Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. There were roses and candlelight, sweet messages and quiet longings. For some, it was joyful. For others, it stirred complicated emotions. For many LGBTQ+ Christians, days like yesterday can awaken old questions: Is my love real? Is it holy? Is it enough?
Today we turn to 1 Corinthians 13 — often called the “Love Chapter.” Paul does not define love by cultural expectations or by who is allowed to participate in it. He defines love by its character. In 1 Corinthians 13:4, he writes, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant.” This is not sentimentality. It is substance. Love is not prideful. It does not seek to dominate. It does not diminish another.
Then Paul deepens the portrait: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:7–8). Real love shows up in hardship. It carries weight. It hopes when hope feels fragile. It remains when walking away would be easier. This kind of love is resilient and faithful.
For those who have been told their love is invalid simply because of who they love, these verses shift the focus. The question is not whether your love fits someone else’s comfort. The question is whether your love reflects patience, kindness, endurance, humility, and truth. Paul never limits love by gender; he reveals love by its fruit.
He concludes with steadying words: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). Faith sustains us. Hope carries us forward. But love is the greatest gift — the one that remains.
The Apostle John echoes this truth in 1 John 4:7–12: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” John goes further still: “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” He reminds us that God’s love was revealed in Christ — embodied, sacrificial, and self-giving. “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”
When we love with patience and kindness, we make the invisible God visible.
John also writes, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). Many LGBTQ+ believers learned fear before they learned love — fear of rejection, fear of being wrong, fear that God’s love might not include them. But perfect love drives fear out. Fear is not the language of God. Love is.
Paul reinforces this in Romans 13:8: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” And in Romans 13:10, he makes it unmistakably clear: “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” If love fulfills the law, then love cannot at the same time be its violation. Love that does no harm, that seeks the good of another, that practices patience and kindness — that love stands within the heart of God’s command.
The day after Valentine’s Day invites us beyond roses and romance into something deeper and steadier. Whether you are partnered or single, celebrated or unseen, your worth is not defined by a holiday or by someone else’s theology. You are invited into the love that bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things — the love that never fails. Faith and hope sustain us, but the greatest of these is love. Perfect love casts out fear. Love fulfills the law. And at the center of it all, beyond every argument and every doubt, stands this unshakable truth: God is love.
Joe
The Closet Professor 