“One of the greatest mistakes you can make is to confuse pleasure with love.”
Thoughts from daily Bible reading for today – March 6, 2025
This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 1 John 4:10-11, NLT
As countless country songs can attest, we all look for love in countless places. We think love is found in the bottom of a bottle, the intimacy of a lover, a loyal canine companion, or a championship trophy for our favorite team. And while these may bring a degree of happiness or contentment, they are a far cry from the “real love” that is described in the pages of Scripture.
Any form of love built upon your own self-satisfaction is a cheap substitute for the real thing.
Quenching your desires and satisfying your cravings is not love, no matter how deeply you may desire something or someone. It may be pleasurable, yes, but one of the greatest mistakes you can make is to confuse pleasure with love. Of course, there are countless ways in which love and pleasure go hand in hand, yet the fatal mistake we make is to assume that if pleasure goes out the window, love goes with it. In truth, love is shown to be true when it is rooted in self-denial that seeks the good of another above all else.
The “real love” that John talks about in 1 John 4 is God’s love, affection, and care for us when we are unlovable to the extreme. This is the heart of the gospel, not that we loved God, but that he loved us first and moved toward us in love when we had done nothing but run away in the opposite direction. And if this is true, it is meant to be the foundation upon which all understanding of love, desire, and pleasure is built. As John tells us in verse 11, “since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.”
For it to be “real love,” all earthly love must take on the self-giving, self-sacrificing love of heaven. We experience true love, not simply when our own cravings and desires are met, but when we master our passions and redirect our desires away from self-love and toward the blessing of others, speaking life and truth over them in Jesus’ name.
Love sees the unlovable and moves toward them with compassion. It embraces the outcast, never forgetting that we, the unlovable, have been perfectly loved by God. “This is real love.”
Prayer
Father, remind us of the love you have poured upon us, even when we were far from you, and may that love transform the way we love and serve others, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Application
Meditate today on this theme of “real love,” looking for ways to serve instead of being served and to give instead of receiving.
Related Reading
John 15:13; Romans 5:8; Philippians 2:3-4
Worship Resource
Matt Maher: Your Grace is Enough
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