Over the years, “I love you” has become a platitude I haven’t wanted anymore; a statement so often full of feelings of affection and good intentions and empty of embodiment — and so the one to whom these words are given too often ends up crumbling because the support that should have embodied love was never actually there or was too limited and over-committed to ever follow through, and the affection wasn’t enough.
Can you relate?
I started to notice this a few years ago. People in my community would tell me they loved me, and then, that was it. I was left so disillusioned when I’d go to these people for help and support because the “I love you” sentiment is supposed to elicit support and an action to draw near, but the “love” they had to offer me was a vapor that dispersed at my feet. Or it was intertwined with so much dysfunction that this word “love” began to feel “icky” and confusing. In the beginning of a crisis of faith that I was already having, “love” became one of those things I had a hard time trusting anymore.
Now, of course, “I love you” is a statement that much of me still longs for and I’m being a bit dramatic and “tongue-in-cheek” when I say I don’t want it. For me to believe that all this disillusionment is the fault of others would be a severe misunderstanding of my own limited vision of what love is.
I believe it is still good and right to hear “I love you” from your parents, your spouse, your close friends, etc. But the point I want to make is do we really understand the weight of that phrase, and what it means to actually “walk in love as Christ also loved us” (Ephesians 5:2 CSB)?
Are we too flippant with it? Can we tell the difference between the “I love you” we give as followers of Christ, and the “I love you” given by the world?
I have often failed to see the difference. I have also often failed to participate in the difference. I am convinced that we have caused each other great pain because of our huge lack of awareness and understanding in the weight of an “I love you.”
I probably don’t have to give you many examples for you to understand what I mean by that. It’s no wonder marriages are failing, parent-child relationships are crumbling, we feel insecure in our own friendships — and brothers and sisters, it’s no wonder we’re seeing a “great deconversion” within the Christian Church today.
We have failed to keep the sanctity of love. And for the Christian and for the world, there is only one answer as to exactly what love is: it is God Himself (1 John 4:8).
If God is love, then isn’t it Himself that we offer to people? How does this work out in our lives? Can we drum up enough willpower, or drum up enough of the Holy Spirit in us to love others?
There is a theme that runs through 1 & 2 John, as well as chapter 15 in the gospel of John that I would argue answers these questions; it sounds like this:
God is love. Walk in love. Remain in God. Remain in love.
Taking a closer look, this theme runs from Genesis through Revelation, too. And so everywhere in the Bible where I see the word “love,” I’ve experimented with replacing it with “remain,” or “stay,” or “draw close.” (Other translations use the word “abide,” which means the same thing. I will use “remain” for the sake of clarity in the remainder of this argument).
Doing this has seemed to change everything for me, and with it, the Holy Spirit has finally been making the Gospel move from my head down into my very bones, helping me to trust love again.
Let me try to show you what I mean: God gives of Himself to us in this way — He drew so close to us, sent His Son to take our hands and reconcile us to Himself, showing us forever that to participate in His life — to embody love — is to remain in the One who is love (John 3:16-17; John 14-16; 1 John 3:16).
Here is why marriage between a husband and wife submitted to God’s design is the iconic and most beautifully painful Biblical symbol of Christ’s relationship to the Church — a lifelong commitment to draw close; to struggle with; to trust; to commune with; to forgive; to support; to stay; to remain; a powerful, earth-shaking symbiotic relationship that gives and receives “until death do us part.” Except in Christ, nothing can ever separate us from this kind of relationship with God (Romans 8:31-39).
Isn’t this what our hearts really long for, what we’re all searching for in our relationships and place in the world? Isn’t this what we want when we hear, “I love you”? Someone who stays with us, draws crazy close in all things, through all things, despite our tendencies to pull away from something so beautifully scandalous?
He loves us first because it is His very nature to do so: to stay and draw near forever, empowering us by His very own life, not our strength, to remain, too.
When we draw from the very life-breath of the True Vine (John 15), we find that
"Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."1 Corinthians 13:4-8
God epitomizes these things, and in our lives they are the fruit of embodied love; of remaining.
Christian, the greatest command is to love God. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in Him (1 John 4:16). The second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself (Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31).
We do it for the sake of loving Him in return — not for a guarantee that those around us will participate, too, or that we’ll earn a place, or that we’ll be called “good.” No; if we love God, we’ll obey His commands (John 14:18-26), because participating in His very own nature is what we were designed for as those who bear His image.
Brothers and sisters — this is our purpose. And His commands are not a burden because this is where fulfillment is found (1 John 5:1-4).
If to truly participate in love, in the very life of God, is “to remain,” then we first must remain in God, in the True Vine — the life of Christ. This means we conform to His design because this love, this “remaining,” goes all the way back to the Beginning when we walked with God in the Garden (Genesis 1 & 2; John 1; 1 John 1; 2 John 6).
Returning home to His design is key, and we can only walk into it through putting on, hiding in, remaining in the life of Christ — His Spirit in us enabling us with free grace to do so.
Only then can we do what He says next — love, remain with, draw near to our brothers and sisters in His design — this is the Church. We cannot love those in the world if we cannot first love our brothers and sisters (1 John 4:21).
Lastly, we must remember that while all of this is true, our ability to remain with others is limited as human beings in a world still wrought by sin. We will hurt each other because we are finite and we overcommit in our lack of self-awareness regarding our limits and finitude. This is why Jesus said it was good that He was going to the Father and sending us the Helper — the very Spirit of God (John 14:26; John 16:7).
Even Jesus in His human body was limited in His capacity to remain with everyone, draw near to everyone — but He can do so through the Spirit, and do so where we lack and fall short. This is why I can’t really throw the baby out with the bathwater when I hear, “I love you,” even though I may want to at times.
I must remember the humanity of the person who offers this platitude, remember my own, trust that the Spirit of God will fill the longings in my heart, and theirs, to be really loved, and extend mercy to my fellow image bearer.
The Spirit of God transcends all limits.
Brothers and sisters: I implore you to consider the weight of an “I love you” before you offer it if you are not also committing to find your life in and remain in God, drawing from the True Vine — the life of Christ — and committing to remain with, draw near to the one you offer this platitude to.
It was never meant to be given empty but embodied.
And Jesus embodied it first, perfectly and forever.
Today’s culture has convoluted the very essence of love, and as the Church faces a strange pressure from within and outside the Church to “love our neighbor as ourselves,” we desperately and mercifully need a strong theology of love so that we can represent Him correctly, and so that the world may know the Truth — it can’t be by our own way or strength or “muscling through.” It can only be done by first remaining in the Vine.
Imagine if we all consistently participated in this love: we wouldn’t pine for more or be worried about rejection from another. We would already be filled by the One whose nature is love, empowered by His Spirit to consider others more important than ourselves (Philippians 2:1-4).
This is how the Church — Christ’s body — lives on. We hold each other’s arms up, relying on the Spirit to help us and love us fully when we reach our human limits, trusting He will perfectly finish this work He started in the first place.
If you’ve read this far, well done. There’s more that could be said, but I’ve said enough. I’ll leave us with this:
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:35
For further study and reflection:
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