Why Do We Love?

Introduction
There is no person in this world that has never been haunted by the strangest feelings of all, known as love. There is no person on earth that exists that never experienced love. In fact, from the moment that we came out from our mother’s womb, we already feel this strangest feeling of love. Though someone may say that not all of us have been loved by our parents, still a fact remains, all of us experienced love.
Love is the strangest feelings that we all can experience, and perhaps that’s the most beautiful inherent characteristic that God gave us. Its meaning is beyond our imaginations and perhaps, only God can fathom the true meaning of love.
In human sense, love can both have a picture of evilness and godliness. God promoted love all throughout the Bible, and in fact the whole law was governed with love. Jesus summarized them in two simple yet complex commandments, love God above all and love your neighbors as your self.
Love is so broad to define that people have a hundred of definitions of love. But let us say that we have this hundred definitions of love, do we ever know why we love? In my meditation on this word, this question leads me to what we will be hearing today. Here are the three reasons why we love.

God takes pleasure in love.
God is love (1 John 4:8), this definitive statement connotes that God is the author, ultimate example, and perfecter or love. No man can ever equal God when it comes to love. Because of this, we have the confidence to say that God takes pleasure in love. This means, that it pleases God every time he expresses his love. In fact, the very first chapter of our Bible gave us a picture of this fact, Genesis chapter one.
Notice there that in every creation you will find a phrase there, “And God saw that it was good. “ This phrase means that the creation is good for the purposes it was intended to serve. Here we can picture God looking at his creation, seeing that he is satisfied to see his masterpiece, that while smiling, he says, this is it.
We all know God love his creation especially if his creation hit the purposes it was intended to serve, meaning it does what it was intended to do. For example, we invented a passenger jeepney, the owners of these jeepneys does not take pleasure if their jeepneys can only accommodate 8 passengers because a regular jeepney is suppose to accommodate not less than 18 passengers. Even the inventors and innovators of light bulbs that we have nowadays, the bulbs where intended to give enough light in a certain room. But if that light cannot give the brightness that they intended to give, their inventors, modify them.
God takes pleasure in love. We stated earlier that he’s the author and perfecter of love. He even declared this love to his only begotten Son, Matthew 3:17 17And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” It pleases God to express love. This is why you can find so many passages in the Bible that God expresses his love through blessings, trials, and discipline. Every time that we obey God, God blesses us because it is our show of love to him, and this is his pleasure.

God wants us to enjoy the same pleasure.
We are God’s creation and God loves us so much that he also wants to enjoy the same pleasure. This is why he continuously instructed us to love. He wants us to practice love at all times. The Bible was governed by commands that concerns love. God extends his communication and relationship to men by love. Let’s try to see some of the phrases used in the Bible that we may see how powerful love is.

“so loved”
John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…
1 John 4:11 - 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
“through love”
Proverbs 16:6 - 6 Through love and faithfulness sin is atoned for…
Proverbs 20:28 - 28Love and faithfulness keep a king safe; through love his throne is made secure.
Galatians 5:6 - 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
“by love”
1 Thessalonians 1:3 - 3We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
“in love”
Exodus 34:6 - “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness…
Ephesians 1:4-5 … In love 5hepredestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.

These verses affirm us that God governs his creation by love. And because of this fact, God wants us to learn this important lesson, to love because in love, there peace, in love there is joy. God wants us to enjoy the pleasure of love.
Amazingly, this pleasure extends even to our humanly love. This is when a woman and a man unite in love, they create this one of a kind pleasure that no one understands why. I am talking about sex. There is no such joy when a couple blessed with marriage in accordance to God’s word to have sex. On the other hand, an illicit sexual affair which is not governed by love is full of guilt and lust that no one takes pleasure in it. Satan lied to people about pornography and other sexual immorality. He said that it was good and “pleasurable”. That’s a big lie. Look at those people who were engage in these immoral acts. They seem to be the saddest people living on earth. Yes they experienced the pleasurable sensations, but their lives are empty space, still looking for the so-called love, because definitely, immoral acts are not bound by love.
And God wants us to enjoy the pleasures and goodness of love. All the commands and instructions of God from the beginning is always bound in love.

God created us in his own image.
There is no man who cannot love. Don’t ever believe in movies that there is no person who can love. All beings, can love. In fact, even Satan can love, but he only loves himself. The truth is, no human being can love. Animals can love, how much more the emotional humans. This is because God created us in his own image; Genesis 1:27 “27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” And that image reflects in his creation, us.
We said earlier that God is love, and this definition is an image of God, which also means that this image was also transferred in us. To summarize this truth, we inherited the gift of love. This means that in whatever form, people is able to express love.
Digging deeper to this truth, we can see here that God it is only fitting for us to love because a part of the image of God which is love reflected in us as his creation. And therefore, it is not impossible for human beings to obey his commands; to love God above all, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, for we inherited and was given this opportunity to love. In truth, we all gathered here because of love.

Conclusion:
In conclusion, it is God’s will that people will learn to love because even though we were sinners, love covers over a multitude of sin (1 Peter 4:8), and it is because of love that we were saved (John 3:16). In the end, these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13).