Question:

What is Love?

Response:

As a follow-up to the discussion regarding the concept of biblical love, I thought it would be helpful to post a document that outlines the argument that Paul uses to define love in his epistles.  The Greek words commonly used at the time of the Apostolic writings to define the biblical concept of love (in Hebrew - chesed) were somewhat loaded terms because they came out of pagan traditions that did not comprehend what true love was at all.  So Paul works to convey the meaning of love through his exhortation that we should "love one another" [Romans 12:10 - notice the placement in Paul's argument in Romans].

If you look at all Paul's commandments concerning how we should "______ one another" then the concept of love becomes clear.  A summary of this is as follows:

F - Forgive - "forgive one another"
A - Accept - "accept one another"
C - Care - "care for one another"
E - Encourage - 'encourage one another"
S - Support - "support one another"

and

S - Submit - "submit to one another as to the Lord"

In short, think *FACES-S." So, Biblically, one can think of a loving person as a forgiving,accepting, caring, encouraging, and supporting person who submits him or herself to God's commandments.  Hate is simply the antithesis: being an unforgiving, unaccepting, uncaring, unencouraging, and unsupporting person living in rebellion to God's commandments.

For those of you who are interested in doing the research yourselves, please use the following document to hopefully help you get started:

Click here to download the materials

In Christ, Marty