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.