"Love. What is love?", asked a sophisticated, well dressed woman. She had suffered through two divorces and her third marriage was going to pieces.
"No doubt there are many who have been plagued with the same tormenting question", writes columnist John R. Gunn. "There is an answer for her and for you. That answer is found in the personal acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior."
With the Savior, God gives His spirit and His love. As the apostle Paul says, "God's love floods our hearts through the Holy Spirit."
True Christian love is not jealous; jealousy is misplaced love. We are jealous because we have an excessive and inordinate love of self. Jealousy tends to destroy or hurt; Christian love protects. The jealous person is seeking to play God, so feels justified in hurting the person who gets or has what he wants. Jealousy is pride on the warpath; boasting is one of the outward expressions of jealousy. We seek to impress others by exaggerating the truth; making our own ego feel compensated, even if falsely so.
God's love can save us from boasting and from arrogance and rudeness. Self love says, You are mine; I possess you; give me what I want. Jealousy follows if the demand is not satisfied. God's love says, You are mine; both of us are gods. I will help you become your true self in Christ.
Self love makes us afraid that, like Alice in Wonderland, we will go shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. God's love sets us free to love and be loved. It seeks to save and build every other life, so is never jealous. True Christian love protects all life, even your own.