The Way Of Love

Love is a choice, more so than mere emotion.

I must admit, that I am still working through this truth revealed by our Savior. I have often asked the Lord to help me love someone, simply because I did not feel “loving” emotions for them.  I have also often thought that I was failing to love someone, because I wasn’t feeling “loving” emotions toward them. But what the Lord has made increasingly clearer to me, is that love is not really something we feel, it is something we do. Love, according to God, is a choice. 

Love is choosing to do the right thing— regardless of whether you feel like it, regardless of whether we think someone deserves it, regardless of what others may think love looks or feels like… and regardless of whether we will be loved in return.  In Paul’s description of “the way of love” at 1 Cor 13, one will notice that each elucidation is a choice, each quality is an action. None of Paul’s descriptions are emotions. Patience and kindness are actions I choose. Likewise, I choose not to be envious, boastful, proud, rude, self-seeking, or easily-angered. I choose to keep no record of wrongs. And I choose to not reason like a petulant child. 

Protect, trust, hope, persevere— these are actions I choose. But love itself, comes from something much greater than myself, which is why Paul is able to say, “Love never fails” (v. 8). Beloved, we may be dead to sin, but our humanity is still prone to failure. However, love will never fail, because the Apostle John teaches that God is love (1 John 4:16), and God cannot fail. Love is not necessarily something that is felt, but is walked-out. So, as long as I am indeed abiding in Christ…

…I am able to choose to walk “the way of love” in the palm of His unfailing hand. 

(1 Cor 14:1) Follow the way of love…

(1 Cor 13:4-8,11) Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs. Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…

(1 Cor 13:11) When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

(Phil 3:12-14) Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me… I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus.