WHENEVER I PREPARE to officiate a wedding, I always ask the couple what Scripture passage they would like to have read during the ceremony. Some couples just shrug and tell me to decide. Some want Genesis 2:24, the verse about Adam and Eve becoming “one flesh.” As you might imagine, however, the most common answer I get is 1 Corinthians 13, known by many as the “love chapter” — and rightly so. For the couple, the chapter is symbolic of their love for one another, adding a biblical glow to their romantic event.

But the apostle Paul, of course, isn’t writing about marriage or romantic love. He’s not writing a letter to his girlfriend. He’s writing as a pastor to a highly conflicted church, trying to get them to straighten up.

If you want to understand why Paul suddenly starts speaking about love, try this experiment: read 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 straight through, skipping chapter 13. Except for a few transitional words at the end of chapter 12 and the beginning of 14, you can see Paul dealing with the congregation’s anguished questions about spiritual gifts, questions that have divided the congregation and left some people feeling like second class citizens. Paul answers their questions — but not before teaching them that there’s a higher and better way to go: the way of love.

Paul doesn’t describe love in abstract terms. In most of our English translations, Paul uses a series of adjectives and verbs to describe love, beginning with the adjectives “patient” and “kind.” But in the Greek, it’s all verbs. It’s all about the way of love, about what love does rather that what love is. Notice too that Paul says less about how a loving person should behave than he does about how they shouldn’t behave. It’s as if to say, “Yes, I’ll answer your questions about spiritual gifts. But before I do, let me tell you what’s more important. In the end, the only thing that counts is love. So here’s how you should think and behave toward one another — and just as importantly, here’s what needs to stop.”

So, yes: I routinely use 1 Corinthians 13 in wedding ceremonies. But I do it in a way that lifts it out of the realm of the sentimental. If you love each other the way Paul teaches, I tell the bride and groom, then here’s the nitty-gritty of what that looks like in your day-to-day life as a couple. Love isn’t just about the kind of warm and fuzzy feelings you have for each other right now; it’s about what you do and how you think when you disappoint, offend, and anger each other.

I’m happy to say that nobody has stopped the ceremony yet. Nobody’s said, “Is that what I’m signing up for? To heck with that — I’m outta here.” But then again, I don’t get to see what happens later. I don’t get to see what they do when their love is tested.

LIKE PAUL WRITING about love to a divisive Corinthian church, the apostle John also speaks of love in the context of conflict and strife. Remembering the divisive behavior of the people who left the community, John teaches his readers that love is the hallmark of true discipleship. Echoing what Jesus told his disciples in the Upper Room, John writes:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:7-11, NIV)

Do you hear how he bookends that passage? “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. …Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” It’s hard to miss the point: he calls them his beloved (that’s a more literal translation of “dear friends”), reminds them how God took the initiative in loving us, and makes this the reason for loving one another as Jesus commanded.

But here’s what I want us to notice. When John says that God is love, it’s not some abstract or ethereal attribute of a God who is to be admired from afar. Rather, we know that God is love because God actively showed that love. He’s already said as much in chapter 3: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16a). Here, he repeats the thought and amplifies it. Even with God, love is what love does.

I DO WONDER from time to time how the couples I’ve officiated for are doing. Are they still as enthusiastic about their relationship as they were on the day of their wedding? Romantic feelings are nice, but they can only take you so far when it comes to learning to live day in and day out with someone different from you, someone who sometimes exasperates you. It’s also nice to hear those magical, wonderful words, “I love you.” But those words come to nothing if that love isn’t demonstrated in some tangible way.

Real love is more than just words, more than just an emotion. Love is what love does. It’s true of marriage. But first and foremost, it’s true of God.