What is Love?
As we approach Valentines Day, I reflect on the question of love. There are many dynamics that contribute to healthy relationships, but few are so important as love. Growing up in The Salvation Army, I heard dozens if not hundreds of sermons on love, and as I have matured, I find that I disagree with most of them. It is not necessarily that the content is bad, but I believe many miss what I think is the main point.
As we start our exploration of love, the obvious starting point is 1 Corinthians 13, widely referred to as the “love chapter.” Here Paul lays out a comprehensive definition of love — the things that love does and doesn’t do. To briefly summarize, love is patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast, is not proud, does not dishonor others, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, keeps no record of wrong, does not delight in evil, rejoices in the truth, and never fails. We have all heard many sermons on this passage, many focusing on how love is an action. As I mentioned before, this is true but, in many ways, misses the point.
I believe 1 Corinthians 13 is the most depressing chapter in the entire Bible. It always surprises people when they first hear me say that, but please allow me to continue. This passage is a staple at many weddings, and many aspire to live the chapter out in their lives. The entire mission of The Salvation Army is motivated by the love of God. Why would I find 1 Corinthians 13 so depressing? The simple answer is that so few of us can live up to its shining standard.
Look back at that summary of 1 Corinthians 13. How many of us can say that we have been loved by another human being where that person checks off most, if not all, those boxes all the time? The reality for most of us is that we have never been loved like this. How many of us have loved someone else where we meet most of those criteria? Most of us have never loved another human being this way. Most importantly, can you truly say that you love yourself to that standard? I personally fall at “keeping no record of wrong.” I remember every mistake I have ever made and dwell on them far too frequently. Now you can see why 1 Corinthians 13 is so depressing; according to the chapter’s definition, most of us have never been loved, loved someone else, or are even capable of loving ourselves.
If you’ve stuck with me this far you are probably thoroughly depressed. The good news is that there is hope! Paul provides an excellent description of love in 1 Corinthians 13, but there is another definition of love later in the Bible that I think helps us figure out how to love more effectively. In 1 John 4:8b, John tells us that “God is love.” God and love are the same thing. Interestingly, if you go back to 1 Corinthians 13 and replace the word “love” with “God,” we can see that Paul is actually describing God’s character as he explains love. God being love raises a strange question: if God is love, how do we love God?
John knew we would ask this question and is quick to provide an answer. In 1 John 5:3, John tells us that “This is love for God, to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.” If we read Leviticus, it seems pretty clear that God’s commands actually are rather burdensome, but I don’t think this is what John is talking about. John is referring to Matthew 22 when the Pharisees asked Jesus “What is the greatest commandment?” Jesus tells them the entire law can be fulfilled in two things: love the Lord your God (we are trying to figure out how to do this, so I will skip it for the moment), and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Jesus gives us a clear roadmap: to love God, we need to love our neighbor, and to love our neighbor we need to love ourselves. It all starts with loving myself.
You can’t give away what you don’t have. If you don’t love yourself, you will not be able to love your neighbor. If you can’t love your neighbor, then you cannot show love for God. As a counselor, I find that self-love is the key to restoring spiritual intimacy. We must get the self-love piece right if we ever hope to show love to another human being. Going back to 1 Corinthians 13 for a minute, we already established that I barely love my wife, let alone some stranger I meet on the street. If we can master healthy self-love, loving our neighbor comes naturally, and God’s love becomes evident in our lives. So, we arrive at the main question: how do we love ourselves?
The secret to loving yourself is this: you can’t. I know that is a terrible anticlimax. John doesn’t tell us that Ian is love, he tells us that God is love. The key to loving yourself is not generating some sort of feel-good feeling inside yourself or even treating yourself right. The key is accepting the love God has for you. God loves you unconditionally because it is who He is.
If you read Psalm 139, God only has good things to say about you. He tells you that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. He tells you that while you were in your mother’s womb, God was there guiding the process. All your works were written down in His book before one of them came to be. He knew all the mistakes you would make, all the terrible things you would do, and still decided to make you. The reality is God doesn’t care what you look like, what you have done, or who you associate with; He loves you anyway. He wants you to repent and turn from your past ways and accept the love that He has for you. Your only job is to accept it.
When I worked in the Dallas Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center (ARC), this concept was the hardest to communicate. I was working with people who have done some of the worst things imaginable. Explaining that God loved them despite their sins was simply incomprehensible for most of them. Early on, I would encourage them to learn to forgive themselves so that they could more easily accept God’s love, until one day I was politely corrected by our chaplain.
Dan Norwood had been the chaplain at the ARC for more than 10 years when I started working there and had been a pastor twice as long as I had been alive. Thinking highly of myself, I decided to enter into a theological debate with him. You can see where this is going; I did not win. Dan told me that I needed to stop telling my beneficiaries that they need to forgive themselves. Nowhere in the Bible does it say we are to forgive ourselves. In 1 John 1:9 we are told that “If we confess our sins, He (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Self-forgiveness has nothing to do with anything. God is the only one with the power to forgive. As I was slow to admit at the time, Dan is right. That still leaves the question: If God has forgiven me, why do I keep beating myself up?
The secret to forgiving yourself is the same secret as loving yourself: you can’t. Self-forgiveness is about accepting the forgiveness that God has given to us. It is important to remember that God’s grace isn’t free. He sent His son Jesus to die for our sins. When we choose to keep beating ourselves up, we are effectively telling God that His sacrifice wasn’t good enough for us. Failing to forgive ourselves is fundamentally a pride issue. We are choosing to abuse ourselves for something that God has already forgiven us for, disrespecting Jesus’s sacrifice for our sins. When you are beating yourself up about something from the past, remind yourself you are forgiven, not because you deserve it but because of God’s grace.
Learning to love ourselves is much the same process. We do not deserve God’s love. It is something that He has freely given to us, and our job is to humble ourselves enough to accept it. We do that by modifying our self-talk. This is a very simple technique that hundreds of my clients have found effective over the years.
Whenever your self-esteem takes a hit, first admit your failing. We need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge when we make a mistake, sin, or hurt someone else. Then we add God’s truth to the mix: we acknowledge that God loves us anyway, He has forgiven us, He has shown us grace. Here’s what this looks like practically:
Even though I did [insert failure here], God loves me anyway.
Even though I [insert failure here], God gives me value.
Even though I [insert failure here], God has forgiven me.
By adding God’s truth into our self-talk, we can begin to shift our self-esteem out of the things that previously enslaved us and into God’s control. We can learn to love ourselves. As someone who has practiced this for more than 15 years now, it has made an enormous difference in my life. Loving others becomes easy. It is second nature to me. I don’t have to try to love people because it comes out of me naturally all because I love myself. The cool part is that it has helped me grow closer to God as I have shown love to others. Give yourself the best valentine’s gift possible–God’s love–and be amazed as it positively impacts every one of your relationships.