1 John 4:9
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:7-12)
In the Old Testament, love speaks of a spontaneous feeling that impels to self-giving. This was true both for God and man. When man “loved” God, it meant to have pleasure in God, striving impulsively after him, seeking God for his own sake. From God’s side, the warm, strong feeling of affection that characterizes a healthy parent-child relationship is taken as a picture of how God the Father relates to Israel, his son. Love is the foundation of the covenant relationship. If the legal, covenantal aspect of the relationship is strong in the father-son analogy, the passionate loving-kindness of a good marriage is strong in the picture of God the husband and Israel the wife. The climactic revelation of this love relationship is seen in the prophet Hosea and his well-loved harlot-wife. The same analogy of father-son, bridegroom-bride continues in the New Testament, focusing on the warm affection and unfailing bonds between two who love each other deeply.
But the internal aspect of love is more than a feeling. It is a characteristic of life, a disposition. Old Testament scholars seem to have a problem in translating another Hebrew word, chesded. Some translations speak of loving-kindness (KJV), some of steadfast love (ASV, RSV), some of constant love (TEV, Today’s English Version). Indeed, the love of God is steadfast, unfailing—a basic disposition that never changes and that controls all that he does. This has to do with commitment. God’s kind of love is not a sometime thing, tentative and sporadic. It does not run out. His covenantal love is from youth to old age, from generation to generation, from age to age, from eternity to eternity. This unending love is faithful through all kinds of circumstances, even rejection. Biblical love, then, is not a passing emotion, but a way of life, a disposition, a relationship of permanent commitment to the welfare of another.
There is yet another element in the internal aspect of biblical love: loving feelings motivate. In fact, it is not too much to say that love is the only motive. At the root of every choice, every action a person takes, lies love. It may be purely from love of self that a person takes action, or it may be other-love. But always love is the dynamic that propels, the catalyst that transforms thought into action.
Some speak of the glory of God as a motive. But strictly speaking, glory is not a motive. If I seek my wife’s glory, for example, my motive may be my own glory. If she is highly thought of, I will be more praiseworthy for having caught her and kept her. Of course, I may seek to put her in the best light before others because I love her, not me. But the motive is not her glory. The motive is my love, one way or the other. In the same way, the great commission is said to be a motive. But I may obey any command of God because I love me—it is the smart thing to do. A pastor may work himself into an ulcer to build his own reputation on earth or in heaven. I may give generously for the impression it will make on others or witness for fear of the consequences if I do not. Thus, I may seek my own glory because I love me. Or I may be totally indifferent to how people think of me. I may prefer pleasure. Or money. But money, pleasure, honor do not motivate; they are the means by which I may seek my own fulfillment. The same is true of seeking God’s fulfillment, or my neighbor’s. The basic drive, the mainspring, the motive of all human action is love.
Another day we shall see how the Bible treats self-love and other-love and how conflict between them may be resolved. But at this point it is important to identify how biblical love is a feeling, a disposition, and a motive.
Our focus on the internal aspects of love is immediately shifted to the external by the term motive. Motivated to what? To act. How do we now turn from love as an inner response to love as the way a love-motivated person behaves. [110] How would you describe how you love as a way of life, a disposition, and a relationship of permanent commitment to the welfare of another? Ready to walk away from a friendship? Your church? Perhaps a marriage? Or that troubled teenager? Love is determined not by the attributes of the one loved, but by the qualities of the one who loves. (We love because he first loved us.1 John 4:19) How can you love better today?
[110] IBE (2014), 30-33.