The Need to Love and be Loved

1 Corinthians 13 is one of the greatest chapters ever written in the Bible. If you don’t know it, print it and put it on your bathroom mirror. Make it part of the fabric of your life.

1 Corinthians 13

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

This chapter sums up the struggle of all of human existence; the need to love and be loved. If I looked deeply into the cause of almost all of my human frailty, the core would be either not loving enough or the feeling of not being loved enough. Our ego, our self-esteem, our insecurities, our self-image are all rooted in this one concept. How healthy is our perception of being loved?

John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

I want a love so great that I would die for it. I want it to envelop me, protect me, fulfill me, be the very air that I breathe. I want it to be all-consuming and overwhelming. I want it to be grand and incredible and scary. I want it to stop my brain and hold me in awe. I want this kind of love. I want it because that is who God made us be.

1 John 4:19, “We love because He first loved us.”

It’s crazy, a simple statement, seven words, and I stop. I want to love others as God loved me. But, people are not kind or understanding. They think, say, and do weird things. They don’t love me the way I want to be loved. And yet this is who I am to God, and He still loves me.

Romans 8:38-39 “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow–not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below–indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Knowing this full well, why do I struggle? Why is the concept of loving others and being loved so precarious? Why is it so hard?

Because we live in a fallen world, we live in an environment that never will be perfect. So many people do not know Christ and do not know the real source of love. We interact with these people every day; they twist and corrupt God’s concept of love. We are immersed in a media bombardment of the world’s view of love. It is no wonder we get confused. It is no wonder that most of the world feels unfulfilled.

I am genuinely loved. I mean that. I have friends that love me, a family that loves me, and a God that thinks I hung the moon. But I sometimes struggle with this. I sometimes feel alone, isolated,  and unloved. It’s part of being human. The way out for me is not to fixate on the love I am receiving, but increasing the love I give away. Even when I feel unloved, there is joy in loving. In loving others, I start to feel loved myself.

2 Thessalonians 3:5, “May the Lord lead your hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God and the patient endurance that comes from Christ.”