We know love from our beginning as infants, without it we die.  The Soviets discovered this when they withheld critically significant physical contact from babies in State orphanages.  The babies were fed, kept clean and warm, but they were not held and cuddled in a mothers arms, so they died in mass.  We grow in love as we age and experience the wide range of loves meaning.  The Greeks defined love with three main words: Phileo – love of friends; Eros – physical love, and Agape – God’s unconditional love but there are more dimensions of love than three.  How many, is impossible to say, given our physical, mental, and spiritual constraints.  God is love, therefore, love is infinite and eternal.  Both of these concepts are beyond full human comprehension, although we understand unlimited and everlasting, grasping infinity is out of reach.

When those who have had near death experiences attempt to describe the love they encounter in that moment after death words fail.  I have heard and read many of these accounts and they have many similarities, such as, a vision of leaving their body, being enveloped in light and encountering love, but they all struggle to describe the love they sensed. This makes perfect sense and testifies to the nature and reality of God’s love.  Paul describes one such experience of which he was aware.  “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven.  Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows.  And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.” (2 Corinthians 12: 2-4).  I often thought this account was “inexpressible” and “not permitted”, because it must be kept secret, but now I think it was the limitation of words or any other means of communication that did not permit expression.

Where words fail, we still have an internal sensor that spans across the limitations of reason and communication.  In a Spiritual dimension this perfect infinite love touches our being.  It is like the act of salvation by faith, where the believer receives faith and is born again, receiving the indwelling Holy Spirit and a knowledge of Almighty Father God through Yeshua Messiah.  The love of God touches us in human form through Yeshua, Messiah and we see it lived out through His words, deeds, and person.  Nothing compares with this love, yet we understand only a touch which is the maximum the human receptacle, our heart, can contain.  In heaven our temporal restraints will be removed and we will be able to embrace perfection, immortality, infinity, and perfect love completely.  That love is glorious and beyond worldly expression, yet we have enough now to lead us to the Lord and follow in His way of love.  “Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails….” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8).  Love is also a person, our Creator.