Love is...

1 John 4:8
He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

Weddings are a great time to hear scripture.  Sadly, in a lot of cases, weddings are the only time some people hear scripture.  That being the case, it’s crucial that the scripture read is used to impact the lives of the hearer for Christ.  But, in order to do that, the focus has to be turned away from the bride and groom and placed on who Christ is.

There’s a passage in 1 Corinthians about love.  This passage lists out all of the charistics of perfect love and it is most often read at weddings.  Love suffers long and is kind; it does not envy; love is not puffed up.  Love does not behave rudely, seek its own, is not provoked, and thinks no evil.  Love does not rejoice in sinfulness, but rejoices in truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.  Love never fails! (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

This passage is beautiful in describing love, but all too often, it’s used as a challenge to the newlyweds.  This is a list of what love is.  Now you have a list of what to expect from one another.  An challenge of this magnitude on the first day of married life may be the underlying cause to why the divorce rate in both the church and the world is the same: over 50%!  

These are unreasonable expectations!  Thinking that you could consistently meet such high marks as a husband or wife can only lead to guilt and disappointment when you don’t.  Shame and regret come from missing the mark.  And, as husband or wife, to expect your significant other to always meet these expectations is just as ridiculous.  If you can’t meet them, how is he or she going to meet them?

Unreasonable expectations that can’t be met by either party will only end in strife, guilt, shame, and fighting.  This is why it’s crucial to use scripture appropriately!  All of the attributes listed in 1 Corinthians would be great to bring into a marriage, but no person can ever do that.  

God is love; the Bible makes it clear.  When we discuss love’s attributes we’re actually talking about God.  Yes, possessing the characteristics listed in 1 Corinthians would be great, but attempting to achieve them through our own human effort is futile.  If love is all of those things (kind, patient, never failing), and God is love, and Christ is God, and we’re in Christ, then it is Christ who is loving the world from within us (Galatians 2:20).

This is what we need to realize: without Christ we cannot display the attributes of His perfect love to the world.  We can try to be all of those things, but we’ll continually fail.  Failure is the Devil’s hope for our love.  When we fail to meet the expectations of perfection we let our loved ones down.

But Christ’s desire is for His love to be in us.  His desire is for us to recognize that we can’t love perfectly like 1 Corinthians describes.  He wants us to rely on His love.  In so doing, He’ll enable us to love others.  It’s not by our effort; it’s not even our love.  It’s Christ’s perfect love!