1 Corinthians 16:14 says, “Let all you do be done in love.” Obviously, love is important to our Creator. In fact, 1 John 4:7-8 says that those who don’t love, don’t know God because He IS love. I can’t think of a greater motivator for loving others than that very verse. So, how exactly do we love others? I don’t know about you, but it sure feels like we are all being fed myriad ideas of what love is and should look like regularly–with television, music, social media, and even people we interact with. The world has cheapened the idea of love in a lot of ways, making it out to be selfish, and a way to get our own needs met. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember what love actually is, and what it’s actually supposed to look like from a bible-centric, God-ordained perspective. So, how about a little refresher?
Most of us are familiar with 1 Corinthian 13:4-8, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” So now we know what love is, the next step is knowing what that looks like, or how it applies in our everyday lives.
Let’s start with the most important person we should know how to love: God. Matthew 22:37 tells us how to love God, “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Heart, soul, and mind are all-encompassing. That is, in essence, all that we are. What about our bodies, you may wonder. 1 Corinthians 6:19 tells us that our bodies are actually temples of the Most High and that He dwells within us. Think of it like the actual temple. Our bodies are the building as a whole, but our hearts, souls, and minds, are the Holy of Holies, dedicated night and day to the service of God. That doesn’t mean that the body is not also dedicated to His service. In John 14:15, Yeshua himself says, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Yeshua literally tells us how to love God! With all that we are, we meditate on His words to understand Him with our souls. We take every thought captive so we may think on what is true, noble, pure, lovely, and admirable with our minds. And we give Him our hearts, taking down every wall we have built to protect ourselves so we may be His, fully and wholly. And with our bodies, we keep His commandments, the Torah.
Now that we are loving God the way He wants us to, we can focus our attention onto loving other people. Ephesians 5:25, tells husbands to, “love your wives, just as the Messiah loved the Messianic Community, indeed, gave himself up on its behalf…” We know that Yeshua gave himself up to be killed on our behalf, so we can understand this as Paul instructing husbands to be willing to give up their own lives for their wives. However, we know that this is not new information. In fact, in John 15, Yeshua tells us, before Paul, that, “No one has greater love than a person who lays down his life for his friends.” He goes even further to charge His people with the command to love each other like He loved them. And as we know, Yeshua loves them by dying for them. I believe that laying one’s life down can be multifaceted. Yes, we can literally put our very heartbeat on the line for someone in some intense but rather rare scenarios like throwing oneself in front of a bullet or pushing someone out of the way of an oncoming car at one’s own peril. More realistically, however, we can lay our lives down by setting our wants or desires to the side in order to benefit someone else. We can press pause on a video game if we notice through the window our elderly neighbor dragging her trash cans to the road and go out and help. We can put our phone down and tag in with the kids when we notice our struggling spouse. When we lay down ourselves for a moment for someone else, we live out 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, which is, at its core, how we treat people when we have put our own desires to the side. It is exactly how Yeshua loved us.
Going back to Ephesians, Paul continues, saying, “This is how husbands ought to love their wives — like their own bodies; for the man who loves his wife is loving himself. Why, no one ever hated his own flesh! On the contrary, he feeds it well and takes care of it…” This verse about loving your spouse like you love yourself, hearkens back to Matthew 22 where Yeshua tells us the second most important commandment, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. This verse is often used to explain how we are to love others, but what is often overlooked is that this verse also tells us how to love ourselves, because even though we are called to lay our own lives down, we are of no use to anyone else if we have not cared for ourselves, first. We must feed and care for our flesh, so we can feed and care for others. Besides, how are we supposed to keep His commandments with our bodies, if our bodies are falling apart?
When you love someone, you want the highest good for them. But beyond wanting the highest good, the Lord wants us to assist how we can in bringing that highest good to fruition in their lives—and in our own. So while the world is trying to sell you some cheap, knockoff version of love, look to the source, to our God who is in fact, love itself. And of course, like we here at Messiah Texas strive to do at all times, love people like Yeshua died for them.
