Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13 ESV)
Love
This sentence is active, not passive. The best love, Jesus says, is dying for someone. He, of course, is the One who loves the best. He dies for all of His true friends.
But many folk today have changed the idea of love into the passive tense. It is more important, we seem to think, to BE loved, than to love.
Perhaps the change began on Valentine’s Day. In school, we note how many Valentines we receive, not how many Valentines we gave. When we go to the mailbox today, we wonder how many Valentines we will get in the mail; we do not wonder if we gave enough Valentines. We feel mushy when someone utters, “I love you…” not when we declare our love.
And I am not merely speaking of romantic love.
The same phenomenon happens around Christmas cards and birthday presents. We count love by the loves we receive… instead of by the loves we gave.
But Christians can know better. Christians know that loving is better than being loved, perhaps because we have been loved already by the best. Christians know that love is a choice, a decision, and an action, perhaps because we remember Christ’s choice before the foundation of the world, His decision in the garden, and His action on the cross and in the empty tomb.
We are peculiar, we can love.