What is “true love”? It’s a difficult question that many people have tried to answer over the years, but no one answer seems adequate. Here are a few of them:
Erich Segal writes, “True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.”
Ann Landers says, “Love is a friendship that has caught fire.” Now, that’s pretty good, but how do you know if the fire of passion is lasting and real?
Helen Keller once said, “Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.” I like that answer a little better, but it’s not very helpful, because it leaves me asking the question, “What does true love smell like?”
William Goldman said, “True love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops.” Makes you wonder why he liked cough drops better than love.
An anonymous lover says, “True love is not the number of kisses, or how often you get them, true love is the feeling that still lingers long after the kiss is over.” Perhaps, but feelings are fickle.
A neuroscientist might say love is an “elevated activity in the brain pathways which cause feelings of euphoria, strong motivation, and heightened energy which can induce sleepless-ness, loss of appetite, and obsessive thinking about the beloved.” (Leil Lowndes, “How Neuroscience Can Help Us Find True Love,” The Wall Street Journal, 2-14-13; www.Preaching Today.com)
Love is quiet. Love is a fire. Love is the fragrance of a beautiful flower. Love is a feeling that lingers. Love is a matter of brain chemistry. These answers don’t really help to define true love, but perhaps God has a better answer.
If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 1 John 5, 1 John 5, where God in His Word defines true love.
1 John 5:1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. (ESV)
If you love the Father, you have to love His children.
1 John 5:2-3 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. (ESV)
If you truly love God’s children, you have to...
OBEY GOD.
Keep His commandments. Do His will. True love is not sentimental silliness. It is doing what is right and best for the person loved as defined by God Himself.
In matters of love, do not follow your heart, because “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick,” Jeremiah 17:9 says. It will lead you astray every time, but God will never lead you astray. So don’t follow your heart; follow God’s revealed will as declared in His Word. He knows what’s best; your heart does not! Oh, it might feel right, but what feels right may actually bring more harm than good.
In 2006, the American Society of Landscape Architects conducted a study to determine how a fence and a boundary affected the behavior of children in the playground. The researchers constructed a playground with no fences. During the experiment, the children stayed in the center—almost in fear—and never ventured out beyond the playground structure. Then the researchers put up a fence. Immediately, the children's behavior changed. Instead of fearfully staying in the center of the playground, they wandered with freedom all the way to the fence, exploring and enjoying the entire space.
The researchers concluded: “The overwhelming conclusion was that with a given limitation, children felt safer to explore a playground… With a boundary, in this case the fence, the children felt at ease to explore the space.” Fences brought freedom. The absence of fences created fear and apprehension. (American Society of Landscape Architects, “ASLA 2006 Student Awards: Residential Design Award of Honors”, www.asla.org/awards/ 2006/studentawards/282.html; www.PreachingToday.com)
God’s Word is the boundary, the fence, which brings freedom to those we love. We don’t help people by removing the boundaries; we hurt them. For example, it is NOT love when a parent buys alcohol for their teenaged son or daughter’s party. It is NOT love when a man sleeps with a woman he is not married to. It is NOT love when we ignore sin in a brother or sister’s life and pretend that everything is all right.
It is NOT love to ignore the clear commands of Scripture in our relationships with each other. For parents, the Bible says, “Bring [your children] up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). For lovers, the Bible says, “Abstain from sexual immorality” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). And for Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the Bible says, “If anyone is caught in a transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness...” (Galatians 6:1).
The Greek word for “restore” was used in Bible days to describe setting a broken bone. Sometimes, the process is painful, but if you truly love someone, you will not let them continue in their brokenness and sin. Instead, you will do whatever is necessary to get them the help they really need. It is NOT love to ignore the sin, no. True love seeks to restore the one broken by sin. When you do what IS right by God’s standards, not what FEELS right, when you do what IS right, then you have demonstrated true love.
Phil LeMaster, a pastor in Grayson, Kentucky, received a phone call in December from a man who needed to talk to a counselor. Pastor Phil met him at the church office, where the man told him his tale of woe. A decade earlier, he killed his wife in a fit of anger, was convicted of manslaughter, and spent several years in prison. He and his wife had a daughter, who was in the custody of his in-laws. He had not seen her since the crime, and now, as Christmas neared, his heart ached. Tears streaming down his face, he lamented, “I could pass her on the streets of this city and not even know who she was.”
