Rock and soul singer Tina Turner has died after a long battle with illness. She was 83.
Maybe her most well known song was “What’s love got to do with it?” That’s a very provocative question. I contend that love is much more than a second-hand emotion. In fact, everything is all about love.
Where do I get that idea? From God, who is love, defines love, gives love, demonstrates love, commands love, cultivates love and loves us with a love beyond comprehension.
God is Love. I John 4:7
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. I John 4:10
God demonstrates love in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever believes in Him (Jesus) would not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16
[T]hat you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:18-19
God’s greatest gift is love. I Corinthians 13:1-13
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. John 13:34
And love is evidence to the world that we belong to God. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:35
The apostle Paul puts love at the beginning of the list of the fruit produced in the life of a believer by the present power of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:22 reads, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love…”
So, what’s love got to do with it? Well, whatever it is, love’s got everything to do with it.
Why is that? Because God, who is love, has woven love into everything He has made and wired love into the fabric of how it all holds together.
And how exactly do we know love? Well Christopher Watkin says in the book Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture:
“We know love by what it does. God loved so he sent (John 3:16); we love so we obey (1 John 5:3; 2 John 1:6). When God loves, he does not act to acquire or accumulate; he gives his Son, his very self, for unworthy others (Rom 3:10–12). Trinitarian love is the Father sending the Son and the Son obeying the Father.”
What’s love got to do with it?
Everything.
Photo by Mayur Gala on Unsplash
