“I've got the notion love is devotion, not just emotion,No more confusion, no more illusion; found my solution.”
Those words have stuck with me (though the song is over 20 years old), that love in an action. Yes, it is an emotion but it is far too easy to fall into and fall out of emotional states. (Another good reason for why we are to be “transformed in the renewing of our minds” and not through our feelings Romans 12.1,2).
It is true that some loves come and go in our human existence: the love of Chia Pets, or chicken tacos from a particular restaurant until they change something and then they are no longer the same, or the waffle maker we were going to use every Saturday for family brunch, or your favorite closer who wins you a World Series and then signs with the sinkin’ Dodgers. Loves that come and go are shallow and ultimately unimportant, those loves do not define us.
However, some loves are to be profound and life changing because they are to define us. We are defined by the ultimate act of selfless love--Jesus died in our place. As we love Jesus, then we love the things, people and relationships that He wants us to love and the way He wants us to love them. (A conclusive study of such love would be awesome. Alas we do not have time for that in this post).
In Matthew 7.12 Jesus commands us to “do to others what you would have them do to you.” This is love in action (see 5.17 & 22.37-40). A love that flows from God’s love and my relationship with Him, towards others. I will love by not trying to take a speck out of someone else’s eye when I have a plank in my own (vs. 1-5). I will love by not forcing Jesus’ kingdom truths on others, and I will love by not being rude and not receiving correction because I am too conceited to not see my own plank (vs. 6). I will accept Jesus’ love as I accept that God has what is best or “good gifts” for me (vs. 7-11).
Love, in all these examples, is manifested in discernible wisdom. To discern is to perceive or recognize; wisdom is to be marked by a deep understanding, or showing sound judgment (Webster’s). In Butler’s layman’s terms: being thoughtfully considerate of others. My love is thoughtful and considerate when I take the time in prayer to let the Holy Spirit chop down the log in my own eye before I attend to another’s insignificant sawdust (vs. 1-5). My love is thoughtful and considerate when I do not cram knowledge down someone’s throat, and my love is thoughtful and considerate when I am humble enough to learn from Jesus and not be a religious know-it-all (vs. 6). God’s love is the best! He gives the best gifts, the very definition of thoughtful and considerate (vs. 7-11).
Jesus’ love defines us, really it radically transforms us. If we are in relationship with Jesus, His love will flow. That outflow is to be poured out on everyone we come in contact with. Yet, remember John 15, we do nothing to produce the fruit we only bear what He is doing in and through us. When His devotion and faithfulness is the foundation of our loving then confusion is eliminated and love becomes reliable, not just an emotional illusion; ah just like the Apostle Paul, rewritten by Charlie said.
