What Is Love?

I was sitting at lunch today with my 4 year old daughter when out of nowhere she asked, “Dad, what it love?” It was a sincere question, no agenda attached. I asked her why she wanted to know and she told me that Lady Aberlin from Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood (the classic) did not know what love was, so my daughter wanted to know too. I, as any good researcher would do, consulted the fount of all knowledge, Google. I found that the phrase “What is love?” is the most searched phrase on the Internet. That didn’t really surprise me; people are looking for love and doing it with a vengeance these days. But, back to my daughter’s question, “What is love?” Love is almost impossible to quantify, and yet, so many try. Let me lend my hand to the task and attempt to answer a simple question from a 4 year old.

What Love Is Not

At first glance, love seems to be a thing whose definition depends on the person defining it. Yet, there are several attempts at defining and quantifying love that seriously miss the mark.

Emotion

Love is not an emotion. Emotions are fickle at best and easily manipulated at worst. If love were purely an emotion, then it would change as easily as the winds. Those great stories of love that endure the ages, withstand life’s trials, and surmount all obstacles would never happen if love were merely an emotion. While love affects the emotions, emotion is not a good way to describe love.

Physiology

Love is not merely a physiological response brought out by chemistry or biological attraction. Biological attraction need have nothing to do with love and love is a poor moniker to describe something erupted by biological chemistry and physical attraction. No, love is not purely a product of chemistry; it is deeper still. If love originated as a result of a biological attraction, then what happens when attractiveness or physiological attraction wanes? Does love disappear when chemistry cools?

Accident

Love is not something that is “fallen into”; it’s no accident. An instant attraction may be physiological or even emotional, and it may grow into love at some point, but love is not something that happens accidentally. If love was just something that happened to us, that we experienced, then we might well never know love, for we might never accidentally step into it.

What Love Is

If love is not purely emotional, physiological, or accidental, then that begs my daughter’s original question, “What is love?” The problem with trying to define love is that too many try to define love according to the philosophical, cultural, or societal standards of a fallen, sinful humanity rather than allow God, who is love (1 John 4:16), define it for them. Any true definition of love must come from the source of pure love, the person who is love, God. God has revealed what love is in the Bible, so it is there we must turn to find out what love is.

The various Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek terms translated “love” occur over 350 times in the Bible. The terms speak of the physical act of love, brotherly love, friendship, marital commitment, etc. All could be said to be forms of love, but none truly and singularly define love. None define love until you consider 1 John 4:10, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (NIV). The Apostle John begins this simple sentence with a statement, “This is love.” Literally, the Greek phrase reads ἐν τούτῳ ἐστὶν ἡ ἀγάπη (en touto estin he agape – in this is love). John follows this simple statement by quantifying what love is. It is not our loving God, but God’s loving us and demonstrating that love by sending His son, Jesus, as a sin offering on our behalf.  The Apostle Paul put it this way, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (NIV).”

From these verse, and many like them, God, who is love, showed us what love really is. Love is a choice, in its simplest form. God did not choose to love an unlovely, rebellious, sinful, decrepit, depraved, bankrupt mankind because He felt like it; He was not emotionally moved to love us. If emotion was the basis of God’s love for us then He could just as easily not love us anymore because He felt like it. God was not attracted to us in any way either. No, Paul’s description of the unredeemed human heart in Romans 3:10-15 is anything but attractive. So, why does God love us? Both John and Paul make it clear, He chose to do so. It wasn’t anything about us that made Him love us. In fact, He loved us, and demonstrated that love by sending Jesus to die to pay the penalty our sin required, in spite of our sinfulness and in spite of the fact that we did not love him.

This demonstration of true, pure love by God who is love defines for us what love is. Love is a choice to do what is best for the object of our love regardless of worth, loveliness, or reciprocation on the part of that object. That’s a very technical way of saying that love is a choice to love someone whether they deserve it or not, are beautiful or not, or ever love us in return. Yes, that is love and that kind of love is hard, demanding, selfless, and sacrificial. That’s the kind of love God demonstrated to us and it’s the kind of love God demands we Christians show one another (1 John 4:11) and share with a lost and dying world (John 3:16).

So, how do you explain what love is to a 4 year old? Simple, you point her to Jesus. I would do the same for you. Sites like Match.com, ChristianMingle, Zoosk, and eHarmony boast being able to help you find that special person who will love you. True love isn’t about being loved; it’s about choosing to love someone else. The ultimate expression of true love isn’t seen in Romeo and Juliet; it’s seen in God’s lovingly sending Jesus who willingly came to die for us when we didn’t deserve it. It is this love that we are called to demonstrate as we live out Christ. When we learn that it will change the way we view our marriages, our families, our friends, our neighbors, and all those whom God brings into our life.