What is love?! Translated by Google
“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16).
This article is about love, and also about whether we can understand what love is and define this word. Watching television programs, reading books, and also communicating with other people, we often hear and use the word "love", but we understand it in different ways, in different ways and explain it. How can we know: is there love in us, is there love in me? Why do we live on Earth, and what is love, are hard to explain concepts. Arguing about them, we inevitably come to the concept of the word God. The Apostle John tells us that "God is love." This short but very capacious definition is revealed in the Bible on many of its pages. God is love and this is the essence of God, it is permanent and is the Spirit of God. Feelings are all temporary, but love is permanent, both in God and in man. It can never disappear, and many sincerely believing people know this from their lives.
Love SHOULD NOT BE CONFUSED with physical attraction between a man and a woman, when they like each other and there is a desire to have physical, bodily intimacy, which is very important for married life and is laid down by God in every person for the birth of offspring. For this, God gave people genitals during their creation, and after the sin of Adam and Eve, God gave them an attraction to each other, but he especially noted the woman: “He said to the wife: I will multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; and your attraction to your husband, and he will rule over you (Genesis 3:16) However, for a life together, for the normal existence of a normal, happy family, not only a joint PHYSICAL attraction is necessary, but it is very important to have LOVE, which is necessary to have in to them BEFORE they get married.
If one of the spouses marries (gets married) only on the basis of physical attraction, but without the presence of love, then at the first betrayal of his wife, the husband can say to himself, so what did I find special in my wife? She is the same ordinary woman. The wife can also think and say to herself. And this is one of the reasons for the many divorces of married couples.
From the Internet and from our lives, we know examples of married elderly couples, when in their lives the spouses love each other for the rest of their lives, although they can no longer have sex. So love can be without sex. So what is love?
Whether our concept of love corresponds to truth, we can determine only if it corresponds to God. Everything else about the concept of love by people is not love. If God is love, then everything that does not correspond to the Word of God in terms of people should not be called the word LOVE! Let's check this already through the correspondence with the Word of God from the one whom God ordered to carry His Word to people, and these were, first of all, His personal witnesses, messengers and Apostles.
The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 tells us:
“Love is long-suffering, kind, love does not envy, love does not exalt itself, does not pride itself, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not irritated, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, covers everything, believes everything, hopes everything, endures everything , Love never ends".
These words of the Apostle are confirmed by the brilliant philosopher G. Hegel (recorded from the Internet), but in a slightly different concise form: "The true essence of love is to abandon the consciousness of oneself, to forget oneself in another "I" and, however, in disappearance and oblivion to find oneself ... ". However, it is impossible to "renounce the consciousness of oneself"; a person who is not selfish does not mean that love exists in him. So the "True essence of love" is different and this essence (Dictionaries: The most important and essential in someone, something, inner content; ESSENCE) is determined by the Bible (the Word of God).
And further, each subsequent statement about love, which the Apostle Paul makes, more and more explains to us the greatness of love: “And now these three remain: faith, hope, love; but the love of them is greater. Love is greater, because when we love God, we believe that He exists, and we hope to meet Him, that is, if we love, then we have both faith and hope in ourselves. In our love for Jesus Christ, we already forget about the word FAITH, this word is already becoming unnecessary, secondary, as it were, because HE, who is God and love, is already in us (1 John 4:16). And further: "Love does no harm to the neighbor" (Rom.: 13-10). So, when people say that there are different kinds of love: God's, as well as parental, love of money, and so on, then this is a lie, since love can only be God's, the truth of which is verified by these verses and others in the Bible.
These words: "he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him" (1 John 4:16), tell us that love does not exist without God, if two people love each other, then this is already a human trinity together with God, and if a person has only unrequited love, then this love is the two of a person and God. However, such love still changes a person who becomes a child of God and transforms (transfers) his love and God's love into life and deeds among people for the good of God. At the same time, such a person is not unhappy and lonely, but feels joy, translating love into his worries and deeds for loved ones and other people.
The commandments of the New Testament for Christians defined and continue to define the necessary and correct relationship between people and God, as well as between people in their daily lives. These commandments are fulfilled by people completely when they are guided by love. “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has power, but faith working through love.” (Galatians, 5:6) Faith is real, true without love for God does not exist, and this is discussed in this article. Relationships between people are very different when they are based on love for each other and when love is absent.
