Love is the Greatest Thing

I wrote this a while ago, but its truth has not changed.  Enjoy.

I think we all know that love is intended to be a verb.  My argument is that love is also intended to be a noun.  

1 Corinthians 13 is often called the “love chapter”- the whole chapter defines love.  But let’s take a look at the last verse of chapter 12, which introduces this chapter.  “Now let me show you a way of life that is best of all,” Paul says.

This is why I say that love is a noun- because it is a chosen way of life. 

Now, the power of love is when we live in a way that turns love from a noun into a verb.  But how do we do that?

1 Corinthians 13:4-7:  “Love is patient and kind.  Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.  It does not demand its own way.  It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.  It does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.  Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”

At the beginning of this past summer, I had forgotten what it was to live with love.  And I will be the first to tell you that living without love does not leave one in a good place.  I was falling from God, losing hope, and letting grief and bitterness take over.  I had no idea who I was, except that I felt worthless and empty.  Surely every teenager has felt this way.  But I would encourage you, when you feel empty or worthless, or if you feel like you are searching for something that you cannot find- examine your life for love.  For this is what Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 13:2- “If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.”

Without love, we’re nothing.  What we should pursue, then, is to live love.

That’s not the real point, though.  Though we should strive to live with love, we all stumble in that.  My point is this- God is love.  This definition of love that we find in 1 Corinthians is the definition of the God that we worship!

 He never gives up.  He never loses faith.  He is always hopeful.  He endures through every circumstance.  1 John 4:8 says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

 Don’t forget who it is that we worship.  Let’s strive to know Him, by loving.

As unfathomable as it may seem, do not forget that God loves you no matter what you have done.  Romans 8:38-39 is my favorite passage of Scripture, because it confirms that.  “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This love is beautifully inevitable.  We cannot escape it.  And isn’t that the greatest thing to be captured by?