Love Language

 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

— Romans 8:38-39

Love is a remarkable English word with a broad scope of meanings and implications. We say that we love our spouse, love our church, and love pizza. What’s more, we’d love our favorite football team to win the Super Bowl. On the other hand, Hebrew and ancient Greek — the languages of the Bible — have several words for love including agape (self-sacrificial love), hesed (loving kindness), eros (romantic love), and phileo (fraternal or friendly love). And Genesis 22:2 uses the word ahab to convey the intensely close emotional bond between Abraham and his son Isaac.

While we might broadly consider love to be a thing, it’s also very much an action word … and Jesus is our example. The apostle John wrote that “we love Him because He first loved us.” And then there’s John 3:16, which summarizes God’s good news (the Gospel) to mankind:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

That’s very good news — especially considering that we’re imperfect people who constantly break God’s perfect law through our thoughts, words, and deeds. Moreover, we can’t save ourselves from the resulting punishment we rightfully deserve. But Jesus, who was sinless, paid that exorbitant price for us by dying on a cross between two criminals. And then as the Old Testament had prophesied (predicted) centuries earlier, Christ defeated death and the power of sin by rising to life.

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” John 15:13 explains. And in 1 John 3:1, the apostle adds: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”

The lesson for you and me is that rather than trying to earn love from God or others, we can rest in our Creator’s love because he’s already freely given it to us through Christ’s sacrifice. It just goes to show that ours is a Savior who speaks the ultimate love language.