Love Is a Verb

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, and my kids and I are already in full-on planning mode, picking just the right valentines to give to their classmates and deciding on just the right treat to take to the class party….I’ve even already found a present to give Jimmy the day of—I’m really on the ball this year! But in the midst of all the holiday rush (again! Didn’t we just do this at Christmas?!?), I keep thinking about God’s love for us and how it should spill over into the lives of those around us.

Over December and January, I’ve been reading in my devotions the books of Romans and I Corinthians, and it’s really surprised me—I’ve never noticed before—how much those two books by Paul talk about Christian love in action! In fact, I really considered titling this particular post “Love Is the Theme” because I really believe that true love, godly love, is the theme of I Corinthians in particular. Of course, everyone knows that I Corinthians 13 is the “Love Chapter”, but I propose that the entire book is really about love. Think about it: Paul wrote to the Corinthian church about a lot of different problems they were having—arguments about leadership, lawsuits against each other, striving to be first at the Lord’s Supper, lording their spiritual gifts over one another, just to name a few. But the root cause of all this arguing and disagreement in the church was a lack of love. The Christians in the Corinthian church were each more concerned about him or herself instead of the welfare and well-being of their brothers and sisters in Christ. 

When Paul told them at the end of chapter 12 that he would show them “a more excellent way”, I don’t think he was talking solely about spiritual gifts; he was talking about a more excellent way to live our lives as Christians. This is confirmed in his final instructions to the church at the end of the book—sandwiched right in between his instructions about the Jerusalem collection and greetings from the other Christians he knew Paul stated, “Everything you do should be done in love” (I Cor. 16:14). 

Everything. Every single thing. That is a big statement in a very few words.

I think about my own life: how often are the things that I say or the things that I do motivated by love? When I’m fussing at my kids for leaving their things on the floor again for the hundredth time that day, am I showing them love? When I’m impatient or rude to a service person because they didn’t fill my order correctly, or the telemarketer called me at supper, or the whoever didn’t do whatever as quickly or efficiently as I thought it should be done, am I reacting in love? When I’m having a bad day and one thing after another goes wrong and my hormones are out of whack because of PMS and the proverbial straw makes me explode, and on and on and on, am I showing Christ’s love to those around me? If these questions hit too close to home for you, please know that I am not writing them to make you uncomfortable—these are the questions I have been asking myself a lot lately, and if they hit a nerve, maybe God’s speaking to you about this too. 😜

I know there’s a certain point where I have to cut myself some slack—I am human, after all, and therefore not perfect—but perfection is something I feel I should be continually striving to achieve. Not because I have this insane desire to criticize myself to the point of self-annihilation, but that I want to be like Jesus, and He is perfect, especially in love. His love is the very model of what true love is really all about. He sacrificed everything, gave it all up willingly, to come to this lost and sinful world, live among a people who never really understood or accepted Him, and then died a criminal’s death even though he was completely innocent of any crime, all so that He could save a world full of people who (at one time or another) hated him. He didn’t think about Himself; He thought about us and what we needed. And what we needed was Somebody to save us when we couldn’t save ourselves.

That’s what true love does. It thinks about other people’s needs and not about itself. And I firmly believe that if I am truly living in the full realization of Jesus’ love for me and the amazing gift He gave me, then it’s not so difficult to treat those around me with selfless love. It becomes difficult when I take my eyes off of Him and allow myself to be distracted by all the cares and pressures of the world around me. That happens far more often than I care to admit, unfortunately, and it’s the thought of all those failures that has me questioning how well I really have been obeying the Lord’s mandate to “love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Everyone will know by this that you are My disciples—if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35, NET).

Valentine’s Day is a day set aside to show those we care about how much we love them, usually by giving them extravagant gifts that cost a lot of money and boost our economy. (I am not being cynical—it’s true! Jewelry stores, florists and candy makers depend on this holiday to stay in the red, I’m sure!) And that’s all well and good—it’s good that we have a day when people stop focusing on themselves and think about others, if only for a day—but what about the rest of the year? What about on the days when no one is expecting it, when everything is going wrong, or we just feel all blah? What about when we’re sick? Or tired? Or grumpy (I’m raising my hand here!😜)? What about when love is the exact last thing we are thinking about? What then? As I’ve already said, I’m human. I’m a sinner. I make mistakes, even when I’m trying my hardest not to. I forget and slip up, and what then? How do sinful, imperfect humans, even saved by Jesus’ grace, show love in everything that we do as the Holy Spirit commanded us through the writings of the Apostle Paul?

The answer is, very simply, we can’t. Not by ourselves, anyway. And when I start criticizing myself too harshly for all my failures, the Holy Spirit brings me up short with a very simple question: Was I trying to do it all by myself?

Was I trying to do it all by myself?

The truth is, God’s grace is not just there to save us from sin and death and give us eternal life in Him; His grace is also always extended to us after salvation, to enable us to do what we can’t by ourselves—obey His commands.

Love one another.

Put others before yourself.

Fix your eyes on heaven and not on this world.

Go and make disciples.

Forgive as you have been forgiven.

(I could go on, but you get the idea.)

No matter what command of Christ’s we’re trying to follow, if we try to do it all in our own strength, we will get absolutely nowhere. We will try and fail repeatedly, and Satan will use those repeated failures as ammo to bury us in a minefield of despair and guilt, further hindering our effectiveness for Christ. Simply put, we can’t live a Christian life on our own. I can’t. You can’t. We have to have the help of the Holy Spirit. So now I can see that when I fail to love others as I should—as I’ve been commanded to—it is because I have first failed to fix my eyes on Jesus and keep my focus where it should be—on Him.

But thanks be to God for His unfailing love and grace! He is always ready to take me back and help me try again! And when I allow His Spirit to control me, I can do anything! I can rise above how I feel and love people in spite of my circumstances. I can be kind and gracious even when things are going wrong because it is not me, but His power in me to do and say what should be done and said (instead of what I really want to do and say!😉). I can love those I come in contact with even when I don’t feel like it, especially when I don’t feel like it!

This Valentine’s Day I want to challenge me (and you) to take extra time to thank God for His incredible love He has for us! It really is amazing! And I want to challenge me (and you!) to make sure I share that love with those around me in tangible ways—through encouraging words, random acts of kindness and gifts of my time and attention—ways that do not require any specific amount of money but do require that I give of myself to others. After all, as the title of this post states, love is a verb—not just a noun, something that you have and feel, but a verb, something that you do. And when done right, it can change our world for the better.