Most of what we call love down here is…

Most of what we call love down here is the need to be loved, or the belief that we are loved and needed.
C. S. Lewis said it with terrible clarity in The Great Divorce. Sarah Smith looks at the man she once called husband and tells him the truth: what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. In the main I loved you for my own sake, because I needed you. Then the turn that undoes almost every romance we have ever praised: What needs could I have, now that I have all? I am full now, not empty. I am in Love Himself, not lonely. We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.
No one who still needs another person can yet love them the way God loves. Only when you no longer need them is it possible to prefer them, favor them, and want to bless them purely.
That is not coldness. It is the only soil in which 1 Corinthians 13 can live.
Paul begins with a warning. Tongues, prophecy, knowledge, mountain-moving faith, even giving the body away — without love, it is noise. It profits nothing. You can look holy and still be empty if the engine underneath is I need you to complete me.
Then he shows what love looks like when it is no longer hunting for supply.
Love is patient, because the other person’s timing is no longer a threat to your peace.
Love is kind, because kindness is no longer a down payment you hope they will repay.
It does not envy, because their good does not reduce yours.
It does not boast and is not proud, because you are not performing for their approval.
It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs, because their failures cannot steal from you what they were never meant to give.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
Need-love fails the moment the other person stops being useful. Gift-love does not, because it was never feeding on them.
Read the whole passage twice. First as a picture of how we are called to love. Then as a picture of how God already loves.
God does not need you in order to be God. That is why His love can be this free. He is not waiting for you to stabilize Him. He is not keeping a ledger so He can finally feel secure. He prefers, favors, and blesses without a hidden invoice. That is why His patience does not run out when we are slow, why His kindness is not a transaction, why He does not envy, boast, or keep a record of wrongs the way we do, and why His love does not collapse when we are disappointing.
The rest of the chapter matters too. We know in part. We see in a mirror. The gifts will pass. The partial will give way. Faith, hope, and love remain — and the greatest is the one that does not require the other person to stay useful in order to stay.
Most of us will spend years confusing being needed with being loved, and needing someone with loving them. 1 Corinthians 13 will not let that confusion stand. It describes a love that can only come from fullness, not from hunger.
That love is rare down here. It is also the only kind that does not eventually crush the person we asked to be our god.