1 John 3

"There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love." Eric Fromm said that 55 years ago, but we're still trying to figure out what love is, and why it fails so regularly.

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

Love is defined here as Jesus laying his life down for us. But Jesus didn't just sort of drift into this. He chose to love us in this way. Love is a choice. And if love is a choice, it's not hard to figure why it fails so regularly—people don't think it's a choice. Perhaps they think it's a feeling. And when the feeling goes away, the love goes away.

So instead, John says in effect, "Just as Jesus chose to love by giving his life away, go choose to love one another by giving your lives away too." He says we're to do this not just by saying we love people, but by showing it in our actions.

Anyone can let their love float along on the waves of emotion. But it takes strength and courage to choose to love when those waves get fierce.