WHAT IS LOVE?
Text: I Corinthians 13:4-8
1 Cor 13:4 8
4Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
INTRODUCTION:
Before we go in to study anything about marriage at all we need first to know something about love, which is an important ingredient without which marital relation will never stand. If we attempt talking about marriage without first talking about love it will imply that we are putting a cart before the horse. For without love the soup of love will be bitter or tasteless and no one would want to eat it.
The best place to start is by defining love: what is love?
Love is that feeling, that strong emotional attachment of someone towards the object of his love: with the wish or the desire to do the following:
To posses such an object and make it his own&
To be close to that object of his love.
What does it mean to posses?
To posses mean a desire to own that object; to want to live inside that object.
Proverbs. 18:22
Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing,
and obtaineth favour of the LORD.
• One of the reasons why a man looks for a woman is the desire to own her, to lay claim to her.
• He also wants to live inside that woman or burry himself into his object of love
• Lastly he wants to have control over the woman or to influence her one way or the other. If you have fallen in love with someone all you have done is that you have agreed to be controlled and influenced by your object of love. The steering of your life’s vehicle has been given to that person you love. You can never be the same again no matter how much you try. You cannot take a major decision without an ample consideration of how it may affect your object of love.
To be close
You also want to be close with the object of your love. To be close therefore implies that you wish to do following:
• You wish to touch and hold the object of your love. Touching without any restriction and fear that characterized illegality of sexual relation. And when we talk about closeness it has some levels
level of touch.
Handshake: This is what obtains among casual friends and acquaintance.
Kissing and Hugging : This is what obtains among close friends most especially when they have long missed each other..
Sexual relation: This is what obtains between husband and wife and done without any fear and condemnation as to the legality and societal approval of their actions. When it is done otherwise there is fear and guilty.
In summary when we talk about love under our definition we are saying it is a strong, almost irresistible emotional attachment by someone to another person (the object of his love), first to posses and second, to be close to it.
In marriage you can own/posses and be closed only after you both have been duly joined together.
Other meanings of love.
• Agape: God’s kind of love. An unconditional love towards his creatures.
• Love as meaning sexual intercourse: Gen.24:67.
And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.
The worldly musicians usually sing about love as to give us the impression that it is tantamount to sexual intercourse. No it is not so. Love transcends sex and illegal sexual relations.
REASONS FOR LOVE
If you are asked what is the reason for buying your car. Your response is like I bought it for what it can do for me. Marital love is unlike God’s agape love that is unconditional. Marital love is conditional; we marry because of what we tend to gain through marriage. Therefore we love because of the following:-
Love brings us certain emotional satisfaction.
Love adds honour and respect to our persons in our society where the unmarried are disdained as immature and irresponsible.
Love satisfies our erotic desire. This desire has always been there whether we are Christian or not. The only difference between a Christian and the rest is that he is in control of his desire through the grace that Jesus has given him.
Love makes us to fulfill God’s commandment as contained in-
Gen 1:28
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
