Biblical Love

What does loving someone biblically look like? True love is much more than caring, giving, hugs, kisses, sex, etc. 1 Corinthians 13:3 says, "And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing." So being generous and feeding the poor doesn't make a person a loving person. Some do charitable acts just to feel good about them self. That is not biblical love. 

Types of love

There are three types of love. 1. Eros, which is a romantic type of love. 2. Phileo love, which is a friendship type of love. 3. Agape love, which is a sacrificial love. Over 250 times in the New Testament, the type of love the Holy Spirit uses to define love is agape love. Agape love seems almost foreign to us in our culture. When we think of love, we often times think romantically, full of feeling, not doing. Agape love is a giving and self-sacrificial love to "others." 

Qualities of biblical love

I Corinthians 13:4-8 tells us some more biblical characteristics of love, "Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

"My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:18). I start with being honest with people because this is often times one of the most difficult aspects of biblically loving someone. Sometimes telling a person the truth is the most loving thing you can do and one of the most difficult things you can do.

So, in verses 4-8 we learn that true love is also patient and long-suffering  Long-suffering love is the ability to allow ourselves to be inconvenienced or taken advantage of by a person over and over again. Love is showing kindness to people without conditions. Love is not a resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck. Love is not proud, boastful, or think that his or her own self is better than others and act in such elitist ways. Love does not get nasty and rude to those who say or do some kind of wrong towards you. Love does not seek to build itself up, rather it seeks to build others. Love is not incited, made angry, incensed – This is what it means when it says love is not provoked. Love does not think evil against others. Love does not like immoral or unfair behavior, but loves and shares the truth with others. Love lasts forever and bears all things regardless of what someone else has done in harm to you. True love is an unconditional, never-ending, sacrificial, meek, love that we can only truly get from the Lord, Jesus. 

Test

One way to know whether or not someone truly loves the Lord, is to watch them and see whether or not they display these characteristics of love. The bible teaches us how to judge whether or not someone is a true Christian because it teaches that you will know them by their fruits. ONE of these fruits or characteristics is loving people biblically. Jesus taught us that the greatest commandment of all is to love the Lord your God and the second is to love your neighbors. Any sincere Christian will display these characteristics of biblical love. 1 Corinthians 13:13 says, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."