unforgiving, and it doesn’t delight in evil.
Instead of examining each of these qualities in detail, let’s consider some general truths that emerge from this description to help us better understand the nature of biblical love [16]. First, notice that the Bible doesn’t describe love as a mere feeling. This isn’t to say that love isn’t often accompanied by certain feelings, but there’s more to love than emotions. C. S. Lewis put it like this: “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained” [17]. The love the Bible calls us to show to others is something that can be expressed when the feelings often associated with love are absent – or even contrary. Martin Luther King, Jr. espoused this same idea when explaining the governing ethic of nonviolent resistance: “In speaking of love at this point, we are not referring to some sentimental or affectionate emotion. It would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense. Love in this connection means understanding, redemptive good will.” [18].
“Love isn’t merely a feeling or merely an action, but the heart’s motive for certain actions and attitudes.”
Since love isn’t merely a feeling but a commitment to another’s ultimate good, a second important truth about love emerges: it is something you can choose to do. According to these verses, love consists of certain calculated actions and attitudes that we deliberately choose to exhibit toward one another. But it’s not simply the outward act or attitude that constitutes love. We know that an act of kindness might be masking an attempt to manipulate. And remember that Paul has already indicated that it’s possible to engage in extremely sacrificial acts – giving away all you have – without love. So let me suggest this for what the Bible means by love: love isn’t merely a feeling or merely an action, but the heart’s motive for certain actions and attitudes. In other words, love compels you to concern yourself with the welfare and prosperity of others so that you are patient with them, you are kind to them, you are not rude toward them, etc. I confess that I’m not the world’s most patient driver (I’m working on it, by God’s grace), but if the slow driver in front of me is my mom, I can assure you that I’m going to be patient. Why? Because I love my mom. Love is the heart’s motive for patience, for kindness, and for all of the other traits listed in Paul’s inspired description of love.
We can discern a third important truth about biblical love by noting the way Paul starts the list. The first trait that might come to the minds of many in describing love today is that it’s nice. Now it’s true – on some level – that loving people are nice, if we understand that to mean that they are typically respectful, considerate, sensitive, polite, and well-mannered (“not rude”). But Paul doesn’t tell us that love is nice, nor does he start with it’s more virtuous cousin: kind. Instead, Paul begins his inspired description of love by asserting that love is patient. This informs us that love is hard. It’s hard to be patient [19]. People – including you and me – can be taxing and annoying, people can be selfish and immature, people can demand far more of our time, energy, and attention than we are inclined to give or think they should need. But love motivates us to endure the suffering that patience requires with and for others.
This leads to a fourth truth that Paul’s inspired description of love teaches us: it communicates something about the nature of relationships in this world. There are differences between people and we are to respond to those difference with love. People have different personalities and varying levels of maturity. We are to respond to the challenges this can present not with exasperated irritability or anger but with patience motivated by love. People have different needs. Love doesn’t ignore these needs but responds with kindness and care. People have different gifts, abilities, and privileges. We are not to respond to these differences with pride or boasting if we have gifts that others lack – nor with envy if we lack certain abilities and privileges that others have. Rather love is the heart’s motive that leads us to exercise our gifts, abilities, and privileges for the welfare and prosperity of others, and love is what causes us to celebrate the successes of others as if they were our own [20]. This can be extremely difficult because we can also expect that people will wrong us. But we are to respond to wrongs not with mounting resentment or by holding grudges but with forgiveness motivated by love.
A fifth and final truth is this: when Paul tells us that love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth,” we can conclude that love and truth are not opposed to each other. We do not have to pit our love for someone against standing for the truth of God. To confront someone with or lead others in truth is to love them. The kind of welfare and prosperity we’re aiming for in our love toward others is their eternal welfare and their prosperity in godliness. So contrary to what some will claim, to celebrate, encourage, or give consent to sin or wrongdoing in the hearts and lives of others is not loving them. It’s actually closer to hate.
“In summary, what it means to be a loving person, according to Paul’s Holy Spirit-inspired description, is being patient, kind, humble, sensitive, sacrificial, forgiving, righteous, faithful, committed, and persevering for the good of others. Does this describe you? Is this how others would describe you?”
In summary, what it means to be a loving person, according to Paul’s Holy Spirit-inspired description, is being patient, kind, humble, sensitive, sacrificial, forgiving, righteous, faithful, committed, and persevering for the good of others. Does this describe you? Is this how others would describe you? If this is what marks out disciples of Jesus, does it mark out you?
