Is love a feeling?

What do you think?

__ Yes, love is a feeling.

__ No, love is not a feeling.

The Correct Answer Is …

“Yes”!

The correct answer is “yes” to both the question “Is love a feeling?” and the question “Is love not a feeling?”  Love involves the feelings and affections, so in that sense love is a feeling.  However, love is not merely a feeling, but it involves the will and the actions.

Love Involves Self-Sacrificial and Willful Action

Many in the world assume that love is just a sappy sentimental feeling, or that love is a teenage boy having his heart flutter when a pretty girl looks at him.  This is a very Biblically insufficient definition of love.  How does God love?

John 3:16 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.

God’s love does not just involve sappy sentimentalism.  The Father’s love led Him to give to rebellious sinners what was most valuable to Him–His own Son. His love involved self-sacrificial action.  Believers must show this same kind of self-sacrificial, acting, willing, giving love:

John 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

This sort of love is required in other relationships as well:

Eph. 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

Clearly, love is not just an emotional high, but it involves self-sacrifice, action, giving oneself to the loved one at tremendous cost.

Love Also Includes the Feelings or Affections

At the same time, love is not the self-sacrifice of a drone or robot that follows a computer program to blow itself up and save someone else.  Love includes the feelings and affections.  We do not love as robots, but as people who have affections and passions. God wants us to love Him with all that we are–that includes our minds and wills, but it also includes our affections or feelings.

God’s love for His people involves His affections in whatever sense He has passions or affections:

Hos. 11:8 How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.
Hos. 11:9 I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city.

Zeph. 3:17 The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.

Human love between spouses involves the affections or passions.  In the Song of Solomon the husband and wife–who are to be patterns for marital relationships–are madly in love with each other and passions and affections are coming out all over the place.

Our love for what is of God also involves our passions or affections. Paul said: “I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Romans 7:22).  “Delight” is a feeling or affection. The Messiah said, as a pattern for all the godly:  “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8).

We could multiple examples for all other sorts of love that are dealt with in Scripture.

So is love a feeling?  Yes, it is–God did not make us robots.  Is love merely a feeling, or only a feeling, or primarily a feeling? No–it is much more than that, but it involves self-sacrificial action.

So in all your relationships–most importantly with God and secondarily with others–love like God does.  Give yourself self-sacrificially to the Lord and to others.  That is the most important thing–but don’t be a robot either.  God wants you to love with all that you are, and that includes your feelings or affections.

–TDR