But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in action and in truth. – 1 John 3:17-18
Here’s a simple truth to remember; love is a verb. Hopefully we remember from grammar school that a verb is a word that puts action to something, it is the moving part, the part that directs us in a particular way as we read. So often when we think about love, we make it stationary, we love something, but truth is, we only love it as much as it brings meaning to us at a particular point in time. Our love might fade, or become common, and it may no longer have the same emphasis that it once had on a particular subject.
True love, however, is something that should grow over time. We might be reminded of what the apostle Paul says about love in 1 Corinthians 13 in the grad list of things love will and will not do, yet, the most important thing for us to remember is that love is a verb. Love is active, and it active in all directions. Love comes from God, who first loves us (1 John 4:19). We are loved by a God who sent his son to forgive us of all the ways we had mistreated and misinterpreted love, and in such forgiveness we find that we are truly free to be loved by God. In our love from God, we begin to turn and love God, we love God for the forgiveness and freedom that we have, we love God for the removal of guilt, we love God for the renewal of life that we have found in the resurrection. With this, we find that God then asks us to use our freedom to love others. So we look out into this world and we start to love what God created, who God created, but it is limited. Even though we have an unlimited love from God our love is limited. We might find people who think like us, act like us, enjoy the same things as us, they are easy for us to love. However, we are called to love all our neighbors.
When Jesus wanted to teach those who would listen about what it meant to love one’s neighbor he told a story, of a good Samaritan (Luke 10). In the story the one that was most different from those hearing the story was the one who understood love as a verb. In the same way, John reminds us that we can claim the love of God all we want, we can speak about, we can preach about, we can tell others how to show it. However, unless we show such love in our actions, as the truth of who we are, we are still missing out.
Love in a verb, love is the actions we show to others because sometimes words aren’t understood, sometimes words aren’t enough. Love is best known when it is lived through treating others in the same way if not better than we, ourselves hope to be treated. Let love be in the actions you perform this week, from home, in work, in everything, let love be the verb.
Grace & Peace,
Sam