What Exactly Is Love?

The following post comes from one of our Contributing Authors – Mike Keller. Mike is on the RPM Board of Directors. 

1 John 4:8 says:

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

What exactly is love?

We throw the term around with romantic images of googly eyes and hearts aflutter, unless you’re a married man and you have grown to know better.  If God is love, then we can learn what it is by who He is and what He does, how He acts and what He says.  In everything that God does and says He put our needs ahead of everything else.  He promises that He knows what we need and He promises that He will supply every need.  The Creator of the Universe is concerned about who I am and what I need.

Imagine what would happen if we would look at our friends, our family, our wives, our children with that same attitude.  We would necessarily have to spend time getting to know them in a way that we can anticipate their needs — physical, emotional, spiritual — and react to those needs.  What would happen if our entire focus was on discerning the needs of the other person and resolving to do nothing but those things that supply their needs? Not what we think they need by making assumptions and conjecture, but truly knowing them, talking to them, exploring with them, and learning from them what makes them tick and from where they get their energy.  And from that intimacy we meet their needs.

And if you need an example of what true love is read John 3:16, Romans 5:8 and Philippians 2:1-7.