What is love?

Love is not an emotion but is, in the purest sense, a commitment, or a decision. Loving is an act of the will. This must be so because true love transcends our emotional and intellectual vacillations.

The main difference between love and the emotions it evokes, is that love persists: “It (love) always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1Cor.13:7 NIV). If you study Paul’s famous discourse on love in 1Corinthians 13 you can see that love as the Bible uses the word is something more than an emotion.

Emotional responses that attend a love decision are inevitable because love is a provoker of emotion, but these are attachments or side-effects of love and not love itself.

The Bible shows us that the leading of emotional response comes from the human spirit and not from the soul. The soul is the seat of our emotions. But consider: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Gal.5:22 &23 NIV).

If love is to be a “fruit of the Spirit” it must have its beginnings in our spirit.

To live in love is to totally commit oneself to the Father. But, not to any man’s interpretation of the Father, or to the church doctrine, but to the Father Himself – personally and intimately.

Love is not self-seeking. It is out of His perfect love that God is “other-centred.” This is why God delights to give His children all good things. This giving is first manifested as an intimate and personal giving – meaning the giving of oneself.

Because the Father’s life is the only source in the universe of this kind of love, we can say that without the Father we cannot love anyone except ourselves. This is why relationships apart from God are tenuous at best. This is not an indictment against anyone. This is merely the reality of creation. No one, apart from God, has the goodness to love unselfishly.

Only the love of God can lead us to sacrifice for another’s sake without resentment or ulterior motive.

If we are to allow the Father’s life and love to operate out of us in an unencumbered way, we must accept the unconditional nature of that life and love. Any other view of the Father’s life and love is impure. I simply cannot overstate the importance of letting God give you this view.

An Excerpt taken from William Landon’s book “My Father and Your Father”

ADDENDUM:

Bob Mumford tells of his lesson in unconditional love; One day whilst driving on a rural road Bob noticed what seemed to be a dead squirrel lying on the side of the road. He stopped the car, went across to the squirrel and picked it up. The squirrel was not dead; there was discernible movement as he held it in his hands.

Bob, overwhelmed with love for this poor little defenceless creature, wondered what he could do for it in its pain and discomfort. Suddenly the squirrel turned around and bit him. 

Immediately he threw it to the ground and in a temper said you ungrateful creature, don’t you know I was loving you and trying to help you?

It was then that a small voice said to him, unconditional love is to love irrespective of the circumstances. Your love for that squirrel was conditional.