When people live without love for each other, then their relations with each other require laws, judges, police, etc. People are looking for justice. And it is not always easy to prove which of them is right and which is wrong, for those who sort out their lawsuits. And as a result, they often argue, quarrel, swear, try to avenge the wrongs inflicted. Some need laws and protection so that they are not offended; others need them not to break the law and offend others.
When people live and act towards each other for love, they do not need judges, police and laws, because they act in their relationship by grace. Mercy is greater than justice. How can a person do something bad to someone he loves. When a person loves another, he forgives him all his shortcomings and all his mistakes. God loves people and treats people with mercy, forgiving all their sins on Earth, but for this people must be with God, not deny Him, but recognize Him as their God. And in order to be together with God in His eternity, you must have love for Him.
God does not want to force anyone to be with Him in eternity. But since there is no such place in infinity where there would be no God, those who reject God, who do not love God, simply cannot exist on Earth after their physical death. God treats people in mercy, because in justice all people are condemned and deprived of eternal life.
It is impossible to live without love with God and people in eternity. Many people know that it is difficult to live together without love even for one day. But you can live with someone who does not have love for you all the same this day, but for this you need to have patience. It is possible to live even 10, 20 and 50 years, but it is impossible to live in eternity with God and with people without loving them. Also, people should understand: can God be with a person in eternity, if a person rejects and does not love God. All this gives us the opportunity to understand the appeal of Jesus Christ to Christians, His followers, with the following words: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another: as I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” (From John, 13:34).
If we love God, then we must learn to love each other, which means that we must be guided by the requirements that are contained in the explanation of the concept of the word “love”. In the first place for a loving person is not himself, but the one he loves. A loving person always sacrifices his time, material well-being and everything else dear and necessary for himself, sacrifices for his beloved. And this is done without any violence against oneself, it becomes a need and brings happiness to the lover. Love denies egoism, makes it impossible. For us, the other person becomes more important and, ultimately: God and man.
The rejection of egoism, our "I" is our sacrifice. We sacrifice ourselves for another, the life of another becomes more important for us than our own. This is the main thing in love. There is no love without sacrifice! Love is a flow of kindness from the lover to the beloved. In this case, the lover may not receive reciprocal love. This often happens in people's lives, and it also applies to unbelieving people who reject God's love for them.
I understand the pain and sadness of people who love others, but do not have reciprocal love! Yes, there are sorrows and pains that cannot be resolved on earth. We take them to eternity, which belongs to God and all His Children, who love not only God, but also each other. Therefore, there is no unrequited love. Therefore, sadness and pain cannot accompany the life of people with God, people will not have all this with God! It is never too late for a person to become His child with God if he has love in himself for people. The desire to understand another, to understand his experiences and difficulties in life, and the desire to help him that arises is one of the sources of the birth of love in oneself. Through compassion for people, their contradictions are smoothed out, they become not the main ones, and gradually this state turns into love.
What is love is well explained by the epigraph of this article: “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16). When a person loves, then God settles and abides in him. Love is the essence of God - His God's Holy Spirit. Love is not a feeling, as many in this world claim. When a person likes something, then there is a feeling from the outside, which can change. This state is temporary, but love is a permanent state of a person, and love arises and depends on a person’s attitude to everything that surrounds and happens in his life, about his sympathy for people, for loved ones, when a person strives to do good. We are all under the supervision of the Holy Spirit from the moment of birth, and God by His Spirit settles in us, when by our actions and feelings we become pleasing to God, we become the same with God, we become relatives of God.
Love evokes feelings: joys, sorrows, worries, and others that are associated with the experience for the life of the one we love. We rejoice in the happiness of a loved one and at the same time become happy ourselves. We worry about all his failures, grieving with him. And if he needs something, then we help him, no matter what, even if it will be difficult for us and dangerous. And we do this with joy, even if it is connected with life for us. A lover can devote his whole life to his beloved, while receiving nothing from him for himself, except for finding the happiness of helping him, participating in his cares.
