4. HOW DO YOU DEFINE LOVE? Most young people, boys and girls, claim being in love is the reason for having sex. Love is often charged as being a powerful motivator for behavior. Yet, how many of us can truly define what love is? From movies, to music, to poetry, love is perhaps the most talked about, sung or written about topic in all of history. Take these examples: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” – a line from the novel and the 1970 film Love Story starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal “Luv is a Verb …” – song and lyrics from dc Talk’s 1992 album, Free at Last “Love is passion, obsession, someone you can’t live without….” – a line from the film Meet Joe Black, William Parrish (Sir Anthony Hopkins) to his daughter, Susan Parrish “I heard once that love is friendship on fire. That's how I feel about you. …” – from the film, The Perfect Man, by Ben Feldman’s Adam Forrest Most definitions of love make catchy song lyrics or great quotable movie lines, but do they hold up in the real world? If we apply these thoughts to our relationships and experiences, do they really show what love is? Love is one of the most intricate and powerful concepts in the world, and yet, in our experience, very few people seem to understand it. Most of us struggle to define what love is. Often at my (Josh) talks, I will go down into the audience, and ask parents, grandparents and pastors to define love for me. Even in an audience of pastors, there might be two in the whole room who could define it. Defining love is a critical step toward understanding God’s purpose and design for sex. After all, if you cannot define love, how do you know if you are in love? If you cannot define love, how do you know if you are being loved? If you cannot define love, how do you know if you have a loving, intimate relationship? If you cannot define love, how can you express love through sex? You can’t. And you can’t help your children recognize it, know it, experience it or express it, either. Definitions That Don’t Work
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How do the pastors, parents or grandparents answer the question, what is love? Here are a couple of the answers we’ve heard: “God.” Okay, this may surprise you, but defining love by saying, “God is love,” is meaningless. It’s like saying “Factor X … fill in the blanks.” Yes, God is love – but what does that mean? God in His very nature is love, but that doesn’t help us to define love. By saying, “God is love,” without defining love, it’s like dropping the word “love” into a sentence as a placeholder only. Others have said, “I Corinthians 13.” Again, this may surprise you, but First Corinthians 13 doesn’t define love, it shows what love is. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. …” (1 Corinthians 13:4a). It is helpful, of course, to show what love looks like, but it does not define it for us. The third most popular answer we hear is, “Well, it’s a feeling.” How can love be a feeling? You see, if love were a feeling God could not command it. You can’t command an emotion. You can’t command someone, “Feel better. Like your neighbor, or like such-and-such.” You can’t command someone to feel good or to like someone. Show me one place in the Word of God where you are commanded to like someone. There’s nothing. God can’t command you to like someone…that’s an emotion, a feeling. Rather, God commands decisions, choices or actions. Take Jesus’ command, “Love one another,” (John 15:12), Jesus is not commanding an emotion. Rather, He is commanding a decision, a choice, an action. Are we commanded to like our neighbors? No. Are we commanded to love our neighbors? Yes, we are to love our neighbors. There is not one person in the world we are not commanded to love. We may not like certain people. We may not like someone’s character, or the way a person treats another. We may not like what a certain person does, but, nevertheless, we are commanded to love that person. Why is this so important? For this reason: if you can’t define love, how do you know you really have a loving relationship? If you can’t define love, Manuscripts\Talk to your kids…\Book and Chapters\4.Define Love
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how do you even know you’re being loved? You can’t. If you can’t define love, how do you even know you have a loving relationship? Being able to know, experience, express and define love is critical for your children and your grandchildren. In the absence of a definition from us, our kids are defining it themselves, based on what the world is telling them. Of evangelical, fundamental, bornagain, Christian kids, 38 percent will say sex is okay if you love that person. Thirty-eight percent! That is almost four out of every 10 evangelical, fundamental, born again, Christian young people who will say sex is okay if you love them. What do we do? Our pastors preach, “You should love one another, love one another, love one another….” Parents tell their kids, “You should love one another,” but don’t define it. For almost every evangelical, fundamental, born-again, Christian young person, we have let the world define love. It’s incredible. And the way the world defines it, love is sex and sex is love. We have let the world equate love with sex and sex with love for our grandkids and our kids. And it’s time to take it back and begin to define love for our children. A Definition That Stands In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church …. — Ephesians 5:28-29 (ESV) God’s Word offers a clear definition of love. Let’s give ourselves a standard for our own life relationships, for our children and our grandchildren. In fact, let’s take the most complicated concept in the world and define it in less than five to seven words. Let’s make it easy to remember so that you can pass it on to your kids and your grandchildren. Let’s trace the word “love” through several passages of Scripture to find a definition. In Ephesian 5:28, the Word of God says, “So husbands ought also to love their own wives …” wait, how? “…as their own bodies; he who loves his own wife loves himself.” Wait, Josh and Dottie, we aren’t supposed to love ourselves. Isn’t that narcissistic? Well, what does Scripture say? How am I to love my wife? How am I to love Josh? As I love my own body. Did you ever catch that before? But, Dottie, I thought you weren’t supposed to love Manuscripts\Talk to your kids…\Book and Chapters\4.Define Love
