I have a favorite comedian. His name is Ismo, he is from Finland and the guy is brilliant, especially when it comes to analyzing the English language. He does several bits on various words and how they get used, often in contradictory ways that are very confusing for someone from another country. One example that is safe for the workplace is the word “literally”, which according to Ismo can mean it actually happened or it didn’t really happen at all; like the time a woman came up to him after his show and said she laughed so hard she literally died. He encouraged her to get a second opinion because he was fairly certain that she was literally alive.

I would love to hear Ismo do a bit on the word love. Even my use of it at the beginning of that sentence starts to reveal the problem. We use the word love in so many ways to cover so many ideas that it has come to be nearly meaningless. Perhaps the most obvious current example, to me at least, of the word love losing its meaning is the ubiquitous phrase, “Love is love”. While I think I understand what is trying to be communicated in that phrase, from a purely grammatical, linguistic, and logical perspective, it means nothing. It is like saying “Blue is blue”, or “Up is up”. One of the first things I learned in English class is that you cannot define a word by the word itself. In philosophy there is something called a tautology in which we needlessly say the same thing twice only using different words. For instance, one of my pet peeves is when someone says, “9 AM in the morning”. But “Love is love” is not even a tautology. It is defining a word by saying the same thing twice using the very same word.

I use that example, not as a reason to harp on the movement that uses the phrase, but simply as an example of how our understanding of what love is has become so convoluted as to become meaningless. I could just as easily use the example of how much I love my wife and Teriyaki Salmon. I better mean something different by those two loves or I am in deep trouble. Especially since my wife can’t stand the taste of salmon. Love for my wife and love of Teriyaki Salmon cannot be the same kind of love. The point is, we speak about love all the time, using the word endlessly and in countless situations, with a seemingly infinite number of meanings and nuances. We have taken one of the most important words and concepts in all the English language and sucked the life and power out of it through overuse and misunderstanding.

So what are we to make of love? What is it and how do we love well? Those are vital questions to answer on two fronts. First, because we are using the word so often that we need to figure out just what we are saying. More importantly, is the fact that Jesus said that there is no more critical thing in the world than to love. We find this on multiple occasions in the Bible, one example being in the twenty-second chapter of Matthew where Jesus said:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Jesus is saying that everything in the Bible, what he means but the Law and the Prophets, can be summed up in two things; Love God with all you are, and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. If there is nothing more important for us to do in all the world, then we better figure out just what we mean by this word, love, or better yet, just what did Jesus mean by it.

When I look at the life and teachings of Jesus as they relate to love, I see a couple of things. 1) Loving someone means acknowledging that they are made in the image of God just like you are. 2) Loving someone means sacrificially serving them, even if they are your enemy. 3) Loving someone means forgiving them even if they don’t ask for it. 4) Loving someone means telling them the truth, even when it is painful.

Loving Someone Means Acknowledging That They Are Made In The Image Of God

This is the place to start because this is where we started. On the very first page of the Bible, in Genesis 1:26, we find this, “And God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image and after our own likeness”. Unlike any of the other creatures that God created, only human beings are given the dignity of being made, in some manner, like God. Bearing the image of God means in part, that we represent God in creation. We have been tasked by God to be his vice-regents, caring for creation and one another, in his name. What that means for loving one another is that as representatives of God, how we treat one another has a direct correlation with how we treat God. As 1 John 4:20 says, “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen”.

It doesn’t matter if someone is rich or poor, black or white, gay or straight, or any of the other ways in which we distinguish ourselves from one another, every person you lock eyes with is created in the image of God and is to be treated with dignity and respect. Failure to do so is a failure not only to love them but a failure to love God. That is what 1 John 4:20 is all about and that is why Jesus inseparably connected loving God and loving your neighbor.

You are no better than anyone else. Their life circumstances may be difficult as a result of their own terrible choices. They may be considered a loser and an outcast by the rest of the world. They may hold religious, political, and moral positions that you think are evil and cruel. But they are no less valuable in the eyes of God than you are. They are no less deserving of dignity, kindness, and love than you are. They are no less made in the image of God than you are.

