Love

by GATS, written 03/01/2023 updated 06/16/2025

Popular culture is not shy to characterize love: it's a battlefield, it is all you need, a hard habit to break, a many splendid thing and there is an art to it if you are so inclined. But what does love have to do with it? Tough love seems to be a thing these days. Love can be confusing, as you can be head over heels both in debt and in love; what then, do we owe love? Love is in places as its in the air, it finds a way, its over the moon and you can fall in to it. Love is personified making the world go around, love hurts and it can find you. Many don't see it coming, but love can begin at first sight and be altogether finished with; it can increase, blossom, wane and grow cold. It is used to describe so many things: home, the garden, youth, an icecream sundae.

But what is love, and what is it to love? The Scriptures have much to say about it as God is love. The first instance in the Scriptures of the word 'love' is in Gen 22:2, "your only son, whom you love, Isaac." Abraham's love for and offering of Isaac is a type for God sending His beloved Son into the world, "His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin" (Rom 8:3). Just when Abraham raised a hand to take Isaac's life the Lord provided a substitute offering, a ram whose horns were caught in the interwoven branches of a briar bush (Gen 22:12-13). This was a type for Jesus Christ wearing a crown of thorns before his crucifixion.

Just before Jesus was crucified He was thinking of His Father's love for Him from eternity, desiring that His disciples would know and have that same love in them (John 17:24, 26). Being replete with love is one thing, but the completion of love is to show it by the doing, to love your neighbor. "By this the love of God was manifested to us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him" (1John 4:9). This love God has made apparent to us, entrusting us to live it out that the world might also know that they are loved.