Love

1 John 4: 16b God is love.
We've been talking about love in Sunday School and the simple question of "what is love" has proven to be both a simple and extremely complex answer.  For the Christian, the elegantly simple answer is "God."  Relaying that to a non-Christian, however, isn't quite so straightforward.  Dictionary.com has numerous definitions for both a noun as well as a verb ranging from descriptive terms such as affection and attachment to sexual acts or feelings.  I think the Greek language gives us better insight into the various things we lump into "love."  The Greek word agape describes that unconditional love that is quite literally God and describes that way in which he reaches out to relate to us.  This love existed before time and is independent of anything we might do to include whether we even accept it or not.  We are commanded to love God with all that we have and all that we are and to love others as we love ourselves.  This would simply be unachievable and therefore illogical if God wasn't love himself and first loved us.  With His love inside of us in the form of the Holy Spirit, we then have the capacity to love correctly:  unconditional love. 
More tomorrow