When a couple would come to me asking to get married, I would require them to meet with me for at least three premarital counseling sessions. One of the questions I always asked in the first session was “Why do you want to get married?” What do you think the #1 answer was?  “Because we love each other.” I would reply by saying, “That’s great. So what does that mean? What does it mean to love?” Many of them had a hard time trying to define this word that we use so much day after day. They had to stop and think what they meant when they said “I love you.” Many of them could not put it into words.

Have you noticed how overused the word “love” is in our world today? We say “I love that car,” “I love your hair,” “I’d love to go with you,” “I just love what you’ve done with this place.”

And what about music? The majority of popular songs, regardless of the style of music, have to do with love! There are songs about ideal love, unfulfilled love, desired love, love that hurts, love gone bad, love that has been lost, or some other aspect of love.

When a word is overused to the extent that “love” is, it loses it’s meaning. That is why I decided to spend the next several days sharing devotional thoughts with you about what love is. I want us to remember what the Bible says about love, not the way the world defines it. In order to do that, we will need to look at some passages that speak of love. Let’s start with this one.

John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Jesus repeated this command several times while having what we know as “The Last Supper” with His disciples. It must have been important if He kept repeating it. He wants us to love each other the way He loved and still loves us. In fact, He commands us to do so. That means we better understand what it means to love.

As you think about what it means to love, think about what Jesus did for you. He let Himself be killed so that you could be forgiven and live with Him forever. Something else He said that evening…

John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

That is exactly what He did. The love the Bible describes is more that just a feeling or emotion. It is an action. You do something when you love like Jesus loves.