The Bedrock Series from Grassmarket Press aims to provide clear, concise books on Christian doctrine and life from a Reformed and Presbyterian perspective. Here’s an excerpt from one.

We make the decision to love. We choose to love. Sometimes we really need to remember that. I was meeting with a young couple engaged to be married, and I asked them the question, “When you don’t feel in love with your significant other, how do you still love?” I probably could have asked the question in a foreign language, or even strung together nonsensical sounds, and it would have had as much effect on these two. It had never entered into their minds that they might not always feel the way they did in that moment.

Well, it happens. It happens with husbands and wives, it can happen with parents and children, and it can happen among our friends and church family. We don’t always feel like we love them. In those moments, we need to remember that love is primarily an act of the will—daily deciding to love and to do good to those in my life.

The Affection of Love

But does that mean love has no emotions? Of course not. Emotions or affections accompany love. How do we know? I think a pretty solid answer comes from a simple appreciation for who we are. God has created us. All of us. He has created our body, and He has created our soul. He’s created us with a will, intelligence, and emotions. That’s right! God has created our emotions—and no, they weren’t given to women only. While people experience and express emotions differently, our emotions are part of what makes us human.

When you read the Bible, you find that some of the most prominent men were emotional men. The mighty man of war, David, who also wrote some of the psalms, expressed all kinds of emotions, especially in his songs. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy wrote to the Thessalonians and said, “But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thess. 2:7–8). Even Jesus Himself had an emotional life of compassion, amazement, anger, grief, and joy. That’s why I’m not impressed (and neither should you be) by men who think there’s some manly virtue in being stoic. That’s to deny a fundamental part of who God created us to be.

So, what is the emotion of love? We often associate it with sweaty palms, beating heart, or butter-flies in the stomach. But biblically, the main emotion associated with love is delight. Remember, love has a reflexive response. That reflexive response is rejoicing—or delight. Our relationship with God expresses itself in delight (Ps. 37:4). The love of a husband to a wife is found in delighting in companionship and physical pleasures (Prov. 5:19). The love of a parent to a child, to other Christians, and to friends is a mutual delight in one another.

Of course, love’s delight also means that there are other emotions that accompany love. The psalmist delighted so much in the law of God that he exper­ienced sorrow and grief when that law was broken (Ps. 119:136). The love we have for others in the church leads us to be jealous over them with a godly jeal­ousy (2 Cor. 11:2). We are to be so delighted in loving God that, comparatively speaking, we hate: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).

But the main emotion, the primary affection of love, is that of delight.

With the Truth

The word truth stands on the other side of wrongdoing. Here, it means what is right and what is good. To paraphrase what Paul says, love doesn’t rejoice in vice, but it rejoices in virtue. Love finds delight and pleasure in the truth. The Apostle John wrote, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in truth” (3 John 1:4). That’s the reflex. When love meets with truth—with what is good and right—it rejoices. It can’t help but rejoice.

That’s important for the way we love others. It’s important for how we interact with our spouse, children, people in the church, and friends. It means that love will always praise the good of others. Instead of trumpeting their faults and failings, love shines a spotlight on what is good.

This isn’t flattery. Flattery is an insincere praise. Insincerity is wrong. Therefore, love doesn’t rejoice in it, and the Lord will cut off flattering lips (Ps. 12:3). Love, however, genuinely expresses praise for that which is good in the one loved. For instance, in words that apply to a godly mother and a wife, we read, “Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her” (Prov. 31:28).

It also means that love will seek out the good in others. We’ve already said some people delight in fault-finding. They dig deep to figure out where others have gone wrong. They search and search and search for what is bad. Love delights to seek for the good.

We’ve already seen that the church in Corinth was a disaster. People there were argumentative, boastful, impatient, envious, and on and on. There was a lot wrong. But Paul began his letter not by saying, “Here’s what I’ve found that’s wrong about you,” but by saying, “I give thanks to my God always for you” (1 Cor. 1:4). He found something good in them. That’s what love does. It delights in the truth, and so it searches for it.

It also means that love will help cultivate good in others. This is true, for example, of dads. They’re not to provoke their children to anger, but what are they to do? Paul says, “Bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). It’s what people in the church are to do toward one another. As the author of Hebrews said, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” (Heb. 10:24). Our loving responsibility to those around us is to help them grow in what is good. It’s to encourage, build up, and strengthen one another (1 Thess. 5:11). That’s what love delights to do.

It also means that love will correct the bad when it’s needed. No, not the nitpicky way of trying to stick it to people or take them down a notch. But a word of loving rebuke and correction. Sometimes that is what’s needed. It’s needed in order to push back the bad and bring forward the good. This is why, for example, parents are called to discipline their children: “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him” (Prov. 13:24).

In some ways, we can say that what is being written here is our entire responsibility to our neighbor. It’s as if Paul has gone through various qualities of love—patience, kindness, not envious or boastful, not arrogant or rude, etc.—and as he comes to write these words, they’re a catch-all. I can imagine Paul thinking, “Love is so much more than what I’ve already said. Here, this is the broadest way I can say it.” Love toward our neighbor praises, seeks, and cultivates all that is good in the eyes of God. Love doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

What is Love? is now available from Crown and Covenant Publications.