This essay was adapted from Chase Kuhn’s talk at our 15 March 2023 event. Watch or listen to his talk on our website.
What is love?
When we pause to consider the moral life—the good life—it’s clear we immediately need orientation. Consider the contemporary phrase adopted by the LGBTQ+ movement: “Love is love”, which, in a way, sought to answer the question, “What is love?” This phrase featured broadly in Australian debates around same-sex marriage and around what sexuality ought to be permissible in society. People used it to express their desire to be allowed to choose for themselves what is the good life, wanting to be loved as they desire.
But we need to make an important distinction: having things on one’s own terms and what is, in fact, good are two separate matters. Ever since the dawn of time, we’ve been permitted to choose our own way—even against what’s best for us. Original sin was a denial of the good and a choosing of a false reality. Such is the nature of how we explore love.
However, if we look closely, “Love is love” is not an accurate way of talking about love. “Love” is in no way self-evident. We know this in theory, of course, but also in practice: we know what love isn’t, because we’ve experienced it. Haddaway’s 1993 hit song “What is love?” captures this experience well:
What is love?
Oh baby, don’t hurt me
Don’t hurt me
no more.…
I give you my love, but you don’t care.
So what is right and what is wrong?
Give me a sign.
What is love?1
Lyrics like these demonstrate that we know that not everything we think is love is received as love. “Love” can hurt.
“Love” needs a better definition. Thankfully and most wonderfully for us as Christians, we’ve been given one, because we have been shown love. The Apostle John wrote, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16), and in the next chapter of his epistle, he also wrote, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9). We know what love is because God has shown us that he is the God of love. He is love. His love has been made manifest among us when he sent his Son for us. This is monumental!
All is full of love
You’ll be given love.
You’ll be taken care of.
You’ll be given love.
You’ll have to trust it.Maybe not from the sources you have poured yours.
Maybe not from the directions you are staring at.Twist your head around.
It’s all around you.
All is full of love.
All around you.2
Before looking more closely at God’s love, which is the ultimate standard of love, it is important for us to see that love is all around us, as Björk said. Indeed, there are expressions of love that all humans pursue as the best forms of relationships—for example friendship and marriage. In other words, we’re universally agreed that love is something good. It’s something we desire and deeply want.
But we don’t universally recognise what truly virtuous love is. We are called to a virtuous life as Christians, and even as we aspire to a good, moral life, we want to know what love is in that deep down characteristic for our lives. So my aim in this article is to persuade you of what I believe is a theological explanation of what virtuous love looks like.
Jonathan Edwards provided a detailed exploration of love in relation to true virtue.3 He distinguished between love for beings versus love for the loveliness—that is, the lovely characteristics—of beings. He argued that virtue is found in goodwill towards beings, rather than in love for their features, like their moral excellence. Though there may be many expressions of love, not all are truly virtuous. In an attempt to capture what I think Edwards was arguing, consider what Jesus illustrated in his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48; cf. Luke 6:27-36)
This teaching is not easy. In fact, if we just skim over it, we can think, “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. I’ve heard that before.” But consider for a moment the implications of what Jesus is saying: you need to love your enemies just as you would love your brother or sister or friend. You need to love them like that. Jesus is telling us we need to love like his Father does. His love is indiscriminate, directed towards beings generally, not to particular parties only. In other words, we can’t be choosy about whom we love.
If I’m being honest, I am choosy. I like to think of myself as virtuous, but I am actually pretty choosy about who I like to love and how I like to love them. Loving your family and friends is easy; Jesus says even the pagans do that. But loving all people, including your enemies? That’s hard.
But it’s godly.
Bring me a higher love
This brings us to my next point: we need—and should want—a higher love. In his 1986 hit song, “Bring me a higher love,” Steve Winwood ponders,
Think about it. There must be higher love,
down in the heart or in the stars above.
Without it, life is wasted time.4
In other words, he wants something more. I suspect most people want something more. Love can easily disappoint us, but even so, we know that love is good. Winwood’s hunch is correct: there is a higher love.
Let us revisit Jonathan Edward’s identification of truly virtuous love: truly virtuous love looks like goodwill toward beings in general. In other words, it’s love for a being just because it is, not because of what lovely characteristics it possesses. It’s an unconditional love. Another way you could think about it is it’s loving something for its sake, rather than what you can get from it or what you appreciate in it.
