We’ve Been Taught a Lot About What Love Is Supposed to Look Like
John 3:16 (NLT)
“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”
When we’re young and moving through different phases of life, we start forming our own ideas about what love is. For a while, many of us based love on a feeling—the butterflies, the sweaty palms, or even the hope of having a love story like the ones we see in the movies. The truth is, long before many of us understood what Christ teaches about love, we had already learned quite a bit about what love was supposed to look and feel like from other influences.
The Fairytale Version of Love
From a young age, fairytales had us believing that love was Prince Charming coming to rescue his princess from a difficult life. And whether we realized it or not, some of us carried a version of that story right into adulthood. We waited for our prince to come along, sweep us off our feet, give us the life we had always dreamed of, and then, of course, we would live happily ever after.
It’s a beautiful story. It’s just not enough to build a real relationship on.
Real life tells a different story. It requires patience when we’re frustrated, forgiveness when we’ve been hurt, humility when we’re wrong, and the willingness to love when love requires something from us that we didn’t expect to give. That kind of love doesn’t come from a fairytale. It requires the love of Christ to be anchored deeply in our hearts.
Jesus Shows Us What Love Looks Like
Love is not just a feeling; it’s a choice. Feelings can be here today and gone tomorrow, which is why they were never meant to carry the full weight of love. John 3:16 shows us what love looks like. Love gives. Love sacrifices. And we all know that giving something up isn’t always easy, but love can make the sacrifice worth it. John 15:13 (NLT) says, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” If you want to know whether someone truly loves you, don’t just pay attention to what they say when everything is going well. Pay attention to how they treat you when you disappoint them, when you disagree, when you need something from them, and especially when they don’t need anything from you.
Jesus Christ is our perfect example of this kind of love. He didn’t merely tell us that He loved us; He demonstrated it. Ephesians 5:2 (NLT) says, “Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.” What Christ did for us is something none of us could have ever done for ourselves, and the amazing thing is that He didn’t owe it to us. He gave Himself because He loved us. That is the standard we have to keep coming back to—not the movies, not what somebody tells us love should feel like, and certainly not how many butterflies we get when somebody walks into the room.
If we want relationships that honor God, then we have to let Jesus teach us how to love and how to recognize love when we see it. Real love requires sacrifice. It won’t always be romantic, convenient, or easy. Sometimes it will require patience. Sometimes forgiveness. Sometimes it means putting somebody else ahead of ourselves, and sometimes love requires enough courage to tell the truth. But godly love will never require us to abandon wisdom, tolerate mistreatment, or lose ourselves trying to prove that we love somebody. Christ is our example. The closer we grow to Him, the better we become at recognizing the difference between something that feels like love and the kind of love that actually looks like Him. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“If Love Is Real, Where’s the Sacrifice?”, written by KLizzie, edited by Reverend Fran Mack, for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2026. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.
