What Is The Difference Between God’s Love And The World’s “Love Is Love”?

Question

Many say, “Love is love,” but biblically, love is defined by God Himself (1 Corinthians 13 and 1 John 4). How do we help people see the difference between God's love and the world's redefinition of it?

David Guzik · Accepted Answer

As we see in 1 Corinthians 13, the Jesus kind of love always desires the best for the other person. If I desire the best for someone else, I'm not going to lead them into sin or participate in sin with them. If a man cheats on his wife because he's so in love with his mistress, he doesn't love his mistress, he loves himself, and he certainly doesn't love his family. He may protest that, “But I love this woman so much,” but I would disagree with him. He obviously has a sexual attraction to this woman, and perhaps he enjoys her company. But he does not have true biblical love for her, the type of love we read about in 1 Corinthians 13. When people say things like, “Love is love,” that's just a dodge. It’s a rhetorical way to say, “Leave me alone. We're going to define our sexual expression with the term love, so that you won't say it's wrong.” That's how I would regard it. The Bible’s first mention of Satan is when he takes the form of a serpent in the garden. It tells that he's more subtle than any beast in the garden and able to make sin. Read the first interaction between the serpent and Eve and notice his clever manipulation of words and desires. When we engage with temptation, we ought not try to outsmart the devil. He is going to find a way to manipulate things to serve his own ends. We need to stand on God's word, even when we don't understand a situation, and to say, “I'm just going to trust that God is right here.”