Love is such an interesting study of a word. In the Bible, one of the books that talks more about love than any other, there are three words from the Greek that are all translated into English as “love”.
Today, millions of people celebrated (or made fun of) a holiday centered around the word love. Most will use it as an excuse to give gifts or go out of their way to serve their romantic lover. Some will use it as a way to gather people who are only friends, but friends who have a deeply emotional love for one another.
Whenever this holiday comes around, I can’t help but feel compelled to go to the source of all the love that we see around us. The “true love” in the Disney princess movies. The love of a human and their dear pet. The love someone may have for their home town. All such vastly different feelings, yet accompanied with the word love.
The ESV translation of the Bible uses the word love 552 times. Perhaps one of the most famous chapters of the bible talking about love being 1 Corinthians 13. I wrote a previous blog post on this subject at one point.
Love is a wild word and an even greater action. An action that all must stem from somewhere. True love for another can not come from within us.
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” 1 John 4:7-12