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What Love Looks Like

What Love Looks Like

Last updated on: January 23, 2025 at 8:50 am by Randy Alcorn

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What Love Looks Like 2025-01-03T11:53:52-08:00 Randy Alcorn

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

When a religious leader asked which command was the greatest, Jesus responded, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands” (Matthew 22:37-40, CSB).

Love isn’t something we display on a wall hanging; it’s something we do: “Little children, let us love not in word and speech, but in action and truth” (1 John 3:18, BSB). Jesus’ teaching often centered on loving people, as in the story of the Good Samaritan who freely gave of his time and money to care for a stranger who’d been beaten and robbed (Luke 10:25-37). He said we should tend to the disadvantaged just as we would if He Himself were the one in need (Matthew 25:31-46).

Jesus also said to love the spiritually poor by bringing them the gospel (Matthew 28:19-20) and by praying that God would send out workers to reach them (Matthew 9:37-38).

Each of these passages, and many others, demonstrate that loving the physically poor and the spiritually poor both involve generously giving of ourselves and our resources. Loving others is really living large because it breaks us out of our own minuscule orbits. It puts us in orbit around God, who graciously meets the needs of those who meet the needs of the needy.

Love Can’t Help but Give

In the King James Version, the Greek word agape is often translated “love.” But twenty-nine times, this same word is translated “charity.” Translators believed that when the word was used of vertical action, whether God toward us or us toward God, “love” was the proper translation. But when used of horizontal actions (toward a neighbor or an enemy), “charity” served the meaning best. Why? Because loving someone is inseparable from giving to them. If you love, you give. If you don’t give, you don’t love.

John 3:16 is one of the best-known Bible verses: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” In short, love gives. Love gives time. Love gives money. Love gives privileges. Love gives what others might consider ours but what we know to be God’s.

The life God’s Son offers us cost Him His life. That’s the essence of love, defined by example in the greatest act of love in the history of the universe: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10, NIV).

Generosity Is Love in Action

Imagine if God, instead of sending His Son, sent us a message through an angel: “Too bad you’re going to Hell. Remember, though, I love you!” Instead, He loved us as Immanuel, God with us.

If you still doubt that love is about generous giving, consider these words: “By this we know what love is: Jesus laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone with earthly possessions sees his brother in need, but withholds his compassion from him, how can the love of God abide in him?” (1 John 3:16-17, BSB).

This passage portrays love as inseparable from giving. No, we can’t give everything to everybody. Yet to withhold our money and possessions from the needy is to withhold from them God’s love and compassion. God doesn’t need our help—He could do everything without us. As the body of Christ, we are His hands and feet to the needy.

We can ignore people without hating them. But in the end, if we don’t help them, it will be no consolation that we didn’t hate them. As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel famously said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”

The abundant life, which is itself a gift to us from the God of love, pours forth abundant love to others. That is the essence of giving.

What Story Do Your Financial Habits Tell about Your Loves?

Evangelist John Wesley didn’t just preach the gospel, he lived it.

Wesley had just bought pictures for his Oxford room when he noticed that the chambermaid at his door was cold. She needed a winter coat, but he had very little money left to give her. He asked himself, Will thy Master say . . . “Thou hast adorned thy walls with the money which might have screened this poor creature from the cold!”

Wesley started limiting his expenses so he would have more to help the poor. At one time his book royalties gave him an annual income now worth about $160,000. Yet he lived like someone today might at an income of $20,000. His lifestyle increased marginally while his giving increased dramatically.

Perhaps you aren’t as radical as Wesley—I’m certainly not—but his example of love and generosity inspires me to reevaluate my lifestyle and giving as well as the way I view the people I encounter daily.

You Don’t Have to Be Rich to Give

Generosity isn’t dependent on how much we make but on what’s happening inside our hearts. It’s the overflow of our love for Jesus and for others.

The greatest scriptural example of a group of people giving generously is the Macedonian churches of 2 Corinthians 8, whom Paul commended for insisting on taking an offering to help the needy saints in Jerusalem. The apostle said of these believers, “In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity” (verse 2, NIV). Notice that their giving was the opposite of dutiful drudgery—it came out of “overflowing joy.” Giving was their way of living the good life.

On a trip to Ukraine, we spent the evening with a large family, feasting and singing hymns and laughing and exalting Jesus together. Our hosts served an entire month’s ration of butter at the meal, but we were assured there was nothing they would rather do.

To the selfish person, a giver’s behavior appears foolish and against their best interests. (Why part with a month’s ration of butter to serve rich visitors who have unlimited amounts of butter at home?) Scripture says the opposite: “One person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty” (Proverbs 11:24, NIV).

I’ve certainly known generous people who were facing serious problems, but I’ve never known a generous soul—of any income level—who was chronically unhappy. That wonderful Ukrainian family might have missed their butter, but the payoff of loving Jesus and us by showing hospitality was, to them, a far greater treasure.

Giving from the Heart Really Matters

Jesus said our greatest joy comes when we give to others: “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving” (Acts 20:35, GNT). Notice what Jesus did not say: “Naturally, we’re happier when we receive than when we give, but giving is a duty, so grit your teeth, make the sacrifice, and force yourself to give.”

Money won’t make us happy, but giving away money can make us profoundly happy! When we give out of love for Christ and others, living a life of overflowing love and joyful generosity is a no-brainer.

Adapted from Randy’s book Giving Is the Good Life.

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