It was a sad story, but what Pastor Phil remembers most about the counseling session was what the man said when he first walked into Phil’s office. Dramatically, he raised his arms and said, “Now, preacher, let's just leave Jesus out of this, okay?”
As the man sadly left that day, Pastor Phil thought to himself, “That's the whole problem. You've left Jesus out.” (Phil LeMaster, Senior Minister, First Church of Christ, Grayson, Kentucky; www.PreachingToday.com)
Please, don’t leave Jesus out of your life and relationships. Obey Christ in everything, because true love DOES what is right, not what FEELS right. If you want to truly love someone, obey God. However, if you’re going to obey God, you must...
TRUST GOD.
Rely on the Lord. Depend on Him, believing that He knows what’s best and has your best interest at heart.
1 John 5:4-5 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (ESV)
Your faith in Christ makes you an overcomer, a conqueror, a victorious champion in God’s army! You can’t miss it here! Three times it talks about the believer, who “overcomes the world.”
That means when you trust the Lord, you can obey the Lord even when the whole world pressures you to do otherwise. When you believe God, you can go against the tide of world opinion to do what God tells you to do. When you rely on Christ, you can resist the world’s ideas about love, and love in the way God wants you to love.
Kim Duk-Soo will never forget November 20, 1950. That was the day Communist troops found him hiding with his father in a root cellar in North Korea.
Kim is now the administrator of the Presbyterian Hospital in Taegu, South Korea, but he still has difficulty telling his story.
“When we heard the soldiers coming, I was sure we would be killed,” says Kim, his eyes filling with tears. “My Daddy told me we could not tell a lie to save our lives.” The world would say otherwise, but Kim’s father trusted God enough to do what God said even if it meant certain death.
Kim's father had pastored the same church for 42 years. He had helped his wife hide their children by covering them with rice bags and dirt. But after two days of hiding, Kim uncovered himself. Just then, Communist troops approached the house. Kim and his father ran to the back yard and hid in the root cellar.
Kim said, “I told God I would serve him all my life if I got out of the root cellar alive.”
The soldiers found Kim and his father and took them off to a makeshift prison. They were to be executed the next morning. That evening, a captain approached Kim. “Are you a Christian?” he asked.
For a fleeting moment, life for a lie seemed the only logical way to go, but the young boy remembered his father's instruction. He trusted the Lord and said, “I am a Christian.”
The captain drew closer, and whispered, “I am a Christian too. I used to be a Sunday school teacher before the war. You must escape tonight. I will help you.” Kim fled that night, having to leave his father under heavy guard awaiting his eventual death.
The young Kim reached an American army base, and while “hanging around” there discovered an organ and began teaching himself to play. An American he remembers only as Captain Shoemaker learned of his musical interests and ordered a spinet from the States. For the next ten years, Kim played that organ for chapel services at the base.
Later, he played the organ at the First Presbyterian Church in Taegu for over 30 years, accompanying 2,000 Korean voices. “I should have been killed after the Communists found me,” Kim says, “but God sent that Christian guard to help me escape. When I play the organ at church. I am doing it for God.” (Lyn Cryderman, Christianity Today, Nov. 20, 1987; www.PreachingToday.com)
Kim’s faith helped him overcome the influences of a godless world, and your faith can do the same for you. If you trust the Lord, you won’t give in to the world’s ideas about life and love. Instead, you’ll live and love the way God tells you to, because you believe Him!
At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a clerical error sent a supply clerk with the 82nd Airborne Division out the door of an airplane on his first parachute jump without any formal training. Army Specialist Jeff Lewis, 23, who landed unhurt, said he was just doing what a good soldier is supposed to do when he made the jump: Follow orders. “The Army said I was airborne-qualified,” Lewis said. “I wasn't going to question it.” (Chicago Tribune, 5-20-00; www.PreachingToday.com)
Now, the army may be wrong at times, but God is never wrong. He says, “You’re an overcomer, a conqueror, a victorious champion in His army.” Don’t question it. Just believe it and jump when He tells you to jump even if the world thinks you’re crazy. Trust the Lord enough to do what He says, especially when it comes to your relationships.