• So what is love? It is not fully explained. If we say that this is our attitude towards children? Yes it is. But there are parents who do not love their children, abandon them. There are also children who do not love their parents. But love can also be for a non-native person. Also, the relationship between husband and wife can be based on love, or it can be based only on a stamp in the passport. Love may or may not be in us. And if a person lives without love, then his life is vain and empty, being unhappy and having no eternity.
• Love is such a state, as if someone is present in us and subjugates our actions, controlling us in favor of the one we love, denying our selfishness, our "I". Love has nothing to do with the appearance of the person we love. If this were so, then the Lord would say to Christians: love the beautiful; but He said, "Love one another." People sometimes say differently: “How can I love others (naming my workmates or those who go to church with them), because they have shortcomings that are unpleasant to me?”
But why don’t people ask the same question to themselves: “How can you love me, because I also have many shortcomings, a lot of bad things?” All people want to be loved and respected, regardless of their shortcomings. By answering the second question, we understand the answer to the first question. To love other people is to help them correct their shortcomings, and if they are physically handicapped, then to help them with what they need.
The birth of love in a person begins in the process of living together with people, when a person begins to show sympathy for people who are in various life situations, when these people are not indifferent to him and he needs to be with them all his life. Relationship and love are essentially one and the same. Only love is higher than kinship, because kinship without love has no meaning.
The writer Dostoevsky in "The Brothers Karamazov" mentions the conversation of one unbelieving woman with a deeply religious man, the elder Zosima. She asks him, "How can one become a believer?" And the elder said: we must learn to love people, and first of all, of course, those with whom we live and work side by side. And then Elder Zosima tells about one person who, in response to a wish to learn to love people, replied that he loves all of humanity, that he loves all the people of the Earth and is even ready to give his life for humanity, but cannot endure even one day of living with someone together: whether in a hotel or under other circumstances of being together.
We need to learn to love our neighbors first who show us mercy (Luka 10:25-37). Without it, we cannot find love for other people. In Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot" there is a saying: "In an abstract love for humanity, you almost always love only yourself" (Collected Works, volume 8, page 379).
Another example of the "love" of people: a few years ago, I worked with a woman to prepare documentation for microfilming. She often told everyone: “I love you”, “I love everyone”. “Is it not difficult for you to love all of us?” I asked her. “After all, having love for people, one must help them, that is, sacrifice one’s time or something else.” But her answer was categorical: "It is not difficult for me to love everyone."
But I saw that for processing documentation, she chooses the lightest boxes - boxes with documentation. So my question to her was: “Why do you choose easy-to-handle boxes of documentation when we have to take the boxes in their stacking order? By choosing easy, you leave your comrades with difficult-to-handle boxes. If you love us, then choose the most difficult for yourself.
Her answer was this: putting a finger to her mouth, she said: “Shh, don’t speak loudly!”. And this was understandable, since our comrades were working nearby. Of course, it is difficult to love everyone, although one must strive for this. God loves everyone, but His embodiment of love for people is Golgotha. Christ offered Himself as a sacrifice for all people to atone for their sins, having experienced monstrous suffering.
The fulfillment of God's sacrifice at Calvary could not have happened without God's love for people. This is confirmed in the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, ch.13:3: "And if I give away all my possessions and give my body to be burned, but I do not have love, it will not profit me at all." Here the Apostle Paul, addressing people, speaks of the great significance of all the noble deeds of people when they do them out of love, which is God in them, and only such deeds can benefit them. What benefit is Paul talking about here? About the material? Of course not!
This says that the actions of these people are pleasing to God and are performed by a person at the will of God and, with the consent of a person to perform them immediately according to the needs of a person. The performance of such an act brings joy to a person. But all this is nothing more than a transfer of the divinity of that love of the Lord on Calvary to people, which we must not only understand, but also strive to embody it in ourselves according to the 1st Epistle 13:3.
Our Lord could not go to Calvary without love for people. To all people! And to those who spat on Him, and to those who nailed His hands and feet to the cross. It is so amazing for people in their existence on Earth that sometimes it is even difficult to understand the action of God, His great love for people. During the existence of people, nothing was higher than Calvary.
Love for people gives rise to reciprocal love. But not always! And this is very sad. God loves all people, but not all people love God. Reciprocal love characterizes the inner essence of a person, his desire to help people and to be grateful for everything that he receives from people and from God, to be grateful for all the good things that the people around him do for him. Suffering for loved ones, for loved ones, the desire to help them is already the beginning of love. Love itself and its embodiment manifests itself in people's actions.