If we’re honest, our answers will be less that flattering. Yes, 1 Corinthians 13 is a beautiful chapter. But far from furnishing us with feelings of warm satisfaction or euphoric rapture, it should also be acutely convicting. It confronts us with the ugly truth that you and I aren’t very loving people. Our impatience, unkindness, pride, selfishness, anger, difficulty to forgive, fickleness, and tendency to think the worst about people are daily realities in our relationships. Paul’s inspired description of love condemns us for our sinful shortcomings. But there is good news: we aren’t condemned.
The Incarnate Revelation of Love
We aren’t condemned because the kind of love we’re called to express is the love God has shown to us. God has, in fact, embodied this kind of love. It turns out that Sophocles was right: one word does free us from all the weight and pain in life and that word is love. But Sophocles didn’t know that love is a person. Jesus, the Word-made-flesh, is the incarnate revelation of love who frees us from the pain of divine condemnation that we deserve for our failure to love. His love for us is what was motivating his heart when he offered himself up on the cross not only to rescue us from judgment but to secure our ultimate welfare and eternal prosperity in glory. It’s by looking to the sacrificial death of Jesus that we know what love really is. The apostle John writes: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.” Believer, Jesus loves you, draws near to you with patience and kindness, humbled himself for you, turned the Father’s anger away from you, has put away your sins and forgives you, died for you, is ever faithful to you, and his steadfast love never fails.
“It’s by looking to the sacrificial death of Jesus that we know what love really is. The apostle John writes: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.””
John goes on in this same verse to inform us that the love of Jesus calls for imitation: “and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” [21]. It's been said that people will not care how much you know until they know how much you care. Missionary Doug Nichols tells a moving story that illustrates this. In 1967, while serving with a missionary society in India, tuberculosis forced him into an impoverished clinic for several months. He did not yet speak the indigenous language, so he tried to give Christian literature written in their own language to patients, doctors and nurses. Everyone refused. He recounts:
“The first few nights I awoke around 2am coughing. One night, in my coughing spell, I noticed one of the older, sicker patients across the aisle trying to get out of bed. He would sit up on the edge of his bed and try to stand, then in weakness fall back into bed exhausted. The next morning I realized that the man had been trying to get up and walk to the bathroom. The stench in the ward was awful. Other patients yelled insults at him. Angry nurses moved him roughly from side to side as they cleaned up the mess. One nurse even slapped him. The old man curled into a ball and wept. The next night I again woke up coughing. I noticed the man across the aisle sit up and again try to stand. Like the night before, he fell back whimpering. I do not like bad smells, and I did not want to become involved, but I got out of bed and went over to him. When I touched his shoulder, his eyes opened wide with fear. I smiled, put my arms under him and picked him up. He was very light, due to old age and advanced tuberculosis. I carried him to the restroom, which was just a small, filthy room with a hole in the floor. I stood behind him with my arms under his armpits as he took care of himself. After he finished, I picked him up and carried him back to his bed. As I laid him down, he kissed me on the cheek, smiled, and said something I could not understand. The next morning another patient woke me up and handed me a steaming cup of tea. He motioned with his hands that he wanted a tract. As the sun rose, other patients approached and indicated they also wanted the booklets that I had tried to distribute before. Throughout the day, nurses, interns and doctors asked for literature. Weeks later, an evangelist who spoke the indigenous language visited me, and as he talked to others … he discovered that several already professed faith in Christ as Savior as a result of reading my literature! What did it take to reach these people with the gospel? It wasn’t health, the ability to speak their language, or a persuasive talk. I simply helped someone to the bathroom” [22].
However you choose to celebrate – or not celebrate – Valentine’s Day, be convinced of the indispensable requirement of love, be ruled by the inspired description of love, and be empowered by the incarnate revelation of love. We cannot love this way in our own strength, but because God has first loved us [23] and poured his love into our hearts by the Spirit [24], we have the power and ability to love others with the kind of love in 1 Corinthians 13. We can love like Jesus. So let’s give this love as freely as we have received it, and let patience, kindness, compassion, humility, sensitivity, selfless sacrifice, righteous integrity, forgiving grace, fierce hope, and relentless endurance for the ultimate welfare of others be evident in our relationships. This is how people will know that we are his disciples – by our love.
[2] https://dailyillini.com/uncategorized/2021/02/11/why-are-so-many-songs-about-love/
[3] https://www.azquotes.com/author/37847-Sophocles/tag/love#google_vignette
[4] 1 John 4:8.
