Love is strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties.
What is love to you?
It may be marriage, putting others' needs before your own, or any number of other things we believe love is.
What is love to God?
Love to God is unconditional and constant, and is shown through giving.
1. God's love is based on giving, (John 3:16, Rom 5:8) and he expects ours to be too (Matt 5:38-48). Our love is often conditional, I love you because... I love you for... I love you when, but should be as God loves.
1 John 4:10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
It may sometimes be one way. God does not require us to love him back, or require us to love him first. He loves everyone unconditionally without any bias or expectation. Sure we are called to serve him and follow him, but if we fail it does not decrease his love for us.
Romans 8:38-39 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (This includes ourselves, how we may mess up).
God is the very definition of love itself. There is no such thing as love without God. As hard as we try, we cannot define love outside of knowing God. This essentially means that our human definition of love is false.
To understand what true love is and to be able to truly love others, we must know God, and we can do this through a close personal relationship with Him.
1 John 4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
(The reciprocal is also true, if you don’t know God, you can’t love).
1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
How does knowing God is love change our view on love?
We should try to show unconditional love to those around us. Love is action!
We're supposed to be willing to lay our lives down for others, yet we are too busy being selfish and pulling one another down.
1 John 3:16-18