NOTES for Col 3:14

Most often people call love a certain feeling, an inner sensation of pleasantness when remembering someone or something, joy when meeting this someone or something, or even an acute desire to possess it. Perhaps that is why one keeps hearing from very different people something like "I do not feel love for God" or "I cannot love my enemy."

Everything the Bible says about love is entirely different. Love is not a feeling and not a sensation, although it can be accompanied by them. Love is something that dwells not in the psychological sphere, but in the spiritual sphere, and only a person can be its bearer. Love is a certain way of spiritual life, expressed in relationships and actions. What kind? Those in which someone else, toward whom these relationships and actions are directed, is more important to me than I am myself. Such is the love of God; more than that, God is love (1 John 4:16). Then we understand that love is not some quality of mine, but something greater than I am. And we can precisely "put on" love, enter inside it, so that all our relationships and actions are filled with God's perfection. Jesus is exactly like this, and by joining ourselves to Him we become participants in life-love.