Love as the Desire to Spend Eternity With Someone
We live in a culture that treats love as a spark—something bright, emotional, and fleeting. But Scripture offers a definition far more demanding and far more enduring. If we listen to the biblical story, love is not merely affection or attraction. It is not even primarily compatibility. Love, in its deepest biblical sense, is the desire to spend eternity with someone else all the time. It is the longing for unbroken communion, the refusal to imagine a future in which the beloved is absent. And this definition, far from being sentimental, is woven into the entire fabric of Scripture—from the Trinity’s eternal communion to the commands of Jesus, from the poetry of the Song of Songs to the radical call to love even our enemies.
Before Scripture ever speaks of human romance, it reveals divine love as eternal communion. The Father, Son, and Spirit dwell in a relationship so complete that Jesus describes it as mutual indwelling: “You, Father, are in me, and I in you.” Divine love is not content with distance. It delights in shared life. It is, in the most literal sense, the desire to be with the other forever. When God creates humanity in His image, He invites us into that same pattern of love. The biblical story is the story of a God who continually moves toward His people—not simply to rescue them, but to dwell with them. From the tabernacle to the incarnation, from Pentecost to the New Jerusalem, God’s love expresses itself in nearness. Scripture ends with the staggering promise: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with humanity” (Rev. 21:3). Love, in its final form, is eternal communion.
This is why the greatest commandment begins not with behavior but with desire. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut. 6:5). Jesus echoes and expands this: “with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). This is not a command to feel warmly about God. It is a command to want Him—to desire His presence with the full capacity of one’s being. To love God with all one’s heart is to want Him above all else. To love Him with all one’s soul is to anchor one’s identity in Him. To love Him with all one’s mind is to delight in His truth. To love Him with all one’s strength is to order one’s entire life toward Him. In other words, the greatest commandment is a call to desire eternal communion with God. It is a call to want Him forever.
And then there is the Song of Songs—Scripture’s most surprising witness to this truth. The Song is often read as erotic poetry, and it certainly is that. But it is also something more: a portrait of love that refuses separation. The lovers of the Song are not content with momentary encounters. They seek each other relentlessly. They long for uninterrupted presence. Their desire is not merely physical; it is existential. “Set me as a seal upon your heart… for love is strong as death” (Song 8:6). This is not the language of casual romance. It is the language of covenant. It is the cry of a heart that wants forever. The Song’s imagery—gardens, vineyards, fragrances, the repeated refrain “my beloved is mine, and I am his” (Song 2:16)—is not simply sensual. It is sacramental. It reveals a love that mirrors God’s own longing for His people. The lovers’ desire to be together without interruption anticipates the biblical promise that God will one day remove every barrier between Himself and His beloved. The Song is not embarrassed by desire; it sanctifies it. It teaches us that true love is not satisfied with temporary proximity. It seeks permanence. It seeks communion. It seeks eternity.
This longing for eternal communion is not limited to romance or worship. It extends outward into the world in the form of neighbor-love. When Jesus pairs the command to love God with the command to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39), He is not adding a moral footnote. He is describing the shape of divine love as it flows through human lives. To love one’s neighbor is to desire their good—not just their temporary comfort, but their eternal flourishing. It is to want them to share in the life of God. It is to see them not as obstacles or competitors but as fellow image-bearers destined for eternity. Neighbor-love is the earthly expression of a heavenly desire: that no one be lost, that all be drawn into the communion God desires with humanity.
The apostle John makes this explicit: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God… and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7). To love one’s neighbor is to participate in God’s own life. It is to desire for them what God desires: eternal communion. Jesus says the world will know His disciples not by their arguments or achievements but by their love (John 13:34–35). Neighbor-love is not optional. It is the visible sign of invisible grace.
And then Jesus goes further still. “Love your enemies” (Matt. 5:44). We often treat this command as an impossible ideal, a kind of moral Everest meant to humble us rather than guide us. But Jesus means it quite literally. To love one’s enemies is to desire their eternal good even when they desire your harm. It is to want them in your forever even when they want you out of their present. It is to refuse to let hatred have the final word. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him… overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:20–21). Enemy-love is the most shocking expression of the definition we began with: the desire to spend eternity with someone else all the time.
Jesus does not ask us to feel warmly toward our enemies. He asks us to want their redemption. He asks us to desire their presence in the kingdom of God. He asks us to imagine them not as permanent adversaries but as potential brothers and sisters in the age to come. Because the truth is sobering and hopeful at the same time: the person who opposes you today may stand beside you in glory tomorrow. The one who wounds you may one day worship next to you. The one who curses you may one day sing the same eternal song of praise. Heaven will not preserve our earthly divisions; it will heal them. And in heaven, there is no category for “not love.” There is no corner where resentment can hide, no balcony where bitterness can sit and observe from a distance. Heaven is the realm of perfect communion. If someone is there, you will love them—fully, freely, joyfully.
So Jesus commands us to begin now what will be perfected then. To love our enemies is to practice eternity in the present tense. It is to refuse to write anyone out of God’s story. It is to live as if reconciliation is not only possible but promised. It is to look at someone who opposes you and say, “I want you in my forever.” That is not weakness. It is not naïveté. It is the strength of Christ Himself, who loved His enemies all the way to the cross so that His enemies could become His family. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). He loved us into eternity.
Seen through this lens, the commands to love God, neighbor, and enemy are not three separate tasks. They are three expressions of the same eternal desire. To love God is to desire eternal communion with Him. To love one’s neighbor is to desire their eternal joy. To love one’s enemy is to desire their eternal redemption. And the Song of Songs shows us that this desire is not cold or abstract. It is passionate. It is relentless. It is strong as death.
Your definition—love is the desire to spend eternity with someone else all the time—is not sentimental exaggeration. It is the trajectory of the entire biblical story. It captures the covenantal, communal, and eschatological nature of love. It exposes how thin our cultural definitions have become. And it invites us to recover a vision of love that is both more demanding and more hopeful than anything our world offers.
To love someone, biblically speaking, is to desire their eternal presence and their eternal joy. It is to want them not only in your life, but in your forever. It is to echo the heart of the God who has always wanted to dwell with His people. Love, in the end, is not merely a feeling. It is a longing for communion that does not end. It is a desire shaped by eternity. And it is the very thing God has promised to fulfill.
If you want, I can now:
- add KJV Scripture quotations
- craft a headline/subhead pairing
- prepare a shorter 800‑word version for print
- or help you shape this for CT’s editorial voice even more tightly