November 9, 2025

If someone says, “Love is______,” how would you fill in the blank? Love is when someone spends all their time with you. Love is when you hold hands with someone. Love is when you share your dessert with someone. Those are not terrible ways to talk about love. But love, as 1 Corinthians 13 talks about it, is so much more than that. Love can include some hard things too. Love does not mean agreeing with everyone, only doing what people want you to do, or never saying something difficult to someone.

What is love? First Corinthians 13 is a beautiful picture of love. At the beginning Paul talks about how being a person full of love is more important than anything else we could do. We can have the most amazing gifts (like faith to move mountains!) and be the most generous person (give all our money to help others), but if we don’t have love, then all our gifting and giving is worthless. In the middle of the chapter Paul talks about how love shapes our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions. For example, love makes us patient and kind with others; love keeps us from laughing when bad things happen to others or bragging to them about how amazing we are.

Then at the end of the chapter Paul says, “Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13). Why is love greater? Because love will last! We only need faith and hope until we get to heaven to live forever with Jesus. But in heaven, all we will need (and think, feel, and do) is love! There God—who “is love” (1 John 4:8)—will love us and we will love him and others all the time for the rest of time. Sounds lovely.

The picture of love in 1 Corinthians 13 goes far beyond a warm feeling or romance. Love is what drives us to give ourselves for the good of others, even when it costs us. Such love must be connected to God’s love for them and the good he wants for them.