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yourself. Isn’t that what most people teach, Josh? Isn’t that what we read in the commentaries and the books? You’re not supposed to love yourself? Let’s look at one more passage in the Word of God. In Mark 12:30-31, the scribes were trying to back Jesus into a corner. One of the religious leaders came out with a leading question, thinking he would confuse Jesus, and he said, “What is the greatest commandment of all?” Jesus replied, “To love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind ….” Then Jesus continued, “… The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself….” Years ago, our daughter, Katie, who was 6 years old at the time, attended one of my (Josh) talks. She heard me talk about Ephesians 5. Later in the car on the way home, Katie grew quiet, so I asked her what was wrong. She said, “Daddy, you know what you taught tonight?” “Yes?” I replied. “When you talked about loving your neighbor as yourself?” She paused, then said, “Daddy, if you don’t love yourself, your neighbor really has problems.” Sometimes, our children surprise us, don’t they? Yes, our daughter got the concept – and at 6 years old! But, it’s true, isn’t it? If you don’t love yourself, your neighbor really does have problems. The Word of God tells us to love others as we love ourselves. So what does it mean to love yourself? The word for love in the passage in Ephesians 5 and in Mark 12 is the Greek word, , or agape, which, means love. “But,” we often hear, “in II Timothy 3:2, it says `…they will become lovers of themselves…,’ which can’t be biblical, so you shouldn’t love yourself.” If we look at the Greek word for “lovers of themselves” in II Timothy, we see it is the Greek word, φίλαυτοι, which means selfish or self-centered. What it’s talking about here in II Timothy is putting your own desires ahead of God’s desires for you. It is putting your needs ahead of everyone else’s needs. In Jude 18, we find a similar idea where it says that they were “walking according to their own ungodly desires.” That’s what Paul is addressing in II Timothy, or as it says in II Peter 3, that they were “living according to their own desires.” Manuscripts\Talk to your kids…\Book and Chapters\4.Define Love
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If we look at even one passage that describes God’s love for us, such as that rich passage in Ephesians 2:4 (ESV), “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us … even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ ….” we see the word here for love is , or agape. It becomes clear that Jesus - in commanding us to love others as ourselves - is calling us to something that is far different from a narcissistic, selfish, self-centered love. But in our search to define how we were to love ourselves in order to love others, including researching through Biblical commentaries, every source jumped over what it meant to love ourselves. It wasn’t until one night, when I (Josh) was speaking to an auditorium of kids that I received an answer. I was back stage at Cobo Hall in Detroit waiting to go out and talk to kids for two hours about sex, following dc talk and then Petra. As I waited and continued to mull over what loving ourselves meant, Fay Logan, the man who had led me to Christ came back stage. He was the most unpretentious man you’d ever meet, the pastor of a little tiny church in Michigan, with little education, but also one of the wisest men I’ve ever known. “Pastor,” I blurted out, “What does this mean? To love my wife as I love my own body?” Fay just looked at me and said, “Well, that’s easy.” “Really?” I thought. “All the scholars, radio people, TV people… all the commentaries totally missed it and this man with little education says, `That’s easy?’” “Give me a hint?” I asked him. He said, “Josh, the next verse defines love, starting with self.” And, it does. He was right. In fact it’s the only place in the Bible where love is defined. This is what it says: “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it.” The ‘it’ doesn’t refer back to his wife, but refers back to his own body. And “…nurtures and cherishes it just as Christ also does the church.” To Nourish and To Cherish How do we specifically love ourselves? By nourishing and cherishing. When our children were each about 11 or 12 years old, we talked to them about this idea of what love is with them. When we talked to our son, Sean, he immediately asked, “Dad, what does that mean?” before Josh could even get to the explanation. “What does `nourish’ mean, Dad?” he asked. Josh said to him, “Son, to nourish means to bring to maturity.” The New Manuscripts\Talk to your kids…\Book and Chapters\4.Define Love
