Bible Study with the Cincotti’s – What’s Love Got to do With it?– 02/15/2026
Today’s Bible Study, Authored by Arthur Cincotti.
Listen to our Bible Study Discussion at: What’s Love Got to do with It? – Audible Podcast
Or watch the Video Zoom Session of our Study on YouTube:
What’s Love Got to do With it?
“And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” I Jn. 4:16
Judging from our opening verse, as well as the entirety of Scripture, I think we can safely say the love’s got everything to do with it. Yesterday was Valentines Day, and Suzanna and I are always anxious for opportunities to affirm our love for each other. The title of today’s message was actually a line that the priest quoted and used at our wedding ceremony. It was a song that Tina Turner recorded in 1984 which goes on to ask the question, “What’s love, but a second-hand emotion? That’s a reasonable question considering how the world frames love. But God’s love is the centerpiece of creation. Everything that we experience and know precipitates from God’s love affair within the Trinity and overflows into what we call reality.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought it would be fun to hit a few bullet points. To do an exhaustive study would be exhausting. Every poet, philosopher, novelist, and teenager would have to weigh in.
An analogy I like to use is what I call the three pillars of a love relationship: trust, sacrifice, and choice. Since we are talking about a relationship, it is necessary that these qualities are reciprocal.
These qualities are present and necessary in our relationships on both the vertical and horizontal planes. What happens in the natural world are copies and types of the spiritual. Paul even say, “the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual.” – I Co. 15:46
Trust should be obvious. Belief is built on trust, and so it is necessary to trust someone in order to believe that they love you. All too often, love is an empty word used to promote a secondary agenda. We can try to sneak this in on God; to profess our love for Him because we want something, but He knows the condition of our hearts. Sometimes He will allow lack or need to draw us unto Himself, but Paul says, “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Rm. 5:5. In our love affair with God, trust is present on both sides of the relationship. We are instructed to “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;” Prov. 3:5. Oddly enough, God trusts us as well, in that He has no other plan for the redemption of the world except that the church does what we are commanded to do.
Anyone who has ever been in love knows that sacrifice is inevitable. Dying to yourself in order to promote the other person is, perhaps, our highest expression of love. We don’t always do this willingly because it tends to be painful and contrary to our survival instinct, and yet we see another instinct woven into the fabric of our being that is perfectly willing to sacrifice for the people we love. God’s sacrifice for us is displayed in majesty at the cross; “who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame…” Heb. 12:2. Even His incarnation, coming, dwelling among us, and experiencing our condition, yet without sinning Himself, was a great sacrifice on God’s part. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Jn. 3:16. Though we embrace and enjoy His sacrifice, it’s not as if nothing is required on our part. “Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.” Heb. 13:15. It’s not always easy to give praise, that’s why it’s a sacrifice. Also, Paul says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” Rm. 12:1. The real sacrificial part of that is what he goes on to say, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” vr. 2. This word, “transformed” is only used twice in the NT, and is the word, “metamorphoo” which we may recognize. Science tells us that it is a painful and arduous experience for the butterfly to emerge, transformed, out of the chrysalis. Dying to self, and the lusts of the flesh can likewise be a painful and arduous experience.
Choice is, perhaps, the most interesting and controversial aspect of a love relationship. We all make choices. Shakespeare writes, “love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;” Sonnet 116. Our choices in the natural are unfortunately subject to corruption. Jesus said to His disciples, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain…” Jn. 15:16. And yet, we know that our capacity for free will and personal choice is an essential starting place to our relationship with Christ. In fact, part of the sacrifice will be to choose Christ continually, in every aspect of life. The power of personal choice is necessary for love to exist. The possibility for rejection is the only environment in which true love can exist. At some point we are all faced with the invitation; “if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Rm. 10:9,10.
Once again we see that the quality needs to be reciprocal, and love’s got everything to do with it. Love is what distinguishes us as image-bearers
What does love look like in the kingdom? Is it more than a second hand emotion? We have some glimpses: “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
Jer. 31:33,34. Reconciliation is at the heart of this relationship between God and His creation. We know the fulfillment of this in the free gift of Christ’s sacrifice, if we dare choose to receive it and walk in it. As His followers we are also called to be instruments of reconciliation and to love even our enemies. Now that’s a sacrifice. There will be no divisions or squabbles or contentious opinions, in the kingdom, for when we see Him face to face all that foolishness will be extinguished.
God’s love for us is passionate. Consider Sng. 8:6, “Set me as a seal upon your heart, As a seal upon your arm; For love is as strong as death, Jealousy as cruel as the grave, Its flames are flames of fire, A most vehement flame.” And also the language of
Ps. 85:10,11, “Mercy and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed. Truth shall spring out of the earth. And righteousness shall look down from heaven.” And how could we not glance at I Cor. 13:8, declaring that, “Love never fails.” Even the world knows these things but doesn’t know how or why it’s relevant. Knowing Christ has everything to do with it. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation…For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself…” Col. 1:15-19.
“God is love!”
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