Love is the sacrificial giving for the betterment of the other.

Object Solicited Love vs Subject Generated Love

Think about 7^th grade grammar. You learned what the subjects and objects of sentences are.

Subjects do the action.

Objects receive the action.

i.e.: Jack (subject) hit the ball (object).

There is no such thing as “Object Solicited Love”, but the whole world is built around it. Drive the right car, get the right haircut, go to the right school, live in the right neighborhood and somebody, maybe everybody, will love you. Not true. That is not love. It is something else—admiration, lust, envy, maybe even trust. But it is not love.

We love because He loved us. This is love, not that we loved him, but that he loved us.

He loves because it is in his nature to love us, not because of something that we do, or did, to make him love us. We cannot do anything to make Him love us more, or less. He loves because that is who and what He is—the one from whom love flows. His love is what flows through me.

I love you because He loved me. You cannot do anything to make me love you. I love you because the love of the Father flows through me.

The Father is the subject of love. He is the one doing the loving. I love because he loved first. Anything less than that is not “True Love”. Anything less than “True Love” is not love, it is a lesser thing.

I am the object of His love. So are you. I love you not because you have done something to make me “love” you. That is impossible.

This is love: God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

We didn’t do anything to make Him love us; He just did.

That’s True Love.