Here we see how wonderful God’s love for us is: if God’s love for us was conditioned upon our moral features, we would not be wanted, as we don’t possess any qualities warranting God’s affection. But God’s love is for his creation generally. He gives life and sustains it (Rev 4:11). He shows love towards all generally in an ongoing way of provision, providing the sun and rain to even the evil and the unjust (Matt 5:45). He doesn’t discriminate in that way; he lovingly provides.
But for those whom God has chosen to save, his love is seen in even clearer magnificence. The Apostle Paul wrote,
For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom 5:7-8)
God showed us love when we were unlovely. His love for us was not for our lovely features or our moral excellence; it was because of his goodwill and his pleasure in our wellbeing.
Here is where things get exciting: as God loves us, we are transformed. We’re renewed in our minds to love the Lord (Col 3:9-14). Our hearts are tuned toward the ultimate good, the lover of our souls, the very giver of life. In addition, as we love him, we change more and more: we become lovely ourselves (Eph 4:20-24). Augustine captured this well:
But our soul, my brethren, is unlovely by reason of iniquity: by loving God it becomes lovely. What a love must that be that makes the lover beautiful! But God is always lovely, never unlovely, never changeable. Who is always lovely first loved us; and what were we when He loved us but foul and unlovely? But not to leave us foul; no, but to change us, and of unlovely make us lovely. How shall we become lovely? By loving Him who is always lovely. As the love increases in you, so the loveliness increases: for love is itself the beauty of the soul.5
If you want to trend upwards and see morality increasing and the good life excelling in your life, then love God more. In doing so, you will be transformed into a lovely man or woman more and more. That’s special! What a wonder that the lover is made lovely by loving. God never becomes lovelier than he is in his love. But he turns our hearts to him and we change.
I believe that it was for this reason that Jesus gave his followers the command to love. The command directs us to love one another, but this is an expression of our love for God. So as we love each other, we love the Lord. Jesus said in John’s Gospel,
In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. (John 14:20-21)
In other words, our knowing of God—our inclusion in his love—is experienced as we express the love we’ve known in Jesus. We’re told in 1 John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us”; we’re commanded to love, because in loving, we know love and experience love in a way that transforms us to be more like God himself.
What’s love got to do with it?
So what’s love got to do with it? All this helps us to frame the greatest commandment and the chief virtue as love. Tina Turner considered the dynamics of relationships, asking,
What’s love got to do with it?
What’s love but a second-hand emotion?6
Here, I propose that we consider love morally. What’s love got to do with it? Everything. Jesus us tells us that the greatest command is
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind … And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt 22:37, 39-40)
Everything hangs on love—love for God and love for neighbour. The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 13:8-10 and Galatians 5:14 that love is the fulfillment of the law. In other words, true righteousness is love—love for God and love for neighbour.
In a similar way, love is the chief virtue—that is, first and foremost, it’s almost a summary virtue, like a summary command. The Apostle Paul writes in that great chapter on love, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13). Love always remains. When faith and hope cease—when faith becomes sight and hope is realised—love will remain forever.
So when we think about living the good life, we can see that love is essential. But this love is the love we’ve been shown, not the love of our own choosing.
This is where we need to see the power of the gospel at work. Even though we’ve been commanded to love many times over, and we’ve been exhorted to pursue the virtue of love, true love acts and is without compulsion. We will obey the command to love gladly. We will embody love willingly from our hearts.
This was Jesus’ challenge to us—to “abide” in him (John 15:4). His challenge is not to try harder; instead, it’s to grow into the true love you already possess. We remain, or “abide”, by loving. Our love flows out of the life we have in Jesus. This life is what we enjoy in the power of the Spirit of God, as he transforms and indwells us.
All you need is love
This brings us to my final point. I think the Beatles were sort of on to something when they sang,
All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.7
It’s crucial that we see that this love is not the love of our own choosing or even the love of our own making; it’s the love we’ve been shown by God the Father through the Son in the Spirit—the love that has overflowed to us from the fullness of God’s being.
The love we’re called to is unconditioned by lovely features (desirability). Instead, it’s general goodwill to all. It’s a disposition built upon grace. When we grasp that we’ve been loved so wonderfully and so fully, we are free. We’re free to love others genuinely. We can love without need from them. We can love without justification of their worthiness of that love. Instead, we can love them simply because they are—because they belong to the Lord and because he’s given them to us. Keeping them in existence is an act of his own love. We can seek their good—most chiefly, their good purposes ordered unto God. Because they were made by him and for him, that shapes the kind of love we show them.