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Living Translation (NTL) and the New International Version (NIV) use the following language: “to feed and care.” To love means to nurture and cherish, or to feed and care, and to bring to maturity. We so wanted our children to know that if you love yourself the way you are supposed to, then it is an act of your will to choose to nourish yourself to maturity. “Daddy, in what area?” Our son wasn’t done. That is why we love kids. In Luke 2:52, it says that Jesus was brought to maturity in four areas. It says that he grew in stature (physically); he grew in wisdom (mentally); he grew in favor with God (spiritually); and he grew in favor with men (relationally). So we told Sean, “Son, if you love yourself the way you’re supposed to with a healthy Biblical love, then by an act of your will you will nurture yourself to maturity, physically, mentally, spiritually, and relationally.” But that is only half of love. The other half is to cherish. We aren’t talking about adoring yourself, because that idea is not biblical. It is not in the Scriptures. To cherish doesn’t mean you hold something up and say, “Oh I adore it, I love it, it’s wonderful.” No, to cherish means to care for - if you cherish something you care for it. If you cherish someone, you care for him or her. In the context here, it would mean to care for, in the sense of protecting. It could also be translated “to warm” – to warm in the sense of protecting, or be concerned for, or as John Wesley put it, to feed and clothe. If we truly love ourselves in a healthy, biblical way, then by an act of our wills, we would each choose to nurture ourselves to maturity … physically, mentally, spiritually, and relationally. And then, if we truly love ourselves in a healthy, biblical way, then we would cherish ourselves – or care for and protect ourselves from anything that would hinder the maturing processes in our individual lives whether physically, mentally, spiritually, or relationally. If I (Josh) truly love myself, then I would protect myself from anything that would hinder maturity, or hinder me from becoming the person Christ created me to be. If I (Dottie) truly love myself, then I would protect myself from anything that would hinder maturity or hinder me from becoming the person Christ created me to be. That is what it means to nurture and cherish. That is what it means to love ourselves. Manuscripts\Talk to your kids…\Book and Chapters\4.Define Love
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As the conversation with our son finished, I (Josh) told him, “Sean, this is what’s so beautiful - this is how I am to love your mother - as I love my own body.” True love always, without exception, seeks the best interest of the loved one. Love Your Wife As You Love Yourself Being a parent or a grandparent is an unique role in the life of a child. There is no one else like mom or dad, grandpa or grandma. We have a place in the lives of our children and grandchildren that is irreplaceable. Therefore, it is imperative that we speak into our children’s lives. It is crucial that we model love to our children. It is both our privilege and our responsibility to define and model love for our children. “I’ve watched my dad my whole life,” our daughter, Katie, said recently, “ … how he treated my mom…. I knew I wanted someone that loved me and respected me and encouraged me the way that my dad did. I wasn’t going to settle for anything less.” Wow! And you know what the beauty of this is? Katie has been married now for 10 years to Jerry. They have two children, who are now, in turn, watching their parents model love for them. Define We’ve got to define love and then we’ve got to model it. First, it’s important for us to use language that our children understand as we define love for them. We owe our children a definition of love that has meaning for them. Perhaps the words, “nourish” and “cherish” are not words in their everyday vocabulary, and so we must find a simple language to define love that they will remember and use. We owe our children more than “love one another, love one another, love one another….” And we certainly owe them more than the world’s definition that sex is love and love is sex. If we don’t define love for our children, but simply tell them to love, and our pastors tell them to love, should we be surprised when we see the statistics of how many of our evangelical, fundamental, born-again Christian kids are having sex? Model Second, our children and grandchildren need a model of love. One of the greatest things I (Josh) owe Kelly, Sean, Katie and Heather is to love their mother. It is critical that I give my three daughters and my son a model of Manuscripts\Talk to your kids…\Book and Chapters\4.Define Love
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what it means for a man to love a woman. Likewise, it is so important that I (Dottie) model what loving a husband looks like in how I love their dad. How are kids supposed to find out what it means? By going to Planned Parenthood? By taking a sex education class? Reading a book? No, as parents of four precious children and grandparents of six incredible grandchildren, we must model love. Modeling love adds three-dimensional pictures to the truths you are communicating. “When I was little,” our daughter, Heather, reminded us recently, “I remember Dad calling home to the landline when he was on a trip. He would say, `Hi honey, how’s it going?’ And we’d all say, `Hi Dad, oh, we miss you!’ And he’d say, `Is your mom home?’ We’d respond, `Let me go get her for you,’ and he’d always say, `Tell her, “Her lover is on the phone!”’ “Well, I’d completely roll my eyes and was a little grossed out because nobody wants to think of their parents like that! But, that is something that has stuck with me – just the openness that my parents did enjoy each other and that they were still sexually attracted to each other. As much as I don’t want to think about it, still, I know that my mom and dad love each other and are romantic toward each other and that is something I definitely want to pass down to my kids, that their mom and dad enjoy being together and enjoy having sex together, not just to make kids!” In Ephesians 5:33, it says, “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself….” As I (Josh) have shared with my children, this is how I am to love their mother. If I truly love their mother, then by an act of my will, I choose to nurture their mother to maturity. If I love her, I will nurture her to maturity, physically, mentally, spiritually, and relationally. And, if I (Dottie) truly love my children’s father, then by an act of my will, I will cherish their father. I will protect him from anything that hinders the process of him becoming the person Christ created her to be. That means it affects the kind of movies we go to, the videos we watch, what we eat, what we drink, or even, how we drive. It influences the kind of friends we have, the music we listen to, or the kind of parties we attend. If we truly love each other the way we love our own bodies, then we will protect each other from anything that would hinder or harm the other from being nourished or cherished. God intended that when our daughter, Katie hears her husband, Jerry tell her “I love you,” she has a standard to hold that statement to because first, Manuscripts\Talk to your kids…\Book and Chapters\4.Define Love
