Love Is A Person

Love isn’t a concept. It’s not a feeling. According to the Bible, love is a person, and that person is God.

In the first epistle of John we read:

“The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:7-9)

“God is love, and the one who abides (lives) in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:15-17)

As I was reading through the first epistle of John recently I realized that there’s not much debate about the topic of love. See, once you establish that God is love and then you point out that we are commanded by Jesus to love one another, and to love those who do not love us in return, there’s only one thing left to do – love others.

Debating love and analyzing love and creating a strategy for love is mostly useless. Other than actually practicing love, there’s not much else to do about it. Maybe that’s why there are so few debates about these little epistles by the Apostle John?

So, God is love. This means that love’s origin is God. Apart from God there is no love. And by “love” here we do not mean the earthly, selfish, conditional love that most of us have grown up with. No, we mean the ultimate expression of love that is expressed in the Greek language as “Agape”. It is a love that is unconditional. It is a love that is based on the character and nature of the One who is loving, not on the one who receives that love.

In the Gospel of John, we read where Jesus proclaimed:

“If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” (John 14:9)

Paul places an exclamation point on that by saying:

“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” (Colossians 2:8-10)

That means that if God is love, then Jesus is also love.

So, to know “love” we have to get to know the person, Jesus, who is love incarnate.

It also means that if we are like Jesus, then we will be loving as He is loving. That’s why He said, “They will know that you are my disciples (followers) if you love one another.” (John 13:35)

When we obey Jesus in this area of love we declare that we belong to Him, and we also express to Jesus that we love Him in return.

Love is not an emotion. It is not a feeling. It is a person. His name is Jesus. Get to know Him.

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Keith Giles was formerly a licensed and ordained minister who walked away from organized church 11 years ago, to start a home fellowship that gave away 100% of the offering to the poor in the community. 

Today, He and his wife live in Meridian, Idaho, awaiting their next adventure.

His new book “Jesus Unbound: Liberating the Word of God from the Bible”, is available now on Amazon and features a Foreword by author Brian Zahnd.

He is also the author of the Amazon best-seller, “Jesus Untangled: Crucifying Our Politics To Pledge Allegiance To The Lamb” with a Foreword by Greg Boyd.

Keith also co-hosts the Heretic Happy Hour Podcast on iTunes and Podbean. 

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