Gordon Johnson tells the story of a lady, who loved flowers and plants. She planted a rare vine against the stone wall near the back of her yard. She nurtured it, and it grew well. It was vigorous; it was beautiful. But it had no blossoms. She was disappointed.
One day she stood there looking at that vine with the beautiful foliage but no blossoms. Her neighbor called across the wall, asking her to come over. The lady went over to the other yard. The neighbor said, “Thank you for planting that vine. Look at these beautiful blossoms.” You see, the vine had crept through the stone wall, and the blossoms were on the other side. The owner hadn't seen them yet. (Gordon Johnson, “Finding Significance in Obscurity,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 82; www.PreachingToday.com)
That’s what faith is all about. Hebrews 11 says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things NOT SEEN” (Hebrews 11:1). By faith, you do what God says even when you don’t see the results, even when you don’t see the blossoms on the other side, because one day you will! God will invite you to the other side of the wall; and there, you will see the blossoms of love, planted by faith, and nurtured by your obedience to our Heavenly Father.
That’s what true love is all about! True love trusts God enough to obey Him in all your relationships. Obey God, because you trust God. Then, and only then, do you demonstrate true love.
It’s the kind of love Jesus demonstrated on the cross. In obedience to His Heavenly Father, Jesus suffered the injustice of the cross, dying in our place for our sins. Why? because He trusted God.
1 Peter 2 says, “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23).
His obedient trust was rewarded when God raised Him from the dead and gave Him the place of all authority. Hebrews 12 invites us to look to “Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).
In obedient trust, Jesus died on the cross for your sins and mine! It was true love, because Jesus did NOT do what FELT right. The prospect of the cross felt awful to Jesus. He sweat great drops of blood in anticipation of it. No, Jesus did not do what FELT Right. Instead, He trusted God enough to do what WAS right in obedience to His Heavenly Father.
As a result, all who put their trust in Him, experience God’s love in a secure, eternal relationship with Him, which profoundly changes them from the inside out. How about you? Have you experienced that love for yourself? If not, I invite you to trust Christ with your life. Then in His strength, love others the way He loved you.
Erwin Lutzer, former pastor of the Moody Memorial Church in Chicago, talks about a young woman, who got married, but found she could not relate to her husband. As a child, her stepfather sexually molested her for a number of years. That experience had made it difficult to have any kind of physical love. A molested child may not like to be touched, even though the thing that they need the most is to be touched and to be hugged.
But this young woman was transferring all of the revulsion and the hatred for her stepfather toward her husband because of the depths of her shame and bitterness.
She came to a pastor, and he pointed her to Luke 6. He said, “What does the Bible say that you should do to your enemies?”
She looked at verse 27 and said, “Love them, do good, bless them, and pray for them.”
The pastor said, “That's what you have to do about your stepfather. Until you release all of the feelings of bitterness and you are free in your relationship with him, you will never be free to love your husband.”
Every fiber of her being revolted against such advice. She thought to herself, “Why should I forgive him? Why should I love him when he did all of those awful things to me?”
Yet this young woman decided to trust God enough to obey Him in this matter. She baked her stepfather a birthday cake. And rather than speaking evil of him, she decided to speak well of him. Upon further reflection, she realized that there were many good things she could say about him. Despite this horrible sin against her, the fact was that in many other ways he was a good father. She began to think about those ways and speak well of him rather than evil. She decided that she would pray for him three times a day, that God would bless him, and that's what she did.
Several weeks went by as she continued to obey the Scriptures and to forgive the man who had so severely wronged her. She told the pastor later that she saw her stepfather leave a supermarket and walk across the parking lot with a bag of groceries in his arms. For the first time in all those years, there were actually feelings of love toward him rather than revulsion. She said that except for their previous relationship, she could have gone and put her arms around him.
Then she made the crucial statement that was very important to the survival of her marriage: “Now I'm free to love my husband.” (Erwin Lutzer, "Learning to Love," Preaching Today, Tape No. 99; www.PreachingToday.com)
True love set her free, and true love will set you free, as well! Try it for yourself. Trust God enough to obey Him in all your relationships, no matter how it feels, and let Him set you free!