Loving Someone Means Sacrificially Serving Them, Even If They Are Your Enemy.

The old saying is that actions speak louder than words. That certainly is the case when it comes to loving someone. When you love someone it will be abundantly clear that you do because your actions towards them will be acts of sacrificial service in which you care more about the other person’s welfare than you do your own. This is best exemplified by the famous words of Jesus, in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”. Of course that is exactly what Jesus did by going to the cross. Well, not exactly. Romans 5:10 says in part, “while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son”. Couple that with perhaps the most famous verse from the Bible, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him might not perish but would have everlasting life”, and you see that love demonstrates itself in sacrificial service. In the case of Jesus, he sacrificially loved and served us to the point of death on the cross.

Throughout the Bible, we are given examples of that kind of sacrificial love. The ancient Hebrews were told that if their enemy had an animal that fell into a ditch and was in distress, they should rescue the animal and return it to their enemy. Jesus tells the story of a man who was beaten and robbed and left for dead but was rescued and cared for by a Samaritan man who would have been his sworn enemy. Each of those examples is of an enemy showing love to another enemy by sacrificially serving them.

Loving Someone Means Forgiving Them, Even When They Don’t Ask For It.

Why should I bother forgiving someone if they are not remorseful enough to ask? One reason is self-interest. The simple fact is, when you go through life holding on to unforgiveness, it will lead to bitterness, and that only harms you. It has been said that not forgiving a person is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Show me a bitter and unhappy person and I am sure we will find that they are holding on to some hurt and refusing to forgive someone. Often times the other person is oblivious to the issue and is going on their merry way in life while the unforgiving person is wallowing in bitterness.

There is a further reason to forgive even when they don’t ask. It demonstrates the love of God and opens the door for the Gospel. When you forgive the hurt someone has put on you, it is not the typical human reaction. When they come to realize that you are no longer holding the sin against them, it raises the question, “Why?” The only real answer is “Because Jesus loves me enough to forgive me and I need to show that same love to others”.

Loving Someone Means Telling Them The Truth, Even When It Is Painful.

There is a very common misconception that if you love someone you will always agree with whatever they want and affirm whatever they believe. Nothing could be further from the truth. If I don’t care about you or about what might happen to you, why would I bother saying something to you that might make you angry with me? Why get involved and complicate my life needlessly? Why not just ignore you and move on? That is certainly less likely to result in any drama for me. If you mess your life up as a result, what do I care? The fact is, if we only love people with whom we are in complete agreement, then we will become total narcissists, incapable of loving anyone but ourselves because you will never agree with someone 100% of the time. I am not even sure I agree with myself 100% of the time. Disagreements with others are opportunities to grow and learn and love like Jesus loved. Jesus disagreed with people all the time. He spoke truth, all the time. But he never ceased to love them and show that love.

If I am going to show the love of Jesus to you, that means that there will invariably be times when I will disagree with you, and sometimes the issues will be serious. If I love you, I need to let you know that I think you are wrong. To not do so would be extremely unloving. If I know you are going to hurt yourself in some way by what you are doing or what you believe and say nothing, that could be called cruel. Saying nothing and just sitting back and letting it happen to you is cold and self-serving on my part.

In Ephesians 4:15, Paul urges us to speak the truth in love. Some people are big on speaking the truth but do so in a way that comes off as hyper-judgmental and condescending. Others are big on loving people and won’t speak hard truths because they don’t want hurt feelings. To speak the truth without love is pharisaical hypocrisy. To love without speaking the truth is weak sentimentalism and dangerous.

Conclusion

Does it sound like loving people Jesus style is hard work? You bet it is. You only need to be reminded of the Cross to see the reality of that. But just like with the Cross, there are outcomes to demonstrating God’s love that last for eternity and are priceless.