Today — St. Valentine’s Day — seemed like a great day to break from our Friday tradition with a special installment of the ‘Reclaiming Words’ series!

The purpose of this series is to explore together some words that need to be introduced — or re-introduced — to this current generation of college students.

These words have lost their meaning… or have been mis-used or redefined in unhelpful ways… and therefore need to be reclaimed and redefined (again) so that they can be realized by our students!

Today’s word: LOVE.

It’s a word that means, among other things, unselfish love of one person for another without sexual implications; brotherly love.

Unselfish.

Without sexual implications.

Doesn’t sound like the kind of love we see displayed in our world… does it?

We’ve made a mess of love… haven’t we?

When this post was first live (two years ago now) there was a Hallmark commercial that had been running for the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day. The commercial consisted of clips of different people, from different walks of life, at different ages, in different locations — all saying the same thing: “Tell me you love me.”

Tell me you love me.

Tell me you love me!

Tell me you love me!!!

Who was at the center of this endearing commercial? Who was the focal point?

ME.

Tell me…

Tell me…

Tell me…

We’ve made love about us… about “ME.”

About having our own needs met (which, yes, can be a part of it).

We’ve made it about sex and romance and warm feelings and the like (which, yes, can be a part of it too). This is the eros form of love found in the Bible — which our culture has become infatuated with… and narrowly focused upon. Clearly there’s a place for this in our world — an important place — but it’s not the be all and end all of love.

Sadly, we’ve made love (as a culture) very selfish.

And we’ve stopped there.

And this is the love our students see… and understand (to some level)… and attempt to live into.

The words love, loves and loved are found 686 times in the NIV translation of the Bible — and occur consistently throughout both Old and New Testaments.

And with all of the passages that could be shared here, allow me to point to two that I think our students could best benefit from:

I John 4: ¹⁵ If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. ¹⁶ And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. ¹⁷ This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.

And,

I Corinthians 13: ¹ 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.

 ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

 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.

Love is patient — we could spend a lifetime trying to understand and live this out!

Love is kind.

It does not envy or boast.

It is not proud — WOW.

It does not dishonor others.

It is not self-seeking or easily angered.

It keeps no records of wrong!

It does not delight in evil… but rejoices in truth.

It always protects… trusts… hopes… and perseveres.

Love. Never. Fails.

How might the truth about love… REAL love… change things — change everything?!

We need to help our students to see the Bible as God’s great love story with His created!

They need to stop thinking of the Bible as an ancient (translated irrelevant) text that is filled with an angry God who’s got an obscenely long list of “dos” and “don’ts” to abide by, and start seeing it as an ongoing story of a loving God attempting to woo His wayward loved ones back into His arms and tender care.

… the greatest of these is love.

How might a better understanding of an all-loving God help our students to better understand what love actually is?

And how might this impact their perceptions of relationships and commitment now?

And how might this impact their perceptions about love, marriage, sex and commitment in the future?

We simply must find ways to reclaim LOVE for the sake of this upcoming generation!