‘What is love?’ by Kyle Henderson-Begg, 23 February 2025

Transcript

This morning I want to look at the concept of Love. This talk was on my heart during the Christmas break, so I wrote it over a few days here and there. Interestingly, David used these same verses during his talk a couple of weeks ago. He was reminding us that our primary purpose in life is to be loved by God, to learn how to receive love, take some time to listen if you’ve not heard it already.

It seems like the Lord is trying to get our attention, so it would be pertinent to pay attention.

Biblically, when something was repeated, it was important, I think god does the same now…

We are taught from a young age that God is love, right?

We are taught to Love our neighbours as ourselves.

We are taught to love our enemies.

How about in John 13:35 ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Therefore, we as those who are committed to living a life that reflects Jesus are meant to be loving, right?

We don't always get it right, but that’s the aim anyway.

Our love is meant to mark us as different.

The trouble is I love my wife. I also love chocolate. I love wine (responsibly) I love my kids, I love football. I love my mum (hi mum!) I also love movies…. The list goes on…

The other challenge is people who aren’t trying to follow Jesus’ give good examples of love as well, don’t they? Sometimes better than those who are trying to follow Jesus.

Love Saves the Day - a Bristol music festival based on acceptance and equality for all has been running in Bristol since 2012.

Love is the topic of countless poems, songs, sonnets, paintings, stories…. You name it, we are obsessed with it.

But what do we mean by it?

As with so many concepts our cultural and societal understanding of abstract concepts like love can seep into our christian culture without much careful examination.

So often when our ‘popular culture’ talks about love, it’s talking about physical intimacy.

Sabrina Carpenter's single ‘busy woman’ has a line in the chorus - But if you need my love. My clothes are off, I'm comin' over to your place

My personal opinion is most of the time when we say ‘I love you’, what we really mean is ‘I love how you make me feel’.

But the problem is, that is not how Jesus loves. That is how the world loves. And that means that you become disposable when you don’t give me what I need.

What I mean by ‘the world’ is simply the value & belief systems that are contrary to and/or external to christian values.

And I’ll be really honest with you - I started wrestling with this a few years ago when I found that I wasn’t loving my family well. I wasn’t loving Rossie, my wife or my Children in the way that I believe we are called to love. And I’m by no means there. In fact my biggest struggle this week was wrestling with my own authenticity at these words.

And so this talk has come from a place of weakness and looking to the spirit and scripture for answers…

Therefore, for those of us who are trying to follow the example of Jesus and his disciples, and join the revolution that Owen talked about in his series on Acts, we have to ask, from a biblical perspective;

What is love?

Because, i don’t know about you, but.

I wanna know what love is, and I want him to show me…

Well, first off we have to start with recognising that in English we only have one word to encompass a range of emotions and relationships.

Well, thankfully the hebrews and greeks had more, and thankfully, hebrews and greeks wrote the bible. So let’s consider those words. I’m going to focus on the greek, but I do encourage you to take some time and look at the hebrew words as well.

Eros

The word for physical love, sexual desire, or passion. It can also describe the feeling of love or the desire to be near someone. Used in 1 Corinthians 7:5 when talking about marriage.

Philia

Means "affectionate regard" or "friendship", usually between equals. This is used in Matthew 11:19 when Jesus says to his close followers - I call you ‘friends’.

Storge

A natural affection that's felt among family members, companions, or even pet owners. It's a sweet, considerate love that's usually felt between married couples raising a family.

Isaiah 49:15 describes God's love for us as deeper than the love a mother has for her child.

Agape

The highest form of love, described as unconditional, sacrificial, and selfless. In the Bible, it refers to the love that God shows and that people should demonstrate to others.

And this is John 3:16 - for God unconditionally, self-sacrificially, selflessly loved us…

That is the image, the emotion, the connotations that the Father wants us to think of when we consider his love for us.

As we used to read in our children’s bible, ‘his never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking always & forever love.’

