LOVE IS A PERSON

“We have to restore the meaning of the word ‘love.’ We have been using it in a careless way. When we say, ‘I love hamburgers,’ we are not talking about love. We are talking about our appetite, our desire for hamburgers. We should not dramatize our speech and misuse words like that. We make words like ‘love’ sick that way. We have to make an effort to heal our language by using words carefully.” — Thich Nhat Hahn

1 Corinthians 13
1 John 4:8-10
John 10:17-18

Jesus is God, and God is Love. So if we replace “love” with “Jesus” in this passage from the Apostle Paul, here is what we get (English Standard Version):

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not Jesus, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not Jesus, I am nothing.

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not Jesus, I gain nothing.

Jesus is patient and kind;

Jesus does not envy or boast; He is not arrogant or rude. Jesus does not insist on His own way;

Jesus is not irritable or resentful;

He does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Jesus never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and Jesus abide, these three; but the greatest of these is Jesus.

Do you believe that love is a person?
How do you feel reading Jesus’ name equated with the word love?
Which statements do you question?

Brad