If a person loves someone, then he does not think about whether the saved person loves him or not, whether the saved person has done something for him or not. People often even sacrifice themselves to save another person or others, completely unknown to them. The point is that love does not make a choice and its action not connected with benefit. So the Lord offered Himself as a sacrifice for all people: not those who are clean of sins, but for all those who have fallen on this earth, of whom there is not a single one who would be worthy of His sacrifice.
But not everyone wants to sacrifice themselves, their time, their well-being. Only to receive for oneself, without giving anything in return - so many strive in this life. And the main thing for these people is their own "I", selfishness. The essence of love lies in the renunciation of one's "I" in the name of another person. Renunciation is impossible without suffering and, moreover, voluntary. Suffering, holiness and love are interconnected in one whole. Pavel Billheimer speaks of this in his book (Don't Waste Your Sorrows, Chicago, 1990).
Many people who are deeply religious have experienced much suffering in their lives. And the author speaks about their spiritual perfection, about the presence of deep love in them. Beautiful is his statement: "But those eyes that do not shed tears cannot radiate radiance." The Bible in the book of Job (ch.5:7) says: "But a man is born into suffering, like sparks to rush upward."
It is difficult to overcome your egoism, to get rid of it. And this victory does not come without suffering. Pavel Billheimer in his book says that every step on the path of spiritual progress will leave behind the bloody traces of wounded selfishness. Selfishness in people is not from God. Selfishness is associated with the commission of the first sin of people, when they chose to do what they wanted and put their "I" in the first place, and not God.
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How is the word “love” classically defined and interpreted in literature? Of course, it is best to look in the explanatory dictionary. But even in the dictionaries of different authors, the definition of the word “love” is different, and what is common is contradictory. The word "love" is defined as:
1) a feeling of strong or permanent attachment to dedicate oneself to children - motherly love, 2) attractiveness based on sexual desire, strong attachment and tenderness. These two statements are affirmed by many authors as the definition of the word "love" and differ for all authors essentially insignificantly. Considering them, we understand that completely different relationships between people are defined here by one word “love”, and this contradicts all logic. But maybe something in common? Yes, but only words of affection.
However, "mother's love", according to the Bible, "seeks its own", and therefore it cannot be divine, that is, true love. "Mother's love" is also in animals, but this does not mean that "mother's love" speaks of its presence in people and animals of the Spirit from God. Animals do not have the Spirit of God, but in humans, the reason for the presence of the Spirit of God is faith in God. Also another thing is that in the first statement the attachment is for life, and in the second statement the attachment can be only for a few days or for one night, and they are different. The second attachment is based on the desire of the body (flesh). But the attachment in the first statement is based on something completely different. So there is nothing in common! And why then different relations between people are defined by one word. Is this a mistake or is it so beneficial to a world in which many people serve the devil?
The second sentence contains the word attraction. Attraction to the beautiful is an amazing feeling that God has given to people. All people are familiar with this state, when it is simply impossible to look away from a beautiful object, from beautiful flowers, from a beautiful landscape, from a beautiful person. The attractiveness of a man and a woman to each other is of great importance in the satisfaction of sexual relations. To become husband and wife is very important for them. But this is not yet the basis for loving each other. Without love, marriage will be short-lived or their whole future life will be unhappy. Sexual relations are connected with the satisfaction of our flesh, but love is spiritual, it is the manifestation of God in us. And it's forever! It cannot be said that he or she loved someone, and then fell out of love. This statement destroys the divinity of love. It can and correctly be said that these people have never had love!
Of all the needs for our flesh, for our body, and these are: food, sleep, sex, toilet, and so on, sexual relations bring the greatest pleasure to a person. But this has nothing to do with love. A relationship between a man and a woman based on attractiveness, but without love, is short-lived. And if you ask one of them: can he (she) die for another (other), then the answer will be negative: “What are you talking about, for what reason, why do I need it?" Can we talk about love here? Love is when a person can give his life for another, if necessary, without regretting anything at the same time!
