A New Definition of Love

"We need a definition of love that serves as an antidote to our modern belief that life is as it should be only when feel-good chemicals are coursing through the pleasure centers of our brains. We need a definition of love that embraces romance and passion ... yet still encourages us to appreciate the way in which love can help us to evolve and grow, through the early months of romance, through more tempered attachment, through building a life together, through aging, and , inevitably, through loss - through all of the seasons of a married life. We need a definition of love that doesn't encourage us to devote our relationships to the single-minded pursuit of keeping romance alive, because the more actively we pursue passion the more elusive it becomes.

And we need, above all, a definition of love that can help us to live and love with, rather than against, the natural course of time and human nature."

This quote is not from a Christian counseling book on marriage but rather from a book I've mentioned before, The Marriage Benefit by Mark O'Connell. He is a secular psychologist who exposes a screaming need in marriage that only a biblical view can truly satisfy. We need a definition of love that spans a lifetime which is rooted not in our own happiness and needs but in the journey of working out love in the context of a partner who shares that commitment.

Easier said than done. If it's not divorce it's emotional suicide. The statistics of broken marriages are depressing and distressing. And the response of our culture as well as the church? "That's just the way life is."

We need a new definition of love.

"...and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." I John 4:7,10

For too many of us as professing Christians this is an appendage to our marriages rather than the essence of them. How often do I yearn and hunger to understand my identify with Christ? One who has been born of God. One who knows God. I cannot truly know love apart from God, in Christ and the more I know and understand Him the more I will reflect his love out of gratitude not mere obligation.

Perhaps to our shame we as professing Christians have looked for love more to the world and ourselves than to the scriptures. We want quick answers to our disappointments rather than believing the all sufficient love of God in Christ.

The implications are serious and demand hard work.

That's a theme for another blog on another day!