This is the difference gospel grace makes. It’s the reason that Jonathan Edwards says we can’t truly love without reference to God. We need the gospel to free us for this kind of love. We must be shown it and liberated by it first. We love only once we’ve known the love he’s shown to us. Now, having been transformed by the renewal of our minds, as Paul says in Romans 12:2, we can genuinely love as he encourages us in Romans 12:9: “Let love be genuine”.
Think for a moment about the typical kinds of fears that capture our hearts. Before we encountered grace, we were consumed by, among other things, all kinds of social fears. This manifests itself in our lives in things like envy, rivalry, bitterness, jealousy, malice and hatred. Because of these things, we slander others, gossip, dishonour our parents, and so on (Rom 1:29-31). I think things like these come back to a particular kind of social insecurity: we don’t really know what love looks like, and in not knowing true love, we search for something to help stabilise us.
But in the gospel, we don’t need to compete. There is no better or worse; there is only what we have in Christ. There is no need for self-justification, because we’re already justified in Jesus. There is no fear, because perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). Because we know love from God, we’re truly free to love.
What is perhaps most challenging for us is that our love is supposed to be genuine, as Paul exhorts us in Romans 12:9. Paul challenges Timothy, saying, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim 1:5). This means that love is not something we should do begrudgingly—for example, “I guess I’ll love them because I have to.” No: in Christ, our affections are changed. Our love needs to be genuine. Our love is not part of a checklist to tick off and it’s not just going through the motions. In fact, genuineness is the very distinguishing mark of an action carried forward virtuously.
We know the difference between the kind of act that is done out of duty and the kind of act that is done out of care. For example, duty would see me doing something nice for my wife because I feel obliged to. But how would she feel if I give her a gift out of duty? How would she feel if I said to her, “Here you go. I did it. Hope you feel loved!”? There’s a real difference between this and sincere love.
Furthermore, the virtuous act of love is caring for them for their sake, rather than ours. It’s not about us doing the thing or being that way towards them in order to get something for us; it’s about their interest. It’s especially about seeing them in the Lord—seeing them cared for unto that chief end—seeing them loved in a way that brings them to their highest good. So we must love all without concern for what makes them loveable or lovely, but instead, we must love them as they are.
As I’ve been processing this, I’ve found it very difficult. I really struggle with this, because I know I am capable of performing a good or right thing the wrong way. But as we pursue love, we pursue God in the first instance. Our love will be virtuous when we seek to love God first and foremost. When you find this difficult (as I do, and I really do!), or even when you feel virtuous,8 just pause there. If you’re sinking in despair under the weight of needing to love, or if you’re soaring in self-appreciation for how wonderful you are, cast your mind once more to love of God shown to us in Christ and really meditate on that afresh.
Such love! We were unlovely, and only because of of his benevolence, God showed kindness, care and love to us. Every day, a world lives in denial of this God, and yet he still sends rain and sunshine (cf. Matt 5:45), he gives breath to lungs, and he allows people to continue to be. What’s more, however, for us who are in Jesus, he gives us his Son.
So when you feel the weight of needing to love the world, remember that God has already loved the world—so much, that he gave his only Son (John 3:16). It’s all of grace: God has been kind and loving to us, because he is the perfection of love, and he invites us to know him in his love and to send out this love that we’ve known to each other.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Endnotes
1 Haddaway, Nestor. “What is love?”. Lyrics by Junior Torello. Music by Dee Dee Halligan. The Album. Warner Chappell Music. 1993, track 1.
2 Guðmundsdóttir, Björk. “All is full of love”. Music and lyrics by Björk. Homogenic. One Little Indian, 1997, track 10.
3 Jonathan Edwards, “A Dissertation Concerning the Nature of True Virtue,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol 1, rev by Edward Hickman (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974/2009).
4 Winwood, Steve. “Higher love”. Written by Steve Winwood and Will Jennings. Back in the High Life . Island, 1986, track 1.
5 Augustine, “Homilies on the First Epistle of John” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 7. Translated by H Browne. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co, 1888.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. Translation of In Epistolam Joannis Ad Parthos Tractatus Decem, 407.
6 Turner, Tina. “What’s love got to do with it?”. Written by Graham Lyle and Terry Britten. Private Dancer. Capitol Records, 1984, track 2.
7 The Beatles. “All you need is love”. Written by John Lennon. All You Need is Love. Parlophone, 1967 track 1.
8 We all like to think we’re virtuous: I think I’m a pretty good guy and I think I love people pretty well.