So that is the biblical definition of Love. And while that is helpful, there is so much more to it.

Christians of the 90’s - do you remember what DC talk taught us???

Anyone remember DC talk? - Sadly, due to copyright I can’t play you the video, but I highly recommend having a google (other search engines are available) and seeing how cool Christian teens were in the late 90’s early 00’s

Anyway, they had a cool song called ‘Love is a verb.’

Love is a verb - it’s a doing word. And the more we do it, the more it turns into a Noun - a name. That is why I call Rossie love, because she has embodied love to me for 22 years. She has become Love to me.

But how do we embody love?

Well, 1 corinthians 13 gives us some clues. Before we dive into that, we’ve got to remember that this passage was not written for wedding ceremonies in the 20th Century.

It was written to a community who were not loving each other. Incidentally, this passage is also sandwiched between two chapters on Spiritual gifts which means that love is integral to walking in spiritual gifts - but that’s a different topic for a different day….

Lets read it and see what we can glean from it.

1 Corinthians 13 MSG;

The Way of Love

13 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

2 If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.

Love doesn’t strut,

Doesn’t have a swelled head,

Doesn’t force itself on others,

Isn’t always “me first,”

Doesn’t fly off the handle,

Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn’t revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.

8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

11 When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

So, let’s have a look.

Verse 4 - love never gives up - or as the NIV puts it - Love is patient.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve blown it already!

How often do I lose patience with my kids, my wife, myself, and other drivers on the road.…

‘Love isn’t always me first’ - oops…

‘Trust God always…’ eek!

It was this lack of patience, of grace, of hope that I saw in my own life that challenged me to wrestle with this. I’m not perfect at this, but I like to think I’m growing….

But these thoughts left me with more questions…

What are we meant to do then? Just try really hard.

I must love more!!!! Must. Try. Harder. - honestly, yes, a little. There is application involved in all growth, right?

But there is more to it... To really understand that love is a verb, we’ve got to spend some time in Galations 5… in the NIV this time.

The fruits of the spirit - who here remembers colouring pictures of fruit bowls in sunday school…?

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Love is a fruit.

What is a fruit? Something that grows… My mum is a gardener. She has loads of fruit in her garden. But she can’t grow it. What she knows how to do is create the best environment for succulent gooseberries & currents & strawberries & raspberries…

How do we grow the fruits of the spirit?

Verse 16 tells us.

16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

We are to walk by the spirit!

What does that mean?

To live in the spirit of God. To Journey with God in our lives. To walk instep with The Spirit of God. To walk like the spirit walks, and live like the spirit lives.

How do we do that?

Abide.

We live in God - how do we do that - well, we need to ask the Disciple who Jesus loved.

John 15 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He [a]takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.

We remain.

How do we do that? Well, we do this.

We gather together regularly, corporately, in twos, threes, 10’s, 20’s whatever, but we do church. We gather around the teachings of Jesus. We pray together. We worship together, we study the bible together. We try to live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus Loves, together.

We practice the ways of God, the spiritual disciplines, recognising that the disciplines are not the end goal, but as foster says, ‘they put us on the pathway’ or to think about my mum, they help us create the environment in our hearts which is conducive to growing the fruits of the spirit.

Incidentally, we do all those things on our own as well.

And as you do these things, you will notice that you walk closer to Jesus, you will be more like him. You will love yourself, and others more like He loves. You will also grow in your capacity to love him and receive his love.

But then what do we do when we lose patience with our children?

Well, we check ourselves - ‘Oh, that’s not loving’

Then we say - ‘Oh, how’s my walk with Jesus?’ - ‘Oh, not great.’

But we don’t get condemned, we don’t beat ourselves up. We love ourselves the way He loves us, and we choose to walk closer to him, and the first way we do that is by apologizing to the person we just yelled at…

So, what is love? Abiding in Jesus.

Walking in the spirit.

Filling our lives, our thoughts & our hearts with Jesus.

Let’s pray.

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