Love to Die For

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

(1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NRSV)

“Love” is one of those words which can have a range of meanings in English. We make the one word serve a multiplicity of circumstances. For example, “I love my wife and I love my children” use the term in a different sense from “I love football” or “I just loved that holiday in Malta. There are many more instances we could use, and we understand the meaning of the word “love” by the way it is used.

But what do we mean when we apply the word to Jesus? The Bible…