What is Love?

          I wrote this a little over a year ago as a final paper for my Preparation for Eternal Marriage Class.  I wrote it with the intent of defining the love shared between a man and woman from a doctrinal and scriptural standpoint. However, like any learning, love isn't truly understood until it is experienced... at that point... Love is defined by those who experience it.

           In the world today there are many different definitions of what “Love” is.  Hollywood does a pretty good job of painting a picture that love is nothing more than physical attraction and that the only way it is expressed is through physical intimacy.  This, however, is simply not the case.  Although it may be somewhat difficult to give a perfect definition for what love truly is and what it truly means to be in love, the teachings of living prophets and the scriptures can provide helpful clues.  Indeed, we will spend the entirety of our lives learning about love and how we should love other people.  Christ was the perfect example in loving others.  In this discussion I wish to discuss insights I have received in my study of love and by personal experience.  I wish to speak primarily on the love that is developed and cultivated between a man and a woman as they live the teachings of the restored gospel.

Love is not merely an emotion.  It is not something you simply fall into; it is the union and submission of wills and a process of time.  Often people will ignore the process of love and look solely on the physical attraction felt towards another person.  Elder Spencer W. Kimball has said,

Physical attraction is only one of many elements, but there must be faith and confidence and understanding and partnership.   There must be common ideals and standards.  There must be great devotion and companionship.  Love is cleanliness and progress and sacrifice and selflessness.

Elder Marvin J. Ashton has also said,

True love is a process.  True love requires personal action.  Love must be continuing to be real.  Love takes time.  Too often expediency, infatuation, stimulation, persuasion, or lust are mistaken for love.  How hollow, how empty if our love is no deeper than the arousal of   momentary feeling or the expression in words of what is no more lasting than the time it takes to speak them.

Although in the first stages of a relationship physical attraction plays an important role, over time it may be overshadowed by other things and if a couple hasn’t truly learned to love each other one day they will wake up and find that what they thought was love, was little more than infatuation.

I have observed that the love I feel towards other people grows the more I serve them.  This is the love that Christ demonstrates to all of us.  “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man would lay down his life for his friends” (John 15: 13).  Laying down one’s life is, of course, the greatest act of service one can provide for another.  I find this true in relationships with men and women.  When speaking concerning this relationship, Paul further spoke, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Ephesians 2: 25).  How then can two people truly say they love each other, in the fullest sense of the word, after only knowing each other a few days, or even a few weeks?  True love takes time to develop.  It comes after enduring hardship and trial.  It comes after bearing and rearing children.  It reaches out of forgiveness and helping each other overcome faults.  Elder Boyd K. Packer spoke concerning a maturing love between married couples, he said,

Married couples are tried by temptation, misunderstandings, separation, financial problems, family crises, illness; and all the while love grows stronger, the mature love enjoys a bliss not even imagined by newlyweds.

It makes sense to me why many apostles and prophets have counseled young married couples not to wait to start their family and have children.  I feel that a couple will come closer together as they struggle raising their children amidst getting an education or finding a decent job.  As they learn to rely on each other they will form a bond that cannot be broken, and develop a love that will endure throughout the rest of their lives and throughout eternity.

Ultimately, the love we feel towards a spouse should be a type of charity, the pure love of Christ.  The love of Christ is unconditional.  It is not dependent on how someone looks, the clothes they wear, their health, their education, or their wealth.  The love of Christ “suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all thing” (Moroni 7: 45). If a couple earnestly seeks to develop these attributes they will develop a love that will only grow brighter and stronger with time and will be undimmed amidst sickness, wrinkles, and suffering.

True love is not something you find as much as it is something you are given.  Moroni continued, “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ” (Moroni 7: 48, emphasis added).  Elder Holland further said, “It doesn’t come without effort and it doesn’t come without patience, but, like salvation itself, in the end it is a gift, given by God.”  As quoted by Elder Gordon B. Hinckley, “Pearl Buck has observed, ‘Love cannot be forced… It comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought.’”  I take this to mean that although young people seek opportunities for love to be cultivated, through dating and getting to know other people, love itself is endowed by God when the time is right for both individuals and both are willing to work at it.

Since love is a gift, and therefore a blessing predicated upon obedience, we can only receive it by loving God and keeping his commandments.  When Christ was on the earth he taught, “Thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22: 37-39).  Before we can love others, we must first love God.  Our capacity to love others will only grow as fast as our capacity to love God.   John the Beloved taught, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.  By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandment.” (1 John 5: 1-2, emphasis added).  We can only measure our love for other people according the amount we love God and keep his commandments.  In a marriage relationship, both husband and wife need to understand that their loyalty must first be to the Lord, then to each other.  This will not diminish their love for each other; rather it will strengthen it, especially when they are unified. 

For us to truly understand the nature of love we must first look at the life of Jesus Christ and try and emulate the actions he portrayed.  He was the perfect example of how to love.  The love he offers us is eternal.  It will stand up to anything the world throws at it.  As a couple faithfully lives the gospel together they will develop this love.  They will come to understand, in time, as they practice charity, that the love the love they feel towards each other is simply a magnification of the love of Christ.

