Love is a word that we often use without understanding the full meaning or application of the principals involved. The biblical material points us to a trusted source for understanding the meaning and purpose of love by providing a description and applications.

This kind of love is not natural nor normal to human understanding or experience. You can understand this by reading what John has written about love.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another, (1 John 4:7-11, NRSV).

Listed below are some of the biblical texts which speak of love and/or marriage. It is important to read the scripture passages first to see what is included, then write a brief answer for the questions that follow.

1. Matthew 19:4-6 (NRSV): He answered, "Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."

   1. How do you understand the phrase which says that a man (and woman) shall leave father and mother?

   2. What do you think it means when it says two shall become one?

2. 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:8a (NRSV): But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

1. From the above description of love write a brief paragraph describing what you believe it means.

2. What do you think it means when it says, "Love never ends."?

3. How do you think it is possible to have this kind of love?

3. Luke 10:25-28, NRSV: Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."

1. How is it possible for an individual to create a proper kind of love for him or her self?

2. How is it possible for an individual to love the neighbor as the self?

4. Matthew 5:43-45 NRSV: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

1. What do you think it means when it say we shall love our enemies?

2. How do we come to love our enemies?

5. Romans 13:8-10 NRSV: Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

1. How do you understand the words of Paul to owe nothing except to love one another.

2. How do you understand the statement that love does no wrong (that is does no harm) to another person. (What could be considered harm? How do we avoid doing harm to another?)