Love: defined.

Love.  Love is one of those elusive but finite things.  It's an action that can have emotional content.  Or it's a sense or feeling that is performed outwardly.  Or sometimes it is a word used to designate a sort relationship.  But Scripture defines love as a posture of the heart, an attitude devotion and humility that informs both word and deed in how we relate to to other people and to God.

To be sure, love comes from God as He is the source of love.  Ultimate love is of the supernatural essence of God and it is known most fully in the person of Christ Jesus.  His act of condescension, when He took the incarnate form of a human and emptied Himself so as to become a servant unto death was the definition of love.  Any definition that does not point to Christ would fall short of highlighting the quintessential love act of all creation: the cross.

Love, as humanity knows and carries it forward, must begin with this base.  Putting Christ's work at the foundation of our definition of love will keep us from thinking of love in any less reverence than it deserves.  As Christ says, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13).  In this way, we can see that Christ's life and work is to act as an example for how we measure and define love ourselves.

Let us then always remember what Christ Jesus has done and how He has shown love to us truly.  And let His example guide us to take the same mind among ourselves: to lay down ourselves so as to lift up others in love.  In this way, we will fulfill the great commandments of God and live lives that He has called us to!