In February folks often think a lot about love. Perhaps it’s due to the plethora of red and pink hearts adorning every store, thanks to the vague legacy of St. Valentine of Rome. While all this thinking is going on, I wonder exactly what folks are thinking about it. Are they thinking that they want it? That they need it? Wish they had it? Praying to keep it? Trying to show it? Even attempting to buy it?

The world has been and still is in utter confusion about the nature of love and our relationship to it. In my days growing up one of the most popular songs was by Foreigner: “I wanna know what love is.”  I remember belting it out and maybe even meaning it, but never really listening for the answer- at least not from the right place. Any Christian you may know and love will often be quick to answer what love is by quoting John 3:16. It’s a great answer to be sure, but do we really understand or are we just parroting off an answer we heard in a sermon one weekend?

The bible is a font of wisdom about love. Love – to be more specific, agape love – is listed as the goal of our instruction (1 Tim 1:5) indicating an understanding of love should be of key importance to mankind. Agape is not the sort of love most folks know or experience though. Many may never have even heard of it. In February most folks are focused on eros (sexual passion and lusts), ludus (playful flirtatious affection), philia (deep, friendship affection), storge (love between parents and children), or even philautia (the love of self). It may surprise you to find out that none of these have anything at all to do with the love that is meant to be the goal of your life. These other “loves” were completely different words and concepts in the scriptural language, Koine Greek, yet somehow by the time the English language came along, all these concepts were jumbled up into a single word love. Flash forward to the present, we can love our iPhones, love our hair, love this color and love that food. Is it any wonder that Foreigner (and I) was confused?

I have heard it noted that no one counterfeits one-dollar bills. Why? Because they aren’t of enough worth for the effort and risk. A criminal counterfeits items of much higher value. Similarly, those things of highest value and most importance to God are the things the enemy will attack the most. The devil came to steal, kill and destroy (Jn 10:10). If agape is the goal God has for us, is it any wonder the devil has made such strides in clouding our understanding?

So how are we to achieve our goal? First let’s look to the Scriptures to understand how the outworking of agape is described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8:  It suffers long and yet is kind. It never envies. It does not parade itself. It is not puffed up. It does not behave rudely. It does not seek its own. It is not provoked. It thinks no evil. It does not rejoice in iniquity, instead rejoicing in truth. It bears all things. It believes all things. It hopes all things. It endures all things. It never fails.

Since God IS agape love (1 Jn 4:16), this passage is a description of Him. You may notice the underlying trait in every description of agape love is utter selflessness. Jesus was the visible image of our invisible God (Col 1:15), demonstrating to each of us what agape love looks like when mankind is reconnected to it. Why is it so hard to be like Jesus?

To answer that let’s go back to the beginning: God made man in His image, so He made man to love – not to need love. He made man to love because he’s fulfilled in love. Adam was grafted into the source of love, God, from the beginning. We were we all created in God’s image before the foundation of the world was laid. But when Adam’s branch got cut off from the vine through sin, he got cut off from the source of love (separated from God) and immediately became in desperate need of love. The selfless nature was instantly replaced by a nature of self-focus and self-consciousness. Adam lost his identity in God. Every one of us was born into that same dilemma. We were all born into Adam, needing love. But like Adam we were created to BE love, not need it. We are complete in Him who is the fullness of the godhead bodily (Col 2:9-10). We are complete in Him, but outside of Him we are not, which equals need. Once we are reconnected and know agape love – if we surrender and live by the Holy Spirit – we need for nothing.

Think back: all through life, we’ve tried to find ourselves through one another and have been sorely disappointed time and again. Why? We’re looking for love in all the wrong places because we are so driven by this need for it. This is why when we say “I love you” to someone we usually mean “I need you.” How can you tell? Because we’re crushed if they don’t say it back. The words “I love you” work to calm people down in many circumstances because it meets a primal need; we all want to believe that we are loved. We need to believe that we are loveable, so we seek acceptance, inclusion and “likes” on social media. But this is a blight and the exact dilemma that came through the separation from God in the Fall of Adam. It wasn’t like this at the beginning; we became this way through Adam and Eve.

We were born into Adam and thus we must get born again! The good news of the Gospel is not simply a beneficial prayer to go to Heaven someday. It is a Truth that restores us back to what He created us to be in the first place. To a place where you’re not in need of love, because if you know Him you’ve been loved, and now can become love. You can be perfected in love (1 John).

This need of love has driven us from a very early age. Most of us got hurt by someone when we were very young. It’s why so many people do so many bad things to each other, because it’s every man for himself at the cost of whomever. But agape love lays down its life for another. We grew up living at the expense of another and people living at our expense. This is a total perversion of what we were created for and 180° from Truth. Love lays down its life, it takes no account – that means it doesn’t even consider – any wrong that’s been done to it. So then why do we all have a story of how wronged we’ve been?

Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love (1 Jn 4:7-8).

Wonder if we can become selfless. Wonder if the power of the cross and what Jesus accomplished – knowing what He did when He uttered “it is finished” – was powerful enough to restore us to what He created us to be in the first place. Wonder if we truly sought to be like Him, that we could. Then we could take all the descriptors of love and truthfully apply them to followers of Christ:

They are kind, they are merciful. When wrongs are done to them, when others are cruel, when others are spiteful, betray or stab them in the back – they take absolutely no account of it. They forgive over and over and it’s as if nothing ever happened. If no one ever recognizes them for something they did through praise or a thank you note or a promotion… they never blink an eye at it because their Father in Heaven sees and that is where they store up treasures for themselves. Every time they see someone in need, they hand over all they have in order to help. If someone in need asks for a dollar, they give ten. When someone is hurt or sick, they show tenderness and openly pray for healing rather than be concerned about the perceptions and thoughts of others around them. They are patient beyond understanding (even in traffic and long shopping lines) because their time is not their own; it is the Lord’s. They know God has their schedule in hand. They never boast in their blessings, nor do they pray for green lights, because that would selfishly leave others at a red light. Every day they wake with the only goal on their lips being to walk out the will of God and love others.