It is REALLY hard to write the introduction to a [relatively short] Bible study on love. I am doing edits now and went back to this today. I’d love to know your thoughts. What do you hear people say about love? What do you think about some of these internet discoveries I made regarding the contemporary understanding of love? Please love me by giving me your thoughts:-)!
Love.
Philosophers, poets, moviemakers, and ordinary people have searched to understand and explain love since the beginning of time. A Google search on “studies of love 2012” reveals that the contemporary world thinks of love almost exclusively in terms of romantic or sexual love, although some studies focus on the brain’s response to a mother’s love or supportive relationships. Following current evolutionary science, it is popular to talk about love as a “primitive human instinct.” One MIT professor has determined that romantic love is best understood in the context of economic resources.
In the midst of such cultural conversation, we must ask, to quote Shakespeare out of context, “Is there an ‘ever-fixed mark’ of love?” Is it possible to understand love, and more importantly, is it possible to live love in a world seemingly desperate for it?
The Apostle Paul says it is not only possible; it is essential. In 1 Corinthians 13, often called the “love chapter,” Paul chides the Corinthians for their lack of love by laying out a long description. Paul begins with what would have seemed a bold claim: “without love, I am nothing” (v.2) and concludes with a confident assertion, “Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love” (v.13, NIV). Sandwiched in between these two statements is a long definition of love in about fourteen parts, depending on how you count. Every time I hear this passage read at a wedding, I wonder if the couple truly believes they will love like this (I know I did!). I’m lost at love with the requirements of “patient and kind” (v. 4), but I’m guessing everyone would admit they sometimes “insist on [their] own way” (v.5) And as nice as it sounds to say love “bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things,” (I Cor.13:7), who can really do this?
There is only one answer, the subject of our study and object of our worship – God. God can love like this, does love like this, and amazingly, empowers us by his grace to love like this. Indeed, without love we are nothing, but with God’s love, as we shall see in this study, we become something.
Love: Primitive Instinct, Economic Resource, or Something Else?