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we defined love for her and second, we have modeled love for one another in how we have each loved our children’s father or mother. Our daughter should be able to say, “If Jerry truly loves me then he will treat me the way my father treats my mother.” When our son, Sean told his wife, “Stephanie, I love you,” he should know that if he truly loved her, he would treat her the way his father treats his mother. When our daughter, Kelly tells her husband that she loves him, she should nourish him to maturity, physically, mentally, spiritually and relationally. And when our daughter Heather and her husband demonstrate love for one another, if they truly love one another, they will cherish the other and will protect one another from anything that hinders the other from becoming the person Christ created him or her to be. How’s a young man supposed to know what that means? Talking to his peers? Having the big sex talk? No. By treating his wife the way his father defined love, and modeled that love in how he treated his mother. To Protect and To Provide God’s Word provides the simplest definition of love – to protect and to provide. Let’s start with the word, “nurture.” What “nurture” really means is to provide nutrients for growth physically, mentally, spiritually, relationally. Picture yourself on a warm spring day in April, and your daughter comes home from school. You bring her out into the garden and tell her that when she comes home from school the next day, you want her to go out and fertilize the flower bed. “Why?” she asks. And you explain that you want the flowers to come to maturity and blossom. That’s what “to nourish” means – just as the flowers, you want to put nutrients into your daughter’s life so that physically, mentally, spiritually, relationally she will come to maturity and blossom. Secondly, let’s look at the word “cherish.” Here, we focus on the word “protect.” To protect, is what the word “cherish” means. It means to care for in the sense of protecting, safeguarding, or defending. It is the opposite of neglecting. With “protect and provide,” you’ve got the simplest definition of the most complex concept in all of history. To love yourself the way the Bible commands is to nurture and to cherish or to protect and provide. To love your neighbor the way you love yourself is to protect and provide for your neighbor. To love your husband or your wife is to protect and provide for him or her. Manuscripts\Talk to your kids…\Book and Chapters\4.Define Love
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God is love? Yes! God in His very nature is love. It is in God’s very nature to protect and provide. Just look at God’s commands for us. When we realized that every single commandment in scripture that appears negative – “Thou shall not … Thou shall not … Thou shall not…” – is actually positive, our understanding of God was transformed! Every single commandment in Scripture is positive. How do we get that? Very simple, God is love. Every commandment is an expression of His love that desires to protect and to provide for us and for you. God isn’t a cosmic killjoy. He doesn’t want to take the fun out of our lives, or from the lives of our children or grandchildren. He doesn’t want to make us miserable. Rather, God commands us not to do certain things because He loves us. He wants to protect and provide for us. Just look at what was happening in Deuteronomy. God wanted His people to obey His commandments. Even today, we hear that we should obey God’s commands or else He will punish us. But what does the Word of God say? In Deuteronomy 10:13 (NASB), we read, “…and to keep the Lord’s commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good.” God wants us to keep His commandments and laws for our own good. Why? Because every commandment is an expression of His love and His desire to protect and provide for us. “Keep my commandments because I want to protect you,” says God, “and to provide for you.” This is why in Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV), we read, “`For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, `plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” If God doesn’t protect and provide for us, we can never have that hope in the future. Our children and grandchildren will never have that hope and future. How relevant is this in the 21st century? It is crucial to pass this on to our children and our grandkids for their future and hope. Let’s look at God’s commands about sex. In I Corinthians 6:18 (ESV), the Apostle Paul wrote this, “Flee from sexual immorality….” “See,” we hear, “That’s negative. God is negative. All He wants to do is take the fun out of life.” No, wait a minute. This is actually positive. He says, “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.” Do you see how this is positive? God commands us to flee sexual immorality because He wants to protect us from the one sin that literally affects our bodies, and He Manuscripts\Talk to your kids…\Book and Chapters\4.Define Love
