Two kinds of Love

It is very important to understand the meaning of Love because God is Love. By understanding the meaning of Love we can understand the very nature of God to the most clearest extent.

The word Love is very commonly used in everyday life, but we do not know the real meaning of it. There are 4 types of Love namely a) Brother and Sister Love, b) Friendly Love, c) Sexual Love and d) Selfless Love. We often use the word love for all the possible things in the world. Example: I love my dog, I love my wife. I love my chicken burger. Love here differs in all the three sentences.

In a very broad sense we can differentiate it as Human Love and Godly Love. Let us concentrate on Godly Love, which can also be termed as Selfless Love. Let us first try to define it: Doing always good to others irrespective of the other people's behaviour towards us. This calls for unconditional Love and is a sure qualification to be termed as Godly Love.

Human Love is conditional and mostly based on other person's response towards us. It can be best expressed as: I love you if you will do.........., I love you because you are.......

Problems with human love

People love based on their feelings, depending on other people's actions
People think that they could earn Love through their performances. But they do not realise that Love has to be received and cannot be bought.
People depending on feelings tend to be very uncertain, they cannot tell whether they will be happy today or not? Very pitiable indeed.

Returning back to God's Love: What does it take to Love like God? Can we really do it?
Let us consider certain scenarios and try to answer them to our best knowledge.

Is it possible to say:

I Love you but i can't forgive you.
I forgive you but i can't Love you.
I Love you but i don't have compassion on you.
I Love you but I won't act humbly towards you.

After a brief thought we agree that it is impossible to Love without involving the essence of the terms forgiveness, compassion, humility so on and so forth. We can also say that whenever we show Love towards a person, all the other attributes like forgiveness, compassion and humility will be manifested automatically.

To emphasize on this point a little further, we cannot Love any person without completely forgiving them. Compassion does not equal Love, but it is a step closer to Love. Humility does not mean you show your Love to people, but it is a sure part when you start Loving the person. You cannot strip these attribute of Love and still Love a person.

Unforgiveness has the attributes like anger, bitterness and pride, so it cannot coexist with Love. If we see fire we know that there is heat and light along with it. These individual attributes when found alone, ex: heat does not mean we have fire near always and light does not mean fire is there around too, but it is the other way around. You can recognize Love when we see all its attributes manifested.

When i say that i Love my wife, it means that i have forgiven all her wrong actions and my compassion is not conditional on any of her behaviour. I humble myself and give up my life to protect her. Love is real and exists. Reality is outside of our feelings and emotions. Love is a decision and cannot be based on our feelings which are very uncertain and volatile.

The attributes of fire like heat and light exist independent of your beliefs. If you put your finger in the fire, you will sense the heat. Putting the finger inside the fire did not create the heat, it only revealed the existence of heat in the fire. Similarly if you Love your wife, whenever she does a mistake, the forgiving attitude in you should be revealed to her without checking your feelings whether you should/ want to forgive or not. The mistakes of your wife would have just revealed the forgiving attribute of the Love that you had for her all along.

In order to follow God's way of loving we should make Love a decision and should not base it on other people actions or our own feelings. Love does not require repentance on the other people's part, but requires a decision from your part.

To sum it up all:

I corinthians 13 chapter speaks about Love in a wonderful manner.

though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Love suffers long and is kind;
love does not envy;
love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;
does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
If Love is a decision then we can surely show God's kind of Love. Joy, happiness and lot other things have to be a decision to have a wonderful life, and that is what God has initially planned for us.
John 10:10 says
I have come that you may have life, and that you may have it more abundantly.
If we desire this Godly Love to be a part of our lives, be sure that we cannot attain it by our own effort, it is a gift from God. Unless we receive it from God we cannot share or give it to others.