Heart Beats: What IS Love? (Clarity)

Heart Beats 1

What IS Love?

Message by Daniel Carandang

Written by Ana Andres

Music is a big part of our lives. It sets the vibe and brings liveliness. Just try to imagine life without music. It would be so dull, wouldn’t it? But it just isn’t an atmosphere-setter nor is it just for entertainment. Music is actually powerful. 

According to Taylor Swift, “the truth of it is that every singer out there with songs on the radio is raising the next generation. So make your words count”. Music is that influential in people’s lives. Perhaps we think that we really just listen to music for the sake of its enjoyment; listen to the melody but  never felt that we live out a song’s lyrics. Little do we realize that the words we hear sink deeply in to our minds and this subconsciously embeds in our values and way of thinking. 

The same goes with love songs... And how is it that in spite of our deep knowledge with love songs, many young people sadly end up in broken relationships? 

There are so many love songs out there and they all interpret love differently and inevitably, it leaves us asking, “what is love really?”.

One of the chart-topping love songs of 2013 was Clarity by Zedd and Foxes, 

How can it not flip the charts? With lyrics that strikes where it hurts the most ("You are the piece of me, I wish I didn't need," "If our love is tragedy, why are you my remedy?"), the young generation can't help but bop their heads and pattern their love life after such a song. 

If love is insanity, why else is he or she your clarity?

What is love, really?

We look to so many sources to ask what love is but rarely do we go to God and ask Him what it truly is. But this is what God says, in John chapter 3, Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. This is how we know what love is. We go back to the Cross. This is the ultimate standard. With that said, here are two defining characteristics of love based on the Cross;

REAL LOVE IS GOD HONORING.

When Jesus Christ died for all of our sins on the cross, this was the greatest public display of affection, and it honored God. If we don’t understand this and have not genuinely felt this love in our life, we may not be able to translate this in our own relationships. 

Because God loved us and because we love Him, we will choose to honor Him. Despite all the hardships, the temptations and bewildering emotions, real love will choose to do what is right in the eyes of God. Just like Jesus, despite the agony and suffering he had to go through, because He loved God and because He loved us, He chose to die on the cross to redeem us. 

Therefore when your relationship causes you to lie, when it causes you to compromise your relationship with God and worse when it causes you to put God as second in your heart, ask yourself, do you think this “love” is honoring God?

REAL LOVE IS SELFLESS AND SACRIFICIAL.

In Philippians 2:5-6 God says, “In your relationship with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness”.

Aside from the sacrifice that Jesus Christ did on the cross, He also sacrificed the glory He had with the Father. He chose to humble down by assuming a human body and a human nature in order to lovingly serve us all and so that He can die in our place. 

Now, this is real love. 

If we want to love genuinely then we ought love like this; selfless and sacrificial. 

But it's not easy. 

Naturally, we our selfish people. It’s all about us, it’s all about me and sometimes we even think that what we do for others is solely for their own good but we do this to gain something in return. When we “sacrifice” things for others, we sometimes seek recognition. When we “forgive”, sometimes it’s only because we’ve been so emotionally attached that we would feel so broken without the person. There are conditions and they point to our needs. 

That is not selfless and sacrificial. It says in 1 Corinthians 13: 6-7:

 “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

Our relationships should not be about one’s self, one’s partner nor both. Ultimately, our relationships must point to God. 

Real love equals the Cross and sadly many of us don’t understand this. Many of us don’t realize the gravity of our sins. We sometimes feel that our sins are nothing but minor and hence does not deserve such a grave punishment. Others perhaps feel that being a mere human validates it-- validates being a sinner. We don’t realize that though we may be physically alive, we have become spiritually dead because of all these and we look to many things in order to fill that “missing piece”, often in relationships. We are merely surviving but there really is no genuine living. And God saw all of that and sent His one and only Son to die on the Cross so that we may live. If only we receive Him in our lives and surrender to Him, we will understand what real love is and from there, all the other things follow. 

Love is not just a feeling. It's not some Greek tragedy. It is clarity in a way, but not in the matter we know.

To be honest, God's love is insane. Why love people who do not want to obey You at all? 

Because God's love is unbelievably amazing and it's something we don't deserve. But He gives it to us freely so we can give it to those who need to see who He is, to find their clarity. 

THAT is real LOVE.