If you’ve been a Christian, or associated with Evangelical Christianity, for any length of time, you are bound to hear that the axiom, “love isn’t a feeling, it’s an action.” And while there are many criticisms and failures of modern Christianity when it comes to carrying out the pure and holy will of God, this is actually not one of them! We say the word “love” very easily, but the Scriptures mean something deeper than just mere sentiment or affection. Love is not a vague emotionalism. And in the context of Christmas and Advent, love is not just a seasonal cheer.
Biblical love is much like the magical girl anime trope: it’s a very real force that empowers us, even transforming us to live and conduct ourselves in ways that can change our world. To put in it a way that is more familiar to the Christian’s ears: love is an action. It’s sacrificial living (sometimes even involving suffering).
Ultimately, love is God’s heart moving towards His people.
The apostle who was Jesus’s best friend during his ministry wrote several manuscripts that the Spirit selected to be included in the Bible. John’s first letter (written to Christians in the capital of a Roman province) is rooted in two main themes: light and love. We’re going to look at the latter right now.
John tells us in chapter 4 verse 16 that God is love. Whatever else we know about God or about love, we know that love is the key characteristic of God’s nature and His being; when God operates in Himself, or in human history, He is always, primarily, absolutely, operating out of what we can recognize as love.
And what is love? Love is the pursuit of the well-being, the interests, or the priorities of another, with as much effort as one puts towards his own well-being, his own self-interests and his own priorities, even if there’s a personal cost involved (3:16, 4:10 and many other places.)
Putting these together, God’s love for us under-girds His activity towards us. God is always pursuing what is best for us in the eternal long run (what we can see in other places in the Bible described as “God’s glory”), putting His divine power, authority and sovereignty behind the goal of seeing His people be the sort of individuals He created us to be.
We can almost rest comfortably in this idea, but then John continues to tell us that “we love because He first loved us” (4:19). The Christian especially, understands that even the love we have for one another is not self-generated, but is both a gift from God and a response to God’s own love towards us all. While God’s generosity and care can be seen elsewhere, it’s in Christmas that we start seeing the truest expression of God’s love. If love is the pursuit of another’s well being, and God loves us. What could God give that would assure our utmost and eternal well-being?
God gave us Himself. In Christmas we see God coming so near to humanity, so wanting to be close to us, that He becomes one of us. As Emmanuel, God with us, God steps into human history, with all its pain, its ambiguity and nuance, with all its frustrations and its sin, to live in this world with us to bear our sins and their consequences in our place and to put to death those things that can and do destroy our union with Him (John 3:16).
That’s so much more than the warmth of Christmasy affection we feel once a year.
And friends, this is the sort of love that all of God’s people are called to share and demonstrate to one another and to everyone.
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