God is love
“Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good” (Romans 12:9).
It would be hard to overrate love or speak too much of its wonder. Who ever criticizes love? There are not many things in the same category. However, this verse is a caution about what may be called love but doesn’t measure up.
The experience of love from others and acting in love personally are the highest and happiest elements of human life. Nothings defines the potential, blessedness, and nobility of humanity like love, the sublimest theme of our greatest literature and music.
It’s easy to trace the reason for this. Man was created in the image of God and the Scriptures tell us, “God is love.” Love in mankind is the fulfilment of Divine purpose and our greatest potential. God Himself is the personification and standard of what love really is, and we need to carefully consider what He tells us about it.
No. 1, love is giving. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Here is the gold standard of love in exercise. God saw the unspeakable peril of human beings on their way to an eternal hell and gave everything He had to make a way of salvation, His only begotten Son. His death on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins is love beyond comparison. Believe it.
No. 2, love is lawful. “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10). Love is never illicit. Breaking God’s commandments may masquerade as love but it is ultimately self-serving. It robs God; it robs others; and in the end it robs self. There is a common belief that anything that brings pleasure is love, but that is just an attempt to justify self-gratification. True love honours God and respects people.
No. 3, love is committed. Our opening verse warned about professing love while practising dissimulation, which is another word for hypocrisy. You cannot be loving toward God or man without a deep commitment to doing good and personally opposing evil. We live in a day when shallow thinking people claim all hate should be criminal. According to God (and common sense) true love means we also “abhor evil.” We can only be truly committed to the wellbeing of others as we also abhor those things which are inherently evil and bring ruin. We must also commit to what is good.
The real test of a person is what he embraces and what he detests. You will either hate evil or hate good. Many of the accusations of hate speech are really an attempt to preserve evil from criticism because someone wants to practice it. Love is discerning. Otherwise one cannot know how to act for God’s honour and human good.