Christ defines love

Today I was talking with someone about the challenges of addressing homosexuality - not as an abstract idea, but with friends of mine who are gay and professing Christians. How do you get the courage to have those conversatoins? The person with whom I was talking asked me very directly how I deal with it. My answer came directly from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, because I think he articulates it (though not with regard to homosexuality in particular) far better than I can:

What love is, only Christ tells in his Word. Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love toward the brethren really is. Therefore, spiritual love is bound solely to the Word of Jesus Christ. Where Christ bids me to maintain fellowship for love's sake, I will maintain it. Where his truth enjoins me to dissolve a fellowship for love's sake, there I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my human love. Because spiritual love does not desire but rather serves, it loves an enemy as a brother. It originates neither in the brother nor in the enemy but in Christ and his Word. Human love can never understand spiritual love, for spiritual love is from above; it is something completely strange, new and incomprehensible to all earthly love. (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. "Life Together." Harper Collins: San Francisco, CA.1954 p 35)