Abide in the Doctrine of Christ

John the Beloved warned that there would be many people who would enter into the world and deceive others.  Their deception stems from a misunderstanding of the nature of God.  At that time many believed in the notion that matter was inherently evil and therefore anything involving matter was evil; the truth that God has a body of flesh and bones would then be blasphemous in their eyes.  In addition, the idea of Christ coming to the earth in a physical body made up of “evil matter” would then make Christ evil.  This could not be, so therefore they concluded that Christ only appeared to have a body of flesh and bone and that his suffering was all in appearance instead of reality.  This is of course false.   If true, it would make Christ a liar which is just as counterproductive as Christ not having a body.

If believed, such a doctrine would destroy men’s faith.  The purpose of Peter and the Apostles was to stand as witnesses that Christ lives in the flesh and that we need to exercise faith in that fact.  If that does not exist, what then do we have faith in?  If Christ had no body, how could he suffer?  If Christ could not suffer, how could he pay the price for our sins?  If Christ could not pay the price for our sins, how could we overcome sin and death?  If we could not overcome sin and death, what is our reason for living?  Ultimately, such a belief would destroy all hope in gaining eternal life, and there would be very little to live for.

To avoid believing such doctrines, John taught us to “[abide] in the Doctrine of Christ.”  In other words, we need to check those things that we hear with the established doctrines set forth by Christ himself and his ordained apostles.  He also said, “look to yourselves” or determine your beliefs based on how it makes you feel and what it inspires you to do.  President Hinckley stated, “Does it persuade one to do good, to rise, to stand tall, to do the right thing, to be kind, to be generous? Then it is of the spirit of God…”  If we follow that counsel, we will not be deceived.

The High Priest of Good Things to Come

                The whole purpose of the Law of Moses was to prepare the minds of the people to live the higher law established by Christ.  Amulek taught that “every whit [of the law pointed] to that great and last sacrifice and that great and last sacrifice will be the Son of God” (Alma 34: 14).   The atonement itself is applied to us by having a “broken heart and a contrite spirit” (3 Nephi 9: 20).  There was to be a stop to the shedding of blood, for as Paul mentions, “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins” (Hebrews 10: 4).  Christ was to be the last sacrifice and fulfilled the law by making an infinite and eternal sacrifice.  Christ’s atonement allows us to be forgiven of our sins and a chance to really think for ourselves, having the laws written in our hearts (see Hebrews 10: 16).

                Under the Law of Moses, a sacrifice was made once a year on Yon Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  On this day, the High Priest would enter into the Holy of Holies in the inner most part of the tabernacle and sprinkle the blood of a male lamb without blemish before the mercy seat.  This is symbolic of Christ, who is called the “High Priest of Good Things to Come” offering himself as a sacrifice to allow mercy to be applied to all of us.  He stands in the presence of God (the Holy of Holies) and pleads to the Father on our behalf.  He took upon himself the sins of the world, much like how the “scapegoat” was symbolically given our sins and sent to his death.

                Christ truly is the High Priest of Good Things to come because he provided us a means to have hope.  Without Christ, nothing we do would matter and we would have no hope at all.  Every “good thing” that happens in our life can some way be traced back to the sacrifice Christ made as the great High Priest of the New Covenant.  Salvation only comes through the New Covenant established by Christ.

The Rest of the Lord

                In Hebrews 3: 11, Paul mentions that the people in the days of Moses, who wandered in the wilderness for forty years, not entering into the rest of the lord.  They lost this privilege because they hardened their hearts and did not understand the ways of the lord.  They could not enter because of their unbelief.  Although they had seen miracles in the wilderness they still were laxed in following the Lord.  Paul repeatedly warned the saints to not harden their hearts, warning them that if they did they would not hear the voice of the Lord nor enter into his rest.  This can apply to us today because we can harden our hearts by not listening to the words of the modern prophet.  The Modern Prophet is the voice of the Lord today and if our hearts are hardened we will not hear the voice of the Lord and we won’t understand his ways.

                Doctrine and Covenants 84: 23-24 describes the rest of the Lord as a fullness of the God’s glory.  God’s work and his glory is the immortality and eternal life of man (see Moses 1: 39) so the rest of the lord described here is Eternal Life in the presence of God.  To enter into this rest, Paul counsels us to labor and eagerly work to enter the Lord’s rest.  He notes that not laboring is a sign of unbelief (see Hebrews 4: 11).  Paul also said the “word” needs to be “mixed with faith.”  James taught that we need to be “doers of the word and not hearers only” (James 1: 22).  Paul mentions the work of the creation and how on the seventh day God rested.  It is understood that God created the earth by the word of his power, which is Christ (see Moses 1: 32, Jacob 4: 9).  We need to not only confess Christ as our savior, but we need to do the works of Christ so that on our seventh day we will be able to rest.  Further, John 7: 17 and Matthew 21-23 state how important it is to do the will of the Father in all things in order to understand the doctrine (the word) and to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven (eternal life) which is the rest of the Lord.