In family life, attraction can be for life to each other, but it can only be for a short time due to age changes or due to the fact that you can meet a more attractive woman (man). And then only love can save the family. Even when you can meet a woman more beautiful than your wife (your husband), with whom (with whom) you will find much more pleasure in intimate life. And then your love for your wife (for your husband) becomes an obstacle for them, an insurmountable obstacle, because love protects from everything that can be bad for the one you love; because love is immeasurably higher in its power of influence on a person, in its power for his feelings and sensations, including from carnal pleasures with the greatest attractiveness of a partner.
The last chapter of the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus asked the apostle Peter three times if he loved Him. The Lord apparently asked Peter three times, since Peter denied the Lord three times. But it is no less interesting to know why the Lord asks Peter about his love for Him?! Love, only love can be a source of service to the Lord. Only love for God can convey to the hearts of people the words that a believer can utter, calling others from unbelief and darkness to the Light, to the recognition of God as their Lord. But maybe there is something else in this question of the Lord to Peter?
After all, earlier Peter swore to die for the Lord, if necessary, and not to deny Him. It would seem that the Lord should remind Peter with his question and ask him: “Can you die for me?” But the Lord asks, "Do you love me?" Doesn't this also mean that if someone loves, then, if necessary, he will give his life for the one he loves?! And later Peter confirmed this by his life, by his service to Jesus Christ and by his death for Him. The Lord proved to people His love for them on Calvary, on the cross. Like the Lord, Peter also accepted his death on the cross, proving his love for Him also on the cross.
God's love for people is wonderful and amazing. God is waiting for the return of every person from the world of unbelief and vulgarity, from the world of evil to Him in the world of love, the world of fidelity and purity. And God helps us in this. Jesus talks about this in the parable of the Prodigal Son. The famous artist Rembrandt decided to reproduce this parable in his painting, but made a spiritual mistake. He drew the father inside his house, having just risen from his chair and placing his hands on his son, who was kneeling before his father. But in the parable, the Lord says that when the son went to his father, but was still far away, the father saw him and took pity; and “running, fell on his neck and kissed him” (Lukà 15:20).
The parable tells us that when we take only the first steps towards God, God instantly rushes towards us, “runs” towards us, rejecting His greatness, as if He forgets that He is the Great and Almighty God of everything. On the part of some people, this may seem like self-humiliation: how can God treat a sinner this way. The sinful son goes to his father, and he is already running to him, and falls on his neck and kisses him. Amazing and beautiful is the love of God for people. Every loving person behaves the same way, because God is in him. The famous artist did not understand this.
The Apostle John in the 13th chapter tells how Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. God, as it were, says to people by these actions: “Don’t you see how much I love you.” God's love gives birth to love in people, but if we ourselves strive for this, have a desire to understand God and the people who love us. The Apostle John in 1st Epistle, chapter 4:19, tells people: "We love Him, because He first loved us."
People who have love for other people, sooner or later for them, become believing people who love God. But it simply cannot be otherwise, since God dwells in them. Also with God are all those who need Him, who are trying to find the truth, the meaning of life, who are striving to act according to their conscience in their lives, who are trying to help people in need of something, who have experienced a lot of grief, a lot of suffering in their lives, who I realized how people are offended by the injustice of this world, built by people striving for fame and fortune. The motive of such love: compassion for people, experiencing their joy and sorrow with them, getting joy when you can help them (“she loved me for torment, and I loved her for compassion for them”, Othello’s words about Desdemona in Shakespeare’s tragedy “Othello "). Usually this feeling of empathy arises in people who have experienced grief themselves and know what it is.
“Suffering is a source of great moral values and positive spiritual gains. It leads to faith, love, spiritual strength. We live on earth to work on the beauty of our soul. Life is a huge workshop in which the souls of people become purer and prepare for the transition to another, better world. Suffering teaches to be condescending to other people, brings up sensitivity to the grief of another person. It is difficult for a person, but it is also difficult for another. Suffering must be met with compassion. After all, the word happiness comes from the word complicity, that is, everyone should participate in life with another person, sympathize with him, cooperate with him, participate. And find happiness in it" (Archimandrite Eleazar).
