Love Is All You Need

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

These verses tell us that love has others’ best interests at heart rather than our own. The only way to love that way is to be so completely fulfilled in Christ that you are freed from having to be on guard for yourself.

Who is jealous? Those who feel they should have what others have and believe they would be happier if they did. Who is boastful? Those who feel the need to exalt themselves above everyone else. Who demands their own way? Those who feel they have the right to dictate what is best for everyone else and that their happiness should be the deciding factor.

Do you see a pattern? All the descriptions of love in today’s verses require that people who are loving be more interested in what others need than in their own desires.

God has poured his own love into our hearts: “We know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love” (Romans 5:5). God’s love is the only kind of love that will live up to the standards of today’s verses. But he has promised to give us the kind of love—his love—that will be able to function according to Paul’s description.

The love of God is a giving love. If we are expressing the love of God, then it looks like Jesus: “Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God” (Ephesians 5:2).

Jesus, enable me to express your self-giving love to those you have put in my world. Show me ways to love extravagantly, seeking no benefits for myself.

The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you.

A. W. Tozer(1897–1963), American preacher and author