Marriage

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

by J.W. Phillips
02/18/25
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What’s Love Got To Do With It?

There is a difference between natural love and the love resident in the new nature. The supremacy of this love in our recreated, born-again spirit is well-documented in Scripture. We read in I Corinthians 13:13, “… and the greatest of these is…" And those who have been in the church a while can immediately finish the verse—LOVE!

But do you know what this word means?

In the cartoon strip, Peanuts, Charles Schultz has Schroeder practicing a Beethoven classic on the piano when, with great exuberance, Lucy bursts into the room to ask, “Schroeder, do you know what love is?”

“Yes,” the intellectual Schroeder responded in his typically deadpan way. “Love is an affection based on admiration, benevolence, or mutual interests. Love is a devotion arising out of kinship, loyalty, or tenderness.”

Lucy stands there stunned—her enthusiasm punctured, her mood broken. She then retreats from the room muttering, “Some people sure sound good—on paper."

A.B. Simpson acknowledged, “No word has been so prominent in song and story all through the history of human life and literature as this old word, ‘love.’”¹ Popularly used in poems, conspicuous on many cards, crooned through loudspeakers everywhere, proclaimed from a thousand pulpits, love has been extolled and exhorted until the word itself has almost lost meaning.

The very real danger, then, is this: By overly elasticizing a word, we skew and distort it, until finally what we elasticized snaps, and all that is left is something tattered and worthless.

For sure, it’s easier to say what love isn't than to define it. Prior attempts to define it have proven that love can be counterfeited in several ways.

Counterfeits of Love

First, there are those who love with their glands and not with their heart. If a woman is slender, smart, and seductive; or if a man is tall, dark, and handsome, perhaps then the sparks will fly—which, according to these counterfeit criteria, is a sure sign of love! The tabloids frequently feature this kind of love in their weekly publications.

Scientists are attempting to explain it by chemicals in the brain or by the predictable patterns of animal mating behaviors.

Second, there is an existential love that comes and goes according to the chemistry of certain intangibles, measured for the most part by emotions. If someone is “turned on,” then love will be released; but if that person is “turned off,” love will then disappear.

This kind of love rises and falls on the fickle, flighty testimony of feelings. And while one could wish that only soap operas engaged in this type of love, there’s enough evidence to indicate that the suburbs of Middle-America have succumbed to it as well.

There can be little doubt that Satan’s most popular counterfeit of God’s love is that love which loves only the lovable—fun, affable, generous people: people who think like you think, like what you like, and do what you do. This is the marketplace kind of love that scrounges for advantages, benefits, and compensating rewards.

Needless to say, all the counterfeits just mentioned are extensively evident in today’s world but are obviously contrary to the love of God.

Introduction to Love

Perhaps this truth can be more clearly seen by examining the following passage from the pen of Paul. In Ephesians, chapter 3, the apostle writes: “... that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:17-19).

The words “rooted” and “grounded” are encouraging words, as is the word “know,” because they suggest a reality that is constant and attainable, as opposed to something that is fleeting and elusive.

The Broadway musical “Oliver” features a wistful little song entitled, “Where Is Love?”  This song about an orphan boy living among unsavory characters on the streets of London has become the plaintive heart-cry for many people.

The reason people can identify with this song is because they too have been moving in and out of relationships that never offered love. The gospel, however, says every believer can be both rooted in love (that is, constantly absorbing its blessings) and grounded in love (that is, forever established in its benefits).

When Scripture also says that we can “comprehend” this love, it doesn’t mean we can intellectually define it. The word “comprehend” in the Greek literally means to seize, possess, or grasp. And similarly, the word “know”—instead of referring to cognitive awareness or to conceptual constructs that need to be mastered—refers to an experiential knowing, something meaningful and practical and real.

So what exactly is this love which the world at best can only counterfeit? In reply, we won't attempt to define love like Schroeder did, but we can describe it.

Dimensions of Love

First, we are told of the width of this love. This speaks of an enormously inclusive love, the kind of love that would bring together both the Jew and the Gentile (Ephesians 2:14).

Had we been alive during Jesus’ day, and had we witnessed firsthand the entrenched hostility between these two groups, we would have put their relationship at the very top of our “impossibility list.” And due to our awareness that the Jews were “God’s people,” perhaps we would have also thought (in error) that the Gentiles weren’t candidates for God’s love but were the eventual targets of his wrath.

Contrary to Jewish thought (and, for that matter, common opinion), God’s love isn’t limited to one’s family, country, or race, because his love reaches across all kinds of boundaries—demolishing walls, opening doors, and even melting the hardest of hearts.

While the homogeneous principle may appeal to certain marketers of church growth, it isn’t to be found in the heart of God. What God offers, by contrast, is a fervent, stretched-out love, intent on blessing people whom many of us, carelessly or deliberately, would have excluded.