Love for people appears before they become believers, but love for God comes only after gaining faith in God, or maybe at the same time. Many people know that among unbelievers there are those who treat people better than those who call themselves believers. And these unbelievers help others much more than believers. In such people, when they do good deeds, the Spirit of God is present, because such people are pleasing to God, and God helps them to gain faith, because they work out His righteousness in their actions. The Holy Spirit visits them at the same time, and ultimately helps them gain faith, settling in them forever. The actions of such people are accompanied by the Spirit of God, which means love. The source of the formation of love in them becomes: the Spirit of God, and this is “love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God” (1John 4:7). So, love in a person is the presence of the Spirit of God!
Selfish people cannot love, there is no love in them, because selfishness and love negate each other. There is no God in these people; the Holy Spirit, that is, God, cannot be present in them. They may believe that there is a God, but they cannot love God, they are far from Him. The way of salvation for them is to give up superiority in everything for themselves, to learn to love the people around them. Those who love God should never doubt that their life is connected with God for eternity.
Dostoevsky in the book "Demons" cites the beautiful words of one man to a woman who loves him before his death. Here is what he said: “My immortality is already necessary because God does not want to do wrong and completely extinguish the fire of love that has kindled for Him in my heart. And what is more precious than love? Love is higher than being, love is the crown of being, and how is it possible that being is unyielding to it? If I loved Him and rejoiced in my love, is it possible that He would extinguish both me and my joy and turn us to zero? If there is a God, then I am immortal.” God exists! All believers know this and know that they are immortal: (1 John 4:7 and 3:16).
And yet, a very important side of love is that when they love, they always wait. We wait for a loved one until our last breath. We wait and hope, we love and we wait. And our love helps a loved one to survive in his difficult living conditions. I did not understand before: why people say that those they love come back alive from the war, that they are more likely to survive than the unloved. But I understood when I read Exupery's book about how, as a pilot, he had an accident in a deserted desert, where he was threatened with death. Exupery says that if someone is loved and expected, then he tries to survive and fights to the last strength to return to the one who loves him, so as not to cause him pain and grief. Love also helps in other times when we know we must return to someone who needs us.
Love changes a person. The best source of raising children in a family is the love of parents for each other and for children. No education can replace love for raising children. Education is important, of course, for upbringing, but it is not the main thing. The main thing in everything is love. Children try to imitate their parents in their relationship to each other and to all the people around them.
With good observation of the children in the family, starting from the time when they are still babies of eight to ten months, you can notice how interestingly the children look at their parents when they are all nearby, together. From the look of the child, even if only for a short time, one can understand that the child studies and learns not only how dear his father and mother are to him, but the child is already interested in their relationship with each other. And the most important thing for the child is not only the love of parents for the child, but also the love of parents for each other, which the child can already observe in their words and actions towards each other.
Some readers of Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot" find Prince Myshkin's relationship to two women incomprehensible, and to others mysterious: Aglaya and Nastasia Filippovna. According to the prince, he loves Aglaya very much and wants to marry her, and he also loves Nastasya Filippovna, though he does not add the word “very much”. But this word "very" is connected with the fact that he loves Aglaya as a woman, in contrast to Nastasia Filippovna. After the meeting of the prince with the two of them in Rogozhin's house, the prince abandons Aglaya and stays with Nastasia Filippovna, whom he is going to marry in the future. The prince spoke quite sincerely about his love for them, and we have no right to doubt it. Why did he leave Aglaya, whom he loved very much, but stayed with Nastasia Filippovna, whom, according to him, he loved, but not very much?
When Aglaya organized a meeting of the three at Rogozhin, she did it because of selfish intentions, trying to prove to N.F. that she did not mean anything in the life of the prince. In addition, Aglaya humiliated Nastasya Filippovna in front of the prince and Rogozhin, recalling her past when she was a concubine of her patron, and therefore was rejected by society as a fallen woman. Such a wound was inflicted on Nastasya Filippovna, when she not only could no longer control herself, but her life was in danger.
The decision to save her depended only on the prince, and therefore he could not leave her. The love of the prince chose the one that was in great danger. Love rejects selfishness. Therefore, the prince, saving Nastasya Filippovna, abandoned his happy marriage to his beloved girl. The prince neglected himself, his life, which for many people seems incredible: to give his life for another. The layman, of course, will call such a person an idiot. I think that the Christian writer Dostoevsky took the parable of the Lord “about the lost sheep” as the basis for this act of the prince.