[5] Matthew 22:36-40.
[6] Galatians 5:14.
[7] The Greek language employs different words to distinguish various kinds love. For example, philia (φιλια) refers to brotherly love or friendship, storge (στοργη) refers to affection or familial attachment, and eros (ερος) refers to romantic love. Agape (αγαπη), the most common kind of love in the New Testament, refers both to God’s love and the love we are called to have toward him and others. For a detailed exploration of each of these kinds of love, see C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York, NY: Harcourt, 1960).
[8] The Greek word for love used throughout 1 Corinthians 13 is agape (αγαπη), not eros (ερος).
[9] The broader context of 1 Corinthians 13 is one in which Paul is talking about the exercise of spiritual gifts [chapters 12-14]. Paul exhorts members of the body of Christ to elevate the practice of love above all other gifts because love is the preeminent virtue (the “more excellent way,” see 1 Corinthians 12:31) that directs us how to use our gifts. Although we are called to love God first and foremost, the emphasis in 1 Corinthians 13, and therefore the emphasis of this article, is on our love for one another. But bear in mind that the two are not entirely separate: one way we show our love for God is by loving each other (see 1 John 4:20-21: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”).
[10] Perhaps Paul starts with this because he is writing to a church in Corinth that was apparently very gifted.
[11] Paul doesn’t seem to have in mind here saving faith with Jesus as its object, but a kind of “faith” that is capable of displaying power in its effects, i.e. to “remove mountains” (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:9 where Paul mentions faith as a distinct gift). We might think of those in Matthew 7:21-23 who refer to Jesus as “Lord, Lord” and prophesied in his name, could cast out demons, and did many mighty works but are not, in the end, genuine disciples.
[12] We know it’s possible to be generous and sacrificial without genuine love. There are distant parents who out of a need to be liked or valued or out of a sense of duty, responsibility, and obligation provide their children with excessive amounts of toys at Christmas, all the latest gadgets, and all the best clothes, but never show up on birthdays, or at recitals, or for sporting events. These children know that something indispensable is missing and that none of the other stuff matters.
[13] To clarify, Paul isn’t saying that God doesn’t bless others through gifts and actions that are exercised apart from love. He’s saying that when we are exercising gifts and engaging in acts without love, we are displaying nothing that truly reflects the heart of God or that elicits his delight. Consider 1 John 4:7-8: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
[14] If this seems too dismissive, consider that King Saul served (and prophesied) yet was rejected (1 Samuel 10:10), Balaam prophesied (faithfully) yet was destroyed (Numbers 22-24), Judas exercised gifts yet was lost (see Matthew 10:5-8), and the demons have theological knowledge and are demons still (see James 2:19).
[15] Referring to Paul’s description as “inspired” is not to be taken to mean that the description is inspiring. It means that Paul is writing by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit so that what we have in 1 Corinthians 13 is a divinely authored description of love. By implication, we don’t get to inject whatever ideas or concepts we happen to like into the meaning of biblical love. It is clearly demarcated and displayed by particular expressions.
[16] For detailed treatments on the attributes of love listed in 1 Corinthians 13, see Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits (London, UK: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), or Phil Ryken, Loving the Way Jesus Loves (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2012).
[17] C.S. Lewis, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” God in the Dock in The Collected Works of C. S. Lewis (New York, NY: Inspiration Press, 1996), 330.
[18] Martin Luther King, Jr., “An Experiment in Love,” A Testament of Hope (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1986), 19.
[19] The Greek word for patience here (see also Galatians 5:22; Ephesians 4:2; Colossians 3:12) is from makrothumeo (μακροθυμεω). The King James Version translates the phrase: “Charity suffereth long.”
[20] Good parents routinely demonstrate this kind of celebratory love toward their children. The key is to be ever expanding the circle of those we love so intensely and deeply that their joys and successes are counted as our own.
[21] See 1 John 3:16. Obviously, this call to imitate the love of Jesus doesn’t include the atoning effects of his love. But it does include voluntarily suffering and sacrificing for the good of others – even for enemies (see Matthew 5:43-48). Loving enemies is also an imitation of the love of Jesus who loved us while we were enemies (see Romans 5:6-10).
[22] You can read this story at: https://www.evangelical-times.org/missionary-spotlight-gods-plan-in-a-tb-sanatorium/
[23] See 1 John 4:19.
[24] See Romans 5:5: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”