Man is a failure at love

Many a woman would agree with this, but the same is true of women!

What is love? We can understand love best by first considering what love is not.

Love is NOT words. Saying I love you isn’t necessarily love. Many a young man has said I love you to his girlfriend until she became pregnant.

Love is NOT lust or desire. A desire after someone or something is really selfishness.

Love is NOT a feeling. Emotional feelings can be very powerful. Movies that are entirely separate from reality can cause us to cry and can stir our innermost being.

What then is love?

Love IS totally unselfish, unlike lust or desire.

Love IS a genuine care for the object of love.

Love IS more than words.

Love becomes action toward the object of love.

Love IS NOT dependent on the love of another. True love does not have to be loved first. In fact, true love is even loving toward its enemies.

The two greatest commandments in the Bible are:

Love the Lord God with all the heart, mind and strength.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

These commandments reveal that man is a tragic failure at love. We DO NOT love God with all of our heart, mind and strength, and we DO NOT love our neighbor as ourself, but we should, and we should want to, and we should be sorry that we have failed to.

How then can we learn to love?

The Bible tells us how. It is by “looking unto Jesus.” In the crucifixion of Christ we see the greatest love ever expressed.

There the sin of a hating world was placed on the sinless Son of God that we might be able to be forgiven for being so unloving.

There Christ bore the penalty of eternal justice toward haters of God and man.

There the King of Love loved those who hated Him, even unto death. This is the greatest example of love.

Dear Reader, you are the object of that love. Christ died for you because you are a failure at loving, just like everyone else. If you will truly accept His message of love to you, demonstrated at the cross, you will know God’s forgiveness, and then you will love God; and knowing His love for you, you can then begin to really love others.

Unfortunately, those who reject God’s love will never be more than failures at loving.