According to some, I am required to love but I don’t have to like you!? How can you love and not like? What does that even mean? It doesn’t make sense… Is this simply another lie we’ve bought into? Or some perverted compromise about love that we use to justify our definitions and behaviors?
I know that, at one point, I was swayed by the argument that, as Christians, we are required to love but we don’t have to necessarily like (fill in the blank). This ‘definition’ is also applied to those with whom we have a ‘personality conflict’, including family as well as our ‘enemies’. Then there’s the… ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ concept, though this may be a different subject. Finally, what do we do about enemies that either want to enslave us to their thinking or kill us – can we love them? A great many questions that all of us struggle with to find answers.
Not even considering the definitional difference between love and like, what is love? How does the Lord want us to act, because love is an act and not just words? I think the starting point is how love is defined in scripture, especially 1 Corinthians 13. Beginning in verse 4, Paul tells us that;
“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not
parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not
seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in
iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
NOT: not envy, not puffed, not behave rudely, not seek its own, not provoked, thinks no evil, not rejoice in iniquity, BUT: rejoices in truth, bears -believes -hopes – endures all things. Not, not, not, not, not, no, not. Definition by ‘not’. Kind, rejoices, bears, believes, hopes, endures – never fails, definition by choice. Now tell me, how you can even begin to act in love with people you don’t ‘like’? Nowhere are we told to be false and fake or go through the motions, but it tells us:
“Love covers a multitude of sins…” (1Peter 4:8, Proverbs 10:12)
“Love must be without hypocrisy…” (Romans 12:9)
“Love is the fulfillment of the law… (Romans 13:10)
“…everyone who loves is born of God…” (1John 4:47)
And these are only a small selection of the over 393 references in the Bible that talk about love. Philippians 4:8 also talks about on what we need to think and meditate on: true, noble, good report, virtue, praiseworthy. If you only read 1 of the 393 scriptures each day and meditated on it, it would take you 13 months to read through just this list. Think about how you would be feeding your spirit for that year+ and how this would be enhancing who you are becoming. Perhaps our understanding of love increases when we realized John 3:16 is meant for you… personally! That God loved each and every one of us so much that He sent His Son so that we may all come into the richness of relationship. This is love. And if love motivates you how can you not like?
