Is #loveislove enough?

As the closing date for the marriage postal survey approaches, it’s worth reflecting on some of the slogans we’ve heard throughout the campaign.

One well-known ‘hashtag’ is #loveislove.

It’s a catchy phrase, but what does it really mean?

Maybe it’s saying that if a person feels love, then that love is enough to allow them to marry that person, even if they are of the opposite sex.

But in the end, when people say “love is love”, it doesn’t really say a lot about love.

That’s why it’s good that God tells us in the Bible what love really is.

We see this in 1 John chapter 4 sentence 9: “This is how God shows his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”

But Jesus was sent for a specific reason, which we read in the next sentence: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

In other words, God’s love was shown by a costly sacrifice, by sending Jesus to us, to die for us.

He did that so that we might have our sins forgiven.

So if we ask Jesus for forgiveness and follow him as our loving ruler, then we can now fully enjoy the greatest love of all.

What’s more, we’ll also understand that the heart of love is sacrifice.

As we then know this sacrificial love of God deeper and deeper, and follow his loving rule more and more, then he will also empower us to supernaturally love like he first loved us.

Which means that #godsloveislove is probably a better hashtag!

Jodie McNeill