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wants to provide for us everything that He created us to experience in love, and sex, and marriage, and family. It’s actually an act of love. True love’s motivation is always to protect and to provide. When young people start to understand this, their whole image of God transforms. Think of your own children or grandchildren. God has designed sex to fit into His definition of love. When sex is kept within the boundary of marriage, it is a beautiful way for your son or daughter, your granddaughter or grandson to provide for the physical and emotional needs of his or her partner. But outside of marriage, sex opens him or her and his or her partner up to harm. When your son or daughter or granddaughter or grandson chooses to engage in sex outside of marriage, he or she is failing to protect his or her partners (and him or herself) from the potential for devastating consequences like unplanned pregnancy, STDs, guilt, heartbreak, and hindered goals. I Corinthians 6:18 says sexual immorality is the one sin that you commit against your own body. Let’s look at the reality of this one sin and the harm it can cause. When we were in high school, one out of every 60 teenagers had an STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease). In 1970, it went to one out of every 47 teenagers. Then, it went to one out of 31 teenagers. Do you know what the statistic is today? Currently, one out of every four teenagers has an STD. And this includes our Christian kids. This statistic can include your sons and daughters or your grandchildren. Most of us have never heard of the human papilloma virus, or HPV. It is the number one sexually transmitted disease in the world; it is the number one sexually transmitted disease in the United States. In the last seven years, it has killed more women than HIV/AIDS and nobody has talked about it until recently. Several months ago, the American Cancer Institute announced that 99 percent of all vulvar and cervical cancer comes from an STD.1 Five years ago, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta shocked the medical world when they came out and said cancer is a sexually transmitted disease.2 In a recent study of men, age 12-72 years of age, from all of South America, Mexico, United States and Canada - the two Americas, more than 50 percent are infected right now with HPV.3 1
Research citation? Research citation? 3 Research citation? 2
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God says, “Wait for sex within the boundaries of marriage because I love you. I want to protect you, provide for you. Flee sexual immorality because I love you, I want to protect you, and I want to provide for you.” Every commandment of God’s is positive. We can’t leave it to the world to define love for our children and our grandchildren. We need to define it, and talk about it with them over and over. Talk about it with your children, with your grandchildren when they are curious – not when they are interested. Talk to them when they are between ages 6-11 years old, when they are simply curious about sex, but not yet interested. Satisfy their curiosity, not their interest later. Give your children and grandchildren a standard to evaluate the phrases they are hearing at school, in the university, at a classmate’s party, or at a friend’s house. When your son or daughter starts to understand, like our son and daughters did, when he or she hears, “Well if you love me, you’ll let me,” he or she can ask the question, “Is what I’m being asked literally protecting or providing for me?” And he or she can respond, “If you really loved me you wouldn’t have asked.” When your granddaughter is told, “Well everyone’s doing it,” she can ask the question, “Is what I’m being asked literally protecting or providing for me?” And she can respond, “Then is shouldn’t be too hard to find somebody else.” When your son is told, “Let me make a man out of you,” he can ask the question, “Is what I’m being asked literally protecting or providing for me?” And he can respond, “What you want to do won’t make me a man.” Help your son or daughter, granddaughter or grandson in recognizing and not buying the world’s definition - that sex is the best way to express his or her love for someone. God designed sex for marriage for our own protection. When the happiness, security, spiritual growth and health of another person is as important to your children as their own is – so much so that they desire to protect their partners from the potential harm that sex outside of marriage can bring – then they can know they have found love. Love is truly a powerful motivator for behavior. If we teach our children and our grandchildren that truly loving ourselves means, that by acts of our wills, we choose to nurture and cherish, or protect and provide for ourselves toward physical, mental, spiritual and relational maturity, then we have defined how to love ourselves for them. If we teach our children and our grandchildren that truly loving another means, that by acts of our wills, we choose to nurture and cherish, or protect and provide for that other Manuscripts\Talk to your kids…\Book and Chapters\4.Define Love
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person physically, mentally, spiritually and relationally, we have demonstrated how to love another for them. And in the process of defining and modeling love to our children and grandchildren, we are, in fact, truly loving them, providing for them and protecting them from anything that hinders the process of them becoming the persons Christ created them to be. Define love – to nourish and to cherish - for your son or daughter. Model love – protect and provide – in your relationships for your grandchildren. Show them that God’s commands are positive because He desires to protect and provide for them.
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