Love is love.

This popular claim sounds nice, but how accurate is it?  I might marry my friend because I love him, but I wouldn’t marry a candy bar because I love chocolate. I love my puppy is not the same as I love my job. 

My guess is that the word love is limited to the love between two people. And not just any love, such as the love between a parent and child. Based on when and how it is used, people who use this have defined love as the intimate relationship, usually but not always, between two adults. This includes straight, gay, trans, and other types of people-people relationships. It doesn’t matter who the love partner is because love is love.

Is that Biblical? I did a quick search of the New Testament and found many verses about love. Most of them connected love to God in some way. But none said “love is love” or suggested a person could have an intimate relationship with just anyone.

The true definition of love is connected to God because God is love (1 John 4:16).

Therefore He’s the only one who can define what intimate love is and isn’t. According to His Word, intimate love is to be between a man and a woman who are married (1 Cor 7:2). This life-long relationship (Gen 2:24) is to be honored by everyone (Heb 13:4), and all sex outside of it is to be avoided (1Cor 6:18). Jesus confirmed this when He said that a man is to hold fast to his wife (Mark 10:6-8). Man and woman. Period. Anything outside of this leads to death (Prov 14:12).

Love is love? Not for those who call themselves Christians. Unbelievers can say and do whatever they want, but when we accepted Jesus, we accepted His Lordship over us. That means doing and seeing things His way regardless of what the rest of the world says or does, or even what seems right to us (Proverbs 14:12).

Many Christians are sitting on the fence. They hear what God says, but don’t see how loving anyone could be wrong regardless of who it is.  They seem to be more concerned about offending other people than offending God. Or maybe they agree with God for their own relationships but don’t want to impose that on other Christians or warn nonbelievers because everyone has a right to what they believe. Therefore they accept and support those who love differently or give a different interpretation of God’s Word. They have bought into the love is love idea.

I believe God is shaking the world right now (Haggai 2:6-7; Amos 9:8-10; Hebrews 12:25-27).  It’s time to wake up and open our eyes. It’s time to get off the fence. Will we follow the Creator or the created? We can’t have both God’s approval and man’s approval. We can’t love both God and the world (1 John 2:15-16). Compromise is not a choice. As Christians, we must obey God over man (Acts 5:29). We must walk in His ways. But do we? Will we?

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1 John 4:16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Genesis 2:24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 

1 Corinthians 7:2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

Hebrews 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

1 Corinthians 6:18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

Mark 10:6-8 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.

1 John 2:15-16 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life – is not from the father but is from the world.

Acts 5:29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.”

1 John 2:17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

Haggai 2:6-7 For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts.

Amos 9:8-10  Behold, the eyes of the LORD GOD are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground, except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” declares the LORD. For behold, I will command, and shake the house of Israel among all the nations as one shakes a sieve, but no pebble shall fall to the earth.  All the sinners of my people will die by the sword – all those who say, “Disaster will never draw near or confront us.”

Hebrews 12:25-27  See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns us from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken – that is, things that have been made – in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain.