Love is Knowing

Fill in the blank: Love is________.

Love is knowing.

Knowledge makes love possible. In fact it is impossible to love apart from it. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot love anything or anyone unless you first have some idea of that specific something or someone in your mind. Before there can be love there has to be knowledge, and in that sense, love is knowing.

When we talk about loving God or other people, love is more than simply knowing facts about them. It means knowing them personally (i.e. relationally) doesn’t it? We need to not have just any knowledge about a person, but true knowledge about that person if we are going to be in relationship with him or her. Again, that is true about any relationship isn’t it? I can’t expect to have a good loving relationship with my wife if I don’t have true knowledge about what is important to her, what she likes and dislikes, how she communicates, and how I need to communicate with her. The same is true with God. He has told us in Scripture who He is, what is important to Him, what He is doing, and how He wants us to relate to Him.

If you want to excel in love you need to excel in knowledge. The more you know the deeper your love can go. God says in Jeremiah 9:23-24 (ESV),

Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”

The Hebrew word for “knows” in verse 24 is the same word used in Genesis 4:1, 17, 29 talking about Adam sleeping with Eve and Cain sleeping with his wife. The word means knowing another in the personal and intimate way. God in this passage is saying He wants to not only be known about, but known deeply—and that is love.

The only way to the heart is through the head. If we don’t take the time and effort to get to know God or anyone for that matter, we will not be able to love them. Jonathan Edwards knew the connection between knowledge and love well. Speaking of knowing and loving God he wrote,

It becomes one who is called to be a soldier, and to go a warfare, to endeavor to excel in the art of war. It becomes one who is called to be a mariner, and to spend his life in sailing the ocean, to endeavor to excel in the art of navigation. It becomes one who professes to be a physician, and devotes himself to that work, to endeavor to excel in the knowledge of those things which pertain to the art of physic. So it becomes all such as profess to be Christians, and to devote themselves to the practice of Christianity, to endeavor to excel in the knowledge of divinity.

Love is knowing. Do you want to love God more? Get to know Him better by reading His Word. Do you want to love your wife or husband better? Spend time listening to them more. Do you want to love your neighbor better? Spend the time and energy to get to know them. Love is knowing.