I rarely listen to the radio, so it was years ago that I turned it on just to hear what folks were singing about. Sure enough, there were several songs within about a 20 minute span that were love songs or that mentioned the word love. However, not surprisingly, not one of them included any definition of the word love. I would guess that what they had in mind is a common conception of love defined as liking someone a lot. It goes something like this: you like someone a little, and then a little more and then even more until you say you love them.
Now, I’m not disparaging the fact that there certainly can be and eventually will be an emotional component to loving someone, but such emotion is hardly what the Bible is referring to when we are commanded to love God and each other. Emotions can’t be controlled by a commandment anymore then you can command a butterfly to land where you’d like it to.
So allow me to offer what I think the Bible means when we are commanded, in this case, to love our neighbor. I see two components in it.
To love is to — first of all — value more than anything else that the purposes of God be fulfilled in another person’s life. That means we want them to experience the highest and best realities they could ever know. And secondly, to love is to constantly cowork with Jesus in what He shows us will help that person take the next step towards fulfilling God’s purpose for them.
