What's Love Got To Do With It?

Eons ago, back when rainbows were in black and white (actually it was in 1984), Tina Turner released a song entitled, "What's Love Got To Do With It?"  The lyrical retort, "it's just a second-hand emotion," was meant to carry the same weight as Edwin Starr's 1970 release, "War," which asked and answered, "...what is it good for?  Absolutely nothing!"  Turner's song asserted love has absolutely nothing to do with the relationships between men and women.

The truth is that the only thing absolute in Tina's song was that she was absolutely wrong as love has everything to do with it and everything else. The apostle Paul revealed the Spirit's word on the subject in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, when he penned, "[1] If I speak in the tongues a of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. [2] If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. [3]If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, b but do not have love, I gain nothing. …"

The truth of Tina's song seems to be in the twisted, self-love she experienced from Ike, which manifested itself in self-serving and even violent ways. What love had to do with their relationship was that it was worldly instead of godly, directed back to self instead of extending to the other.  Biblical, godly love is more akin to another 70s song, written by Peabo Bryson and sung by Bobby Caldwell, "What I Wouldn't Do For Love," in which he croons, he "would do for love what I would not do."

God so loved the world that he did the unthinkable, something no living father would ever want to do, he "gave his one and only Son" (Jn 3:16) to save a rebellious humanity.   "While we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son" (Rom 5:10).

What's love got to do with it?  It is the foundation upon which the universe was built and mankind was redeemed. Love has everything to do with everything. Without it, nothing has any true and lasting value, only temporary, self-serving, gratification that is eternally empty. Jus' Say'n.