Paul Tripp is wrote this convicting passage in a collection of essays I'm reading, called The Power of Words and the Wonder of God. I don't know about you, but the concept of love is evasive to my intellect at times. I don't completely understand why that is, but I think it's partly because 1) we know that, as children of God, Scripture commands us to know the love of God, and to love one another; BUT 2) the world talks about love all the time, but defines it so many different (and often contradictory and sinful) ways.
So I appreciate this definition - it clarifies the biblical definition of love, and brings out the implications for Christians living out this love that God has revealed to us.
Tripp quotes 1 John 4:7-12:
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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. 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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."
Then he comments:
You don't define love by a set of abstract concepts. Love is defined by an event, and that event is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. God calls us to cruciform love, that is, love that shapes itself to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is that love? I will give you a definition: Love is willing self-sacrifice for the redemptive good of another that doesn't demand reciprocation or that the person being loved is deserving. That is the love that took Christ to the cross of his death for our redemption.
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