As we have acknowledged many times, Bible Alive has a special devotion to St Paul. It would be hard for us not to, for his letters, which are the fruit of his evangelization and missionary outreach, make up so much of the canon of the New Testament.

This month we want to explore St Paul’s insight into the greatest Christian gift of all – love. Love is, as the song goes, ‘a many spendoured thing’, but for St Paul the word has a very specific meaning which informs his entire vision of the Christian life. For him Christian love is rooted in a committed covenant relationship with God, expressed in selfless service and in a laying down of one’s life on behalf of our fellow human beings. This vision is grounded in the revelation that the supreme expression of human love the world has ever known and ever will know was given through and in Jesus of Nazareth and displayed nowhere more wonderfully than in the laying down of his life on the cross.

Paul viewed the entire gospel as a living and tangible witness of God pouring out his love (Rom. 5:5). The reason Jesus entered into time and space was to demonstrate God’s love (Rom. 5:8). Paul understood that the Christian life is not about the rules and regulations of the law but about being loved by God and loving God. It is about walking and living as those who are secure and confident in God’s love, knowing with deep inner certainty ‘that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose’ (Rom. 8:28).

The Christian who has experienced this love and has taken hold of it in their inner being cannot be separated from it. There is nothing in heaven or on earth which can separate us from the love of God: St Paul was more convinced of this truth than anything else, and we can be too. We suggest that being convinced of God’s love is the first duty of every Christian because it is this love that we are called to give witness to. Listen to these words of St Paul, reflect on them and make a commitment to live by them today:

For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:38-39)   

St Paul taught that love is above all practical and demonstrable. It isn’t a theory or an abstract idea but living and real. He constantly urged that love be sincere (Rom. 12:9) and that those in the Christian community display true devotion and affection for each other (Rom. 12:10). Each of us, whether we realize it or not, owe each other a debt of love: we are debtors and must strive to repay this ‘debt of love’ as often as we can (Rom. 13:8). Love was for St Paul the complete fulfilment and realization of the law (Rom. 13:10) and the apostle urged his readers always to ensure that love was the motivation for all their actions (Rom. 14:15).


With the insight that only a saint can offer, St John of the Cross said: ‘In the eve of our lives we will be judged on love.’ The Christian vocation is, then, an invitation to ‘make love your aim’ (1 Cor. 14:1) and ‘Let all that you do be done in love’ (1 Cor. 16:14). Like St Paul we are to be compelled by the love of Christ (2 Cor. 5:14) and to witness to the simple truth that what counts more than anything else is ‘faith working through love’ (Gal. 5:6) and serving one another in love (Gal. 5:13). Love is at the very heart of living a life in the power of the Holy Spirit, in which we give witness to the fruits of the Spirit. The first of these fruits is love: ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law’ (Gal. 5:22-23).

Much is written today about how to be happy. Popular authors, pundits and social commentators keen to jump on the bandwagon are constantly suggesting ways we can be happy. In an age of plenty, being happy has become the holy grail. However, for the Christian, the secret of happiness should be self-evident. Scripture teaches us that the only way we can be happy is by following Christ and obeying his law, and his law is the law of love. The Latin Poet Ovid wrote, ‘If you want to be loved, be loveable’, and St Paul’s life, teaching and witness show us exactly how we are to love and be loved.

Let us conclude by reflecting on the prayer St Paul wrote for the church in Philippi, in which he prayed that they would grow, mature and deepen in their knowledge, understanding and appreciation of love, and by this he meant their love for God but also their love for one another. Today he speaks to us with the same wisdom and by the same grace. We take to heart his words as we strive with all our heart, strength and soul to put them into practice:

It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness which come through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Phil. 1:9-11)

The Christian community founded by St Paul in the port of Corinth caused him much concern and anxiety because of their tendency to slip back into their old ways (sexual immorality, in-fighting, quarrelling and so on). Despite – or perhaps because of – their many difficulties it was to these Corinthians that he penned his ‘hymn of love’ which captures with an almost divine eloquence the beauty and glory of love. In this amazing passage love is revealed less as a virtue and more as a person, and that person is Jesus. Jesus was for St Paul the living embodiment of love and in describing love he is really giving us a description of Jesus:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not 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 have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.