How do you define/understand 'love' in your religion?

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Reuben_J

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Just want a quick (name removed by moderator)ut from various religions on your understanding/teaching of the meaning of love in your belief.

What does it mean (from your belief perspective)?
 
Love is wanting the best for the other and to be willing to sacrifice, suffer, and do things for the other to obtain the best for him. All love comes from God.
 
Through His word, God lets us define love as Himself; God is love. The whole ramification of that is one of those things I don’t think we can know til we are with Him. On another level it is easier for me to say what love is not; it is not mere emotion. Love is action.
 
Jesus is Love and He suffered and died for us upon the Cross. Even if it had only been only to save ONE person, He still would have done it. Of course, firstly, He has doing it out of Love for the Father–as a Sacrifice to Him (which is complicated, but the Trinity is complicated, or maybe just so simple, it’s too hard to really ever grasp, except the way St. Patrick explained it with the shamrock–I mean except at the end of time of course, when all the righteous will know.)

Anyway, to put it simply, God is Love and by that Love He willed us into existence in His Image.🙂
 
Reuben_J said:
Just want a quick (name removed by moderator)ut from various religions on your understanding/teaching of the meaning of love in your belief.

What does it mean (from your belief perspective)?
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1 Corinthians 13:4-13
**
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
**

1 John 4:7-12

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
 
jaimeleglise said:
Love is wanting the best for the other and to be willing to sacrifice, suffer, and do things for the other to obtain the best for him. All love comes from God.
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This poster said it best, in my opinion.
 
jaimeleglise said:
Love is wanting the best for the other and to be willing to sacrifice, suffer, and do things for the other to obtain the best for him. All love comes from God.
Click to expand...
Just wanting a bit of clarification in view, I think, of what other religions, other than Christianity, are also saying that God ‘grant love between you and those whom you hold as enemies’.

If love comes from God and therefore we love, would that love then as a result of something that is not from our own free will? If it is not from our free will, how sincere would that love be?

Thanks.
 
spedteacherita said:
1 Corinthians 13:4-13
**
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
**

1 John 4:7-12

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

Thanks Rita. I love the definition of love as given by Paul in 1 Cor 13 and also in 1 Jn 4.

I think 1 Jn 4:11 is pertinent - we kind of have to make that decision to love first. God will only help us to perfect it in us because He is in us.
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ChibiViolet said:
Jesus is Love and He suffered and died for us upon the Cross. Even if it had only been only to save ONE person, He still would have done it. Of course, firstly, He has doing it out of Love for the Father–as a Sacrifice to Him (which is complicated, but the Trinity is complicated, or maybe just so simple, it’s too hard to really ever grasp, except the way St. Patrick explained it with the shamrock–I mean except at the end of time of course, when all the righteous will know.)

Anyway, to put it simply, God is Love and by that Love He willed us into existence in His Image.🙂
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Awesome. :)👍

Funny though, love is not so much about personal attraction but rather about self-giving for the good of others.
 
Kliska said:
Through His word, God lets us define love as Himself; God is love. The whole ramification of that is one of those things I don’t think we can know til we are with Him. On another level it is easier for me to say what love is not; it is not mere emotion. Love is action.
Click to expand...
True. I think that Christianity’s teaching on love is unique, in that it is not about emotion which is perhaps what most people would think love is all about. I have tried to find out what other religions’ teaching on love because they too claim that theirs are also teaching about it.

I think this is the basis of God. He loves everyone, even the unlovable. Love is such a big word, it is rather frightening, because it is about action and ultimately if needs be, one has to give oneself in order to love.
 
Reuben_J said:
I think this is the basis of God. He loves everyone, even the unlovable. Love is such a big word, it is rather frightening, because it is about action and ultimately if needs be, one has to give oneself in order to love.
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There was a song I heard years ago that was written in honor of CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, and about Aslan. In the song “Untame Lion” one of the lines was, “His power is dangerous, His power is endless love…” That line always made me soberly consider just what the love of God implies for humans, those that embrace that love, and those that spit on it…
 
Reuben_J said:
Just want a quick (name removed by moderator)ut from various religions on your understanding/teaching of the meaning of love in your belief.

What does it mean (from your belief perspective)?
Click to expand...
For me … Abdul-Baha defined love in so many ways…

*Love is the mystery of divine revelations!

Love is the effulgent manifestation!

Love is the spiritual fulfillment!

Love is the light of the Kingdom!

Love is the breath of the Holy Spirit inspired into the human spirit!

Love is the cause of the manifestation of the Truth (God) in the phenomenal world!

Love is the necessary tie proceeding from the realities of things through divine creation!

Love is the means of the most great happiness in both the material and spiritual worlds!

Love is a light of guidance in the dark night!

Love is a bond between the Creator and the creature in the inner world!

Love is the cause of development to every enlightened man!

Love is the greatest law in this vast universe of God!

Love is the one law which causeth and controlleth order among the existing atoms!

Love is the universal magnetic power between the planets and stars shining in the lofty firmament! **

Love is the cause of unfoldment to a searching mind, of the secrets deposited in the universe by the Infinite!

Love is the spirit of life in the bountiful body of the world!

Love is the cause of the civilization of nations in this mortal world!

Love is the highest honor to every righteous nation!
Code: 
(Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets of Abdu'l-Baha v3, p. 525)
 
jaimeleglise said:
Love is wanting the best for the other and to be willing to sacrifice, suffer, and do things for the other to obtain the best for him. All love comes from God.
Click to expand...
All love comes from God and that is very true. But does love need to be willing to sacrifice or suffer?

Love is very spacious issue and it cannot be restricted into sacrifice and suffer!
 
From Our Sunday Visitors Catholic Encyclopedia:

[A]ny strong affection, closeness, or devotion to things or persons. The Greeks distinguished four types of love: storge, philia, eros, and agape. Storge, familial love, is a word for the bond that exists between one who loves and persons, animals, and the things that surround him. It is compatible with quite a bit of taken-for-grantedness or even of hatred at times. Philia pertains to friends, freely chosen because of mutual compatibility and common values. Eros is passion, not only of a sexual nature, but also of an aesthetic or spiritual nature, for what is conceived of as supremely beautiful and desirable. Agapic love is manifested when one person has much to give to another more needy. It is generous self-donation without concern for reward.
Such distinctions become especially important in discernments about marriage, because the strength of eros love may blind one to the absence of ther types of love needed to experience a good Christian bond that, with God’s grace, can endure “till death do us part.”
 
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