What is the true meaning of love? The word “Love” has been misunderstood,
abused, and misused. Love is not an emotion , a feeling , a sensation or
a passion. Love is not the same as lust and it is not synonymous to
infatuation, obsession or fascination. “Love” is more than just a four
letter word, it is a Personality. Love is the first person of the Trinity.
Love is God. Love is the greatest law in the Holy Bible. As a matter of
fact, “Love” is the summary of the law of God. Love is the first and the
last commandment of God. Once you obey the commandment of love, you have
obeyed all the laws of God.

Love is the only reason why God sent His only begotten Son to this world to
die for a sin He never committed. The humiliation, the maltreatment, the
oppression, the degradation, the cruelty, the subjugation, the repression,
the despotism and the suppression that Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
suffered on earth was for only one reason, Love. I mean, love for mankind.

Love means to feel affection for, to adore or worship. It means to be
devoted to. It also means to care for, to be keen on, or to find
irresistible. Love is deeper than a sweet talk from a man to a woman. It is
deeper than paying a lip service. Love is what is missing in a home where
there is discord, jealousy, envy, rivalry, in-fighting, disunity,
dissension, wrangling and squabbling.

When love is absent, brothers kill and betray one another and nations rise
in war against each other. Hooliganism, racism, tribalism, favoritism,
nepotism, chauvinism, and homicide are all derivatives and by-products of
lack of love. In a nation of diverse cultures and various languages like
our nation, Nigeria, for us to truly stand in unity, we only need to
change our lingual-franc and adopt the language of love.

Love is the only gravitational force that can pull a nation together as
one. Love is the only breeze that can blow in a family and make the home
peaceful, and will not be accompanied with storm or whirl wind. In a world
where terrorism is eating deep into the fabric of our system, Love, is the
only potent weapon that can put an end to terrorism. It is only love that
can end a war without a bloodshed. Love is the only missile that can be
shot to the camp of the terrorist, which once embraced, it will put an end
to all form of terrorism. Love is the only currency that we can spend in
the world, and we will no longer have an economic recession.

Permit me to say that you cannot understand true love without knowing the
Only True and Living God. Whosoever does not love is walking in death. Love
must not be perverted. A home where the husband and wife does not know the
True God can never understand what true love is all about, because God is
Love. It was the love that God had for Adam in the beginning that made Him
create a help suitable for Adam. God did not create Adam and Steve in the
beginning, it was Adam and Eve.

It is a perversion of God’s love today in our world, that made some
advanced countries think that God made a mistake by not creating Mr and Mr
Adam or Mrs and Mrs Eve. It is unthinkable and unheard of, that world
leaders who are supposed to know better, have quickly forgotten what
happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, that Ancient town in the bible who
committed an abominable, dreadful and monstrous sexual sins. Just like
Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed, destruction awaits all who perverted
God’s kind of love.

Love will make us coexist peacefully on earth. Love is the only ticket that
can give you an access to live for eternity with God. Your love for God and
your love for your fellow men will be the parameter or yardstick for
assessing how obedient you are to God’s commandment. Love is constructive
and productive. When sin destroyed our relationship with God through the
first Adam, it was love that came to our rescue and reinstate us with God
through the second Adam, Jesus Christ. Love is greater than faith. Love is
greater than hope. I can boldly say that, in a world of many superlatives,
Love is the greatest.

*The “Love-meter*”

You may want to measure whether you are living in love or not, I am sure
this “Love-meter” will be useful for you. I Corinthians 13:1-13 (English Standard Version)
*The Way of Love*

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

*2 *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 love, I am nothing

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

*4 *Love is patient and kind;love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant

*5 *or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful

*6 * it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

*7 *Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

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

*9 *For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

*10 *but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

*11 *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.

*12 *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.

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

1 John 3: 14 ( New International Version)

We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other.
Anyone who does not love remains in death.

Have you used this “Love-meter”? How many of us can really measure up to
God’s standard of assessing whether we are walking in love or not. Let us
all reflect and make some adjustment where necessary. Always remember that,
life has no meaning, if love is taken away, and heaven is uncertain, for
anyone who is not full of love. And always remember, for you to know the
true meaning of love, you must know God himself and accept His son Jesus
Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, because God is love and He
demonstrated His love towards us, by sending His only begotten Son, Jesus
Christ.