So many different things masquerade as love in our culture. Sex, loneliness, convenience, co-dependency – they can all wear the mask and pass for love in our culture. They’re not, obviously, but why are they not? What is at the core that separates all these things from love in its true and pure form?

Maybe the answer is related to the old story of how to spot a counterfeit piece of currency. There was a time when it was easy to spot a counterfeit bill, but as the fakes became better and more sophisticated, it became impossible to identify all the differences from the original. The story goes that treasury agents were trained not in spotting the fakes, but in the nature of the real. They were to become so intimately familiar with the real thing that even though they might not be able to list off all the potential ways a bill might be fake, they would still know something was off.

So, then, if we want to know what makes these fake forms of love fake, then let’s start with what makes the real kind of love real. And for that, we have not only a point of identification but an actual definition:

“God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10).

This is what love is. This is how it’s defined. And because it is, this is the gold standard, the real thing. It’s not that we loved God, but that God loved us and demonstrated that love. Now we can start to see exactly what’s off about these counterfeits. When we hold them up to the real thing, we see the true differentiation. The love of God, demonstrated by the cross of Christ, is giving in nature. It is motivated not by lack, but by abundance.

That stands in sharp contrast to these other kinds of “affection” – in each and every one of them, the insecurity of the human heart is on full display. In lust, loneliness, convenience and all the rest of the things that pass for love, we are approaching others for what we can get from them. They are, to us, only carriers of their bodies, or their needs, or something else that we think can satisfy our desires. We use then to try and secure something for ourselves.

That’s why the gospel is the only path to truly loving others. It’s because it’s only in Christ that we can be truly secure. It’s only when we are secure in Christ that we can stop seeing others only for what we can get to them. Then, and only then, can we truly and freely love.