Victor Hugo once said, “The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.” This is a truth we can easily warm up to as we think about our inner circle, and perhaps a little way beyond. But when it comes to those unknown, unlovely people we’d just as soon not think about, we find ourselves digging in our heels and looking at the Savior with much consternation as he marches right past us, ever intent to reach these people, too. The width of God’s love!

Then, according to Scripture, there is the length of God’s love (Ephesians 1:4) —a love that chose us before the foundations of the world (this refers to eternity past) so that we should be holy and without blame before him (this extends to eternity future).

So how long is God’s love? Its length can be characterized in this way: Before we were even born, he loved us. While we were wallowing in sin, he still loved us. Now that we are his, he particularly loves us. And throughout eternity he will ravishingly love us.

So you tell me: Is there any other love as sure as God’s love? Our love fades, whereas God’s love glows with an undimmed brightness.

One young woman was heard to exclaim, “Love is a sickly sentiment that puts a romantic wrapping on a shoddy counterfeit, only to remain but a very short while before it is finally discovered to be a sham?”

Several years ago, Tina Turner put out a hit song entitled “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”—a song that expressed her wounded heart’s cynicism, the aftermath of a difficult past marriage.

Unfortunately, the length of human love, often, isn't that long.

The third dimension of divine love is referred to in Scripture as depth. So how deep is God’s love? It is so deep that it reached way down to rescue lust-driven sons of disobedience, men who were not only in bed with the world but who were also in lockstep with Satan. According to Scripture, it was the Prince of the Power of the Air who was pulling their strings (Ephesians 2:1-4)!

Celsus, the Greek critic, once said, “Everybody knows from long experience with actual life that once a man has gone a certain length in sin and folly, there is no smallest prospect of reclaiming him, because inevitably man is carried downhill faster and faster by his own impetus.” Should we agree with Celsus? Is there a place on sin’s great decline too far from the arms that save?

C.S. Lewis answered that question by describing Jesus as the Divine Diver. In his book, Miracles, Lewis wrote:

... one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through the warm and green water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the deathlike region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to color and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing he went down to recover.²

This is what Jesus did for us! In his incarnation and in his subsequent death, he went all the way to the bottom, to the lowest of the low, on a mission to recover what must have seemed a worthless thing—fallen man: the defiant defiler, the rebellious reviler.

And just think: When love paid its highest price, those for whom it was intended only mocked and jeered. So can anyone deny that the love of God is unsurpassed in its depth? 

The fourth dimension of God’s love is height. How high is God’s love? So high, that according to Ephesians 2:6 he has enabled us to sit together in heavenly places! In clarifying this truth, F.J. Huegel pointed out:

"We do well to look at the tenses of the verbs which the Holy Spirit employs… It is ours now! 'He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ'.

It is not death (physical dissolution) that will bring us into our heritage in Christ. It is faith. We may now sit with him in the heavenlies because God has already made us to sit there in the person of Christ, the head of the church."³

How little we have believed God for the throne life which is ours to utilize on earth! Such ascendancy not only speaks of our exalted relationship with God but also speaks of certain privileges delegated by him—such as authority, capacity, and power!

Tozer wrote, “To regain her lost power the church must see heaven opened and have a transforming vision of God.”⁴ Such a vision will depict heaven and earth operating in sync as God releases his power through those who lay hold of it by faith.

During a time of great financial difficulty in our country, a Philadelphia pastor was walking the streets of his city when he came upon one of the elders of his church. “How are you doing?” the pastor asked as he extended his hand to this elder.

“Oh, all right … I guess,” came the feeble reply. And then—following a punctuated pause and a doleful, downcast look—the elder added the words, “under the circumstances.”

“Under the circumstances?” the pastor probed. “What are you doing under there?”

Good question! Why should the believer become a hapless victim in life? Doesn’t the Bible say that we’re “more than conquerors,” abundantly resourced for whatever challenges us?

Mindful of this perspective, people will sometimes say, “Keep looking up”—these words of encouragement that remind us of God’s willingness to help!

But there may be even more faith in the words “Keep looking down.” For these words envision throne life, our current seating in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6), whereby we access his mind and his might to transform for his glory each trial into a triumph.

The four dimensions of God's love—its width, length, depth, and height. Wouldn't you agree that this description is far more profound than what Schroeder said, and that contrary to Tina Turner, love, for everyone alive, has a lot to do with it?

God's love means we don't have to be overlooked or rejected (the width of his love), that our entire life, here and hereafter, will be inspirationally impacted (the length of his love), that the worst of us will be salvaged by divine deliverance (the depths of his love), and the trajectory of our life will be elevated far beyond our highest dreams (the height of his love).

This answers the question, what love has to do with it?

Notes:                  

 1.  A.B. Simpson, The Christ in the Bible Commentary,                 Volume 6, p.225.

 2. C.S. Lewis, Miracles, (New York, NY: HarperCollins,                  1947), pp.236-237), p.116. 

 3.  F.J. Huegel, Bone of His Bone, (Fort Washington,                     PA., CLC Publications, 2009),p.65,66.

 4.  A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, (New York,                 New York, Harper and Brothers,1961),p.122.