“Love is love.” Chances are good you’ve heard these words recently. Every June, Christians are bombarded with pride, a cultural celebration of what’s called “love.” Our culture demands that every form and expression of love is equally valid and thus deserving of full acceptance. Anyone who even critiques these expressions are labeled as bigoted, backwards, and unloving. Even those who claim to follow Christ insist that loving neighbor means not judging and giving full acceptance.
But does love require us to celebrate unfettered expressions of so-called “love”? To answer this important question, we need to intentionally consider both expressions of God’s revelation—reason and Scripture.
1. Love isn’t love.
God reveals Himself through natural revelation—creation and our conscience. Paul reminds us that no one has any excuse before God since the Law has been “written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness” (Rom 2:15). Humanity has been naturally endowed with the ability and capability to know right from wrong. We know this instinctively because even the most affirming segments of society hold to some form of sexual ethics. Abominations such as pedophilia, sexual abuse, incest, and bestiality are almost universally condemned. The existence of sexual barriers itself refutes the claim that “love is love.” Reason informs us that if some expressions of romantic affection are not love, then love cannot be unilaterally affirmed as all equally valid. If standards exist guarding the boundaries of love, then the conversation shifts away from cultural buzz-phrases like “love is love” and “live and let live,” to “How do we know what is true love?”
2. Love celebrates what’s good.
Love both wants good for another and follows God’s declaration of goodness. More than anything else, love wants what’s truly best for others. True love focuses on what’s good for others. But goodness isn’t a subjective perception—it’s an objective declaration. Everything good is so only because God made it. Goodness exists because God exists. This is why Genesis 1 follows a familiar pattern—God creates and calls it good. What does it mean when God declares various aspects of His creation, “good”? It means that goodness is connected to the purpose for which it was created—glorifying God.
Therefore, true love is good when tied to its Creator and when it’s an objective good for others. The thief can claim he’s loving his neighbor by robbing him, but he is objectively not glorifying God or accomplishing good for others. Neither do LGBTQ expressions demonstrate true love of what’s good for neighbor and glorifying God. True love blesses others and glorifies God.
3. Love is manifested in Christ.
The greatest expression of love was God sending Jesus to die for our sins (Rom 5:8). We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19), all through Christ’s selfless death on our behalf (John 15:13), which is secured by the sustaining love of God (Rom 8:37-39). We know love because God has chosen to lavish His love on us.
Significantly, the Bible displays this perfect picture of love in one, sexual expression—heterosexual marriage. The objective picture of God’s love in human relationships is never LGBTQ, but in a husband-and-wife monogamous relationship (Eph 5:22-33). True love is seen in Christ’s love, and Christ calls us to display this true love in the marriage covenant. No other expression of love suffices because no other expression of love is genuine, biblical love.
While our culture uses this month to celebrate false expressions of love, Christians have the joy of reclaiming true, biblical love by genuinely loving our neighbors and reflecting Christ’s love for the glory of God.
