Download What is Real Love
What Real Love is Not
“I love you.” It gets said a lot. We want it said of us. But how do we know if this love is “real love”?
Unfortunately real love is hard to find in our society. “I love you” is very often spoken for the wrong reasons. “I love you,” the teenage boy says to his girlfriend. What he means is, “I love you like I love my car. I want to possess you. I want to show you off. I want you to make me feel good.”
“I will love you if …” is often the message implied by parents when they overemphasize grades or sports to their children.
“I’ll love you when …” is often the message sent between husband and wife when something is expected in return for their love.
Discovered by Real Love
“I love you.” It’s sad to say, but real love is hard to find. It is not readily seen in our society. It is often absent from our homes. It isn’t always the kind of love evidenced in marriages. The reason for this lack of real love around us is the lack of real love within us. It isn’t something that comes naturally. Saying the words “I love you” comes naturally. But real love needs to be discovered outside of ourselves.
Now get ready for some verbal gymnastics! Discovering real love—since it is not something our nature really wants to do—comes only after we realize we have been discovered by real love! Real love comes from God.
Shortly after his birth, Christopher’s 16-year-old mom, her parents, and siblings met with the adoptive parents at the hospital. Christopher was baptized in their presence. After a tearful goodbye, Christopher’s mom, realizing she was too young for single parenthood, lovingly placed her son in the arms of his adoptive parents.
Christopher’s grandma wrote, “Only Christopher is yet unaware of what went on in his first day of life. Someday he will see the pictures and hear the sounds, as his grandparents did a few days later. And he will know how loved he was, and is, by at least two families and that such love originates in God, whose child he really is.” Real love, the kind of love shown by Christopher’s birth mom, the kind of love shown by his adoptive parents, comes from God.
When God says, “I love you,” that’s real love! You can tell by the way He says it. “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” That’s real love. “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). That’s real love. Nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). That’s real love. Real love never stops. Real love sacrifices and forgives. Real love never allows anything to get in its way. This kind of love can only come from God.
Discovering Real Love
“I love you.” Since Christians have been discovered by real love and that love has been poured out into their hearts, they can begin discovering ways to say this and mean it the way God does. Perhaps the best guideline for doing so is the description of God’s love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a.
“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 record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (NIV)
That’s real love. That’s God’s love. It is the love that has discovered us. It is love we can discover through Christ and strive to put into practice in our relationships with others. Through His love, we can say, “I love you, wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, mom, dad”—the way God does.
Using 1 Corinthians 13 as our guide, the possibilities for discovering real love are endless. On the back of this brochure are a few ways we can say, “I love you.”
Love is patient.
I love you enough to wait for you, not want you.
Love is kind.
I love you enough to be sensitive to your feelings rather than feeling sensuous.
Love does not envy.
I love you enough to be satisfied with who you are, not with what I want you to be.
Love is not rude.
I love you and want to lift you up, not put you down.
Love is not self-seeking.
I love you and desire to serve you rather than have you serve my desires.
Love is not easily angered.
I love you enough to smile at your little mistakes.
Love keeps no record of wrong.
I love you enough to forgive even your big mistakes and leave them in the past.
Love does not delight in evil.
I love you and take no pleasure in seeing you hurt.
Love rejoices with the truth.
I love you and want to share in the joy of doing what pleases God.
Love always protects.
I love you and will put your well being before my own.
Love always trusts.
I love you enough not to doubt your love for me.
Love always hopes.
I love you and know that there are always alternatives to compromising situations.
Love always perseveres.
I love you enough not to give up on real love.
Love never fails.
I love you enough to look for opportunities among the obstacles in our path.
“I love you.” We can say it with real love. And the best news of all is that when our love fails to be real, when we fall short of the guidelines, our God speaks through His Word and Sacraments and is constantly saying to each of us, “I love you—with REAL love!”