“If a man had a hundred sheep and one of them went astray, would he not leave ninety-nine in the mountains and go looking for the lost one?” (Matthew 18:12). What is depicted in this parable happens constantly in the life of every shepherd. The shepherd does not care about the rest of the herd, because he knows that the animals in it will not die, will not be endangered. But a lost animal can disappear, die. The love that exists inside a person for other people is directed in its actions primarily to those lovers who need help more than others. Love “DOES NOT LOOK FOR HIS OWN” (1 Corinthians 13:5). This is true love and it is only from God!
To whomever we feel love, there is a common thing everywhere - this is the self-sacrifice of the lover towards the beloved. And it is done according to our inner need, according to our desire, and brings satisfaction, joy and happiness to us. But where is the source of this? The Bible gives us the answer to this: the presence of God in us! But why is God present in some people and not in others, although he loves everyone? Why is it so? There is only one answer: our big “I”, taking care of ourselves first of all. The selfishness of man closes the heart to the presence of God in it. It's not God's fault. People are to blame for this. God loves people and waits for them to open their hearts to love Him and people. Here are the last words of God to people: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him” (Revelation 3:20).
The saddest thing in a person's life is when people reject his love. Then hands fall, all desire to do something disappears, you don’t want to think and dream about anything. Yes, this is all true, because there can be nothing more than love in a person. Because love is from God and love is God in us. Love gives us the opportunity to live even in the most difficult times. And not only people who went through the war know about this. The love of God is incomparably higher than human love. Therefore, the suffering of God is higher than human suffering. And the Lord experienced all this on Himself at Golgotha.
In our lives, we often use the word "love" instead of the word "like" and do it wrong. So we say: I love cutlets and apples, this person loves money, but this one loves to do evil to people; whereas we should say: I like apples or I really like apples, I like to play sports and so on. But to use the word "love" here, as people say: "neither to the village nor to the city," that is, it is wrong. We need to wean ourselves from these mistakes.
In connection with the wrong concept of the word "love", people make another mistake when they say that love can be the cause of passion, that passion is very, very big love. Misunderstanding is due to the fact that passion belongs to the body, its desires, needs, raised to the extreme by the person himself, while love has nothing to do with the body. Passion belongs to certain feelings, the source of which is the body. The source of love is God, it is a divine state. Love evokes different feelings, but these feelings are not directed at oneself, not to satisfy one's bodily needs. Through love, our attitude towards people is manifested, but this attitude is already imbued and guided by God, His Divine Spirit, which is in us.
Love never does evil, while passion can bring a lot of grief to a person, even death. And one example of this is when a person, after a long endured hunger, pounces on food and cannot stop. As a result, a person dies from poisoning. According to its superiority given by God, the human mind differs from the mind of an animal, and a person, unlike an animal, can overcome passion when passion carries negative consequences. But love is more reasonable, since it is from God, and therefore, guided by love, a person can always stop negative passion. And in this case, we can say that love conquers passion.
The stages of knowing love are the stages of knowing and finding God, which we make in our life, gaining freedom and happiness. But on earth only the beginning! There is one sentence in the Bible that personifies the entire Bible by summarizing it so succinctly. We must always remember these words, remember the great love of God for us, for all living people on earth. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Adam and Eve did not have love and repentance before God, God did not give them love according to the Bible. Only in joint action with God does love arise, which is a joint essence between people and God, as well as between people! This essence is the Holy Spirit! Humans are destined to be the Bride to the Son of God and the Son of God the Father loved humans first. But what does the Son need to do to be loved by the Bride? The Son becomes Christ and devotes himself to serving people in order to save people from the devil to whom they fell, to save the bride from death. And the entire ministry of the Son of God on earth ends with a feat on Calvary for the sake of His Bride, when He endured the greatest suffering for Her sake!
And all those who waited with their hearts for the One Who could love them, saw Him not only as revealing His greatest Truth of life, but also as having loved and proved it by His Feat of this great love on Calvary. His love, like a magnet, attracts all people whose heart is open to love. When they tell me about some kind of faith that is different from the Christian one, that it is more correct, I always point them to Golgotha, to the love of Jesus Christ for people, who proved this by his sacrifice for the salvation of people. There is only ONE such God and only among CHRISTIANS!