Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (NIV)
Biblical love is not the same thing as our world portrays as love – which is often simply cheap emotive passion. No, no. Biblical love is demonstrative. While it doesn’t lack emotion, it is always demonstrative and it can only be continuously possible through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. As we grow in the knowledge and understanding of our Lord Jesus Christ’s love for us, it enables us to love others rightly – including ourselves – sometimes we are the hardest to love, amen? Flesh will fail us. Trust me. Yet, Christ’s love has depths of which “the daring soul may drown, and abundant shallows for the humble to safely wade” (Alsop). We simply never plunge to the depths of it. His love compels us.
As Christ loves us, so too are we to love others with His love - again through His power for His glory. The love of Christ was a triumphant love breaking through the hardest hearts and the malice of Satan’s minions. Let us seek to know this love that surpasses knowledge and receive fullness from the Fountain.
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:14-19 (NIV)