No Greater Love

What does love mean or look like? How do you explain love? The world sees love as some ethereal, mysterious feeling that is felt. Worldly love is very selfish and extremely dependent on circumstances. Worldly love is all about what's in it for me? Worldly love just takes from others. The world pictures love in a strictly romantic, or even in a more pleasurable or erotic sense. In this case, love just becomes some new drug to be taken,  always looking for the next high. Of course, I am referring to sex here, and when love is just some feeling that is meant to be experienced, and is equated to sex, problems will arise. While sex is not bad, like anything else in this world, it all too easily is corrupted. First of all, sex is a very precious and intimate thing, not meant to be abused, and not meant for just anybody. Just like marriage, sex should only be between a man and a woman, and only married couples should have sex. While sex is very intimate, the main purpose usually is procreation. Neglecting these facts has many consequences, the biggest being unwanted pregnancy, and in this culture of no responsibility, and of making problems go away, along with the moral decay of society, and no wonder so many abortions are happening in this country. I really wanted to talk about true love. TRUE love. Real love. Sacrificing love. This is what love looks like to the Christian:
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. John 15:12-13

For the Christian, love is not a vague, ethereal concept or some feeling. Love is very tangible, and can be seen in actions. Not just any ordinary action, but with sacrifice. Sacrificial love is the truest love possible.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. ¹⁷ But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? ¹⁸ Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. 1 John 3:16-18

As a verb, sacrifice means to make an offering of, or surrender or give up, or permit injury, for the sake of something else, and I would add, without expecting anything in return.
More than this, though, love is a Person. God is love and love is God and comes from God..In fact, we are only capable of love through Him, because of our fallen and sinful nature.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ 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. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins….We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4:7-10,18

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

This is the greatest love: that God sacrificed everything in the case of sending his Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for our sins, so that we could get everything, namely eternal life. This is really good news, because when we were unable to love Him, or give Him anything, and even though we did not  deserve anything but God’s wrath, He gave and loved us. So no matter how broken, or unworthy, or helpless, or sinful you are, He did it all for you. It is finished. Just turn from your sin and place your faith in Christ and what he did.