We all know what the first and greatest commandment is: to love the Lord with all our hearts, all our souls, and all our minds. This is what we are to spend our lives doing, purely loving the Lord. However, it isn't left at just this first commandment...there is a second one. One not as important as the first one, but pretty important all the same: and that is to love one another.
Now you would think: love God, love others. Pretty simple, ya? It shouldn't be that hard to live out. Wrong. If you've ever read 1 Corinthians 13, you know that love isn't something small. In fact, there are many aspects of love.
"love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast;
it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends."
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Now, if anyone thinks that all of that is completely and totally manageable on their own strength, then stop reading right now. Seriously.
However, here's the deal with love. It's so big, it cannot be done completely or totally by us on our own strength ever. The only way that someone can be completely and totally loved is through the strength and grace of Christ, and only through Him. This side of heaven, we can try all we want to fully love people but we will fail every time because we are sinful human beings. Christ is the only true source of love.
And then there's another completely different aspect of love. First, perfect complete love is all of those things mentioned above. All of them...all the time.
Have you ever heard of the concept of a love language? Gary Chapman wrote a book about it, which I've never read. But I think that's where the idea came from. Anyhow, it's the idea that we each give love and feel loved in different ways. I think according to Chapman, the five love languages are 1) words of affirmation, 2) quality time, 3) gifts, 4) acts of service, and 5) physical touch. So the idea is that each of us feel loved or give love in different ways. For example, I definitely tend to feel love through words of affirmation, quality time, or physical touch. I also tend to give love through words of affirmation or physical touch. However my brother does not feel as loved through physical touch or words of affirmation as I do. To him, I would say that he feels more loved through quality time. I hope this isn't confusing. But what I am trying to get at is that everyone feels love and gives love differently. What is love to you may not be to someone else.
There are two ways I learned to understand this this week.
First, I learned that in order to fully love other people, I need to try to understand how they feel loved and try to love them in that way. This is a form of selfless love, purposing and trying to share the love of Jesus with others in a way that sometimes may not be comfortable or easy for me. And it's not an easy thing to do, it takes work. Now obviously, you cannot love every single person like this...you don't know every single person. And there are times you are going to fail, we all do. However, if we ask for the strength and wisdom to love others the way that Jesus loves them and the way they need to be loved, then He will equip us to do that.
Second, I learned that often people love me in a way that I don't feel loved, but they do and so that is their way of showing their love and care to me. I remember many times in JH and HS being frustrated because I didn't think that certain people cared for me because they didn't do such-and-such. But looking back, I can see how they did care, they just were showing it in their own language and not in mine. It just looked different.
However, when it comes down to the end, we cannot fully love others without Christ. He is the one who loves them through us, and equips us to help share His love and glory with them. I just encourage you to take this idea of loving others in their own language, and try it out. It has really helped me as I seek to know Him better and to become more like Him, and by living in relationship with His people.
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