What Does the Bible Mean by Love?

We love love.

Whether it’s music, film, or our real-life giddy experiences of finding deep romance, there’s something wired into each of us that knows love is a positive thing.

A Cultural Framework

In 1967, the Beatles famously told us that all you need is love. Love is all you need.

We don’t have to work hard to put theological language around this.

Why do we love love?

Because we know that…

God is love.

1 John 4:16

If that concept is still too abstract for us, John helps us understand this as he
continues in the next chapter; we know that God is love because he has given us the Spirit to help us see the finished work of the Son. A beautifully trinitarian picture!

And therefore, why do we love love?

We love because he first loved us.

1 John 4:19

Why does that Beatles song capture something of our collective imagination?
Because the desire for love is hardwired into each of us as image-bearers of the God who is, himself, love.

But…

While I do personally believe, like the Beatles, that love is all we need, I also believe that the song only gets us halfway there in our quest.

Twenty-six years later, with the horn section of the Beatles now replaced by the electronic drum-and-bass revolution, the Trinidadian-German singer Haddaway infectiously asked the question that the Beatles left wide open for us:

What is love?

We may love love. But what is it?

After all, we love our friends and family. But we also love a good meal and a new piece of clothing. What’s more, we only have to look at the rise of pornography to see that the pursuit of love can so easily become distorted in our post-Eden world.

Haddaway’s answer to the question was “Baby, don’t hurt me.” (Don’t hurt me. No more.)

Catchy, yes. And my 1993 self was all in. But I think we can go deeper because a biblical picture shows us that love is not just an avoidance of hurt. It is that, but it’s more.

A Biblical Framework

Once again, the Apostle John is incredibly helpful for us on fleshing out not just why we love love but what love actually is. His first epistle is the Beatles and Haddaway rolled into one, but just 2,000 years earlier!

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God livesnin us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4:10-12