Love is a versatile word. I love my wife. I love my kids. I love my mom and dad. I love my friends. I love cheeseburgers and I love tacos. How can you not?
I love all of those things in vastly different ways. All of us, when describing a love for something, know the differences in the meaning even if we would have trouble articulating those differences. You know without me having to explain that when I say I love tacos, I don’t mean the same love I have for my wife. The love I have for my kids is different than what I have for my wife, etc.
I believe at the root of the question of “What is love?” What we want to know is how do I recognize love from someone, and how do I know if I really love another person. If we are going to answer the question what is love, we have to be able to categorize and articulate the different types of love. In addition, we have to understand the source of love.
1 John 4:7-8
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
Love is of God and God is love. Every form of love we experience is sourced by the God who created us. The greatest capacity a human has, the ability to love a fellow human, exists because we are made in the image of God. That is where it starts. The better we know our Creator, the better I believe we understand and demonstrate love. If we want to love better, we just need to know God better.
If anyone says that they are a Christian and can find hate for people, doesn’t truly know God. The basic premise of the gospel is that God sent His Son to die on the cross for sinners and then raised Him again three days later to empower all who believe to live like Christ. Christians love their enemies, have compassion for the worst in society, and serves others first.
This is what you would find in the New Testament Greek as the word Agape. It is a love that is more than emotion. It is love that is selfless. This is the what Jesus was talking about when He was talking to his disciples in the book of John.
John 15:13
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Greater Agape hath no man that this. It is a selfless love, one that isn’t dependent on the actions of others. This is the deepest love that there is. If you are a parent, you understand this love very well. I wouldn’t have to think about it, there would be no hesitation, no second thoughts about it; if the choice came down to my life or one of my kids’ lives, they live. Period. Same thing for my wife, there is no question in my mind.
The truth is that in order for a marriage to work and be equitable, this love has to exist from both. We will talk about a couple other forms of love that should exist as well, but the key to having a relationship that stands the test of time is this love, agape love.
The reason is, it’s not based on an emotion. It’s based on a decision. I am going to love this person, not for what I get out of it, but because I want good for them. Agape love doesn’t require us to “feel” in love. You don’t have to feel “in love” with someone to perform acts of love for that person.
This is one of the biggest issues that we face as a society. We want the loving “feelings” in order to act loving toward someone. Whether we are talking about a spouse or not. We think that the emotion has to proceed the action. That isn’t true. As a matter of fact, one of the things psychology has discovered, is that if you want to make a connection with someone, one of the best ways to do that is to ask them to do you a favor. It’s actually called the Ben Franklin effect.
Do me a favor - Ben Franklin effect
By doing good to others, we are actually activating the part of brain that allows us to “feel” connected to people. Love absolutely has an emotional component to it, but it has to go deeper than an emotion for any relationship to stand the test of time.
If we equate the euphoric feeling we have in the beginning of relationships with love, we will always find ourselves disappointed because that feeling will go away. What should happen afterwards is a deeper connection that allows room for flaws and mistakes in each other. True love, at its core, is doing what’s best for the other person as often as possible. That is Agape love.
The type of love that is associated with romance and marriage is the Greek word Eros. It is where we get the English word erotic. It is the physical attraction to someone, the sexual desire for another person. Obviously, this type of love is needed in a spousal relationship.
In Hebrew the word is Yada. We only find examples of the Hebrew word in the bible. Nowhere in the New Testament is the Greek version of the word used. When Judah believes he is using the services of a prostitute when he was with his daughter-in-law of his son that died, the word used is Yada.
Allowing this type of love to occur prior to the deeper commitment of the selfless love of agape, causes all kinds of relationship problems. For guys they find out what they felt was lust not love. For women they can find they were used instead of loved. Sexual attraction is a powerful force. When we engage in it, there is a mingling of the souls. Paul says it this way when writing to believers early on in the church.
1 Corinthians 6:15-19
Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
I’ll say two things about this and then we will move on. If you want to dig into this a little more, I’ll be putting a few videos out this week that will talk about different aspects of love, and we will go a little deeper on each one.
First, there is no such thing as just sex. There is a word for love devoted to describe what we experience. We even call it “making love.” Second, when we awaken sexual desire before being in a committed relationship all kinds of problems arise. You have children born without both parents, or worse the terminating of a pregnancy because of a million different reasons. You find out that you really didn’t like the person you are with so you move on, but you want sex, so you repeat the process over and over again.
Eros love needs to be experienced within the context of agape love. When that happens, it is a powerful force to bond two people together. More on this in a video this week.
Another type of love, is Phileo love. This is friendship love, brotherly love. It is why we call Philadelphia “The city of Brotherly Love”. The root word is phileo. In Hebrews, the writer comes right out and says it.
Hebrews 13:1
Let brotherly love continue.
This is love has no sexual component to it. It is a deep love and affection for someone, regardless of their gender. The best example of this type of love in scripture is the love between David and Jonathan. There was a deep connection. So much so, that Jonathan warned David when Saul was trying to kill him, even though doing so would eventually lead to Jonathan not being king. His own ambitions were set aside in favor of his relationship with David. After Jonathan died, David cared for Jonathan’s son.
Friendships are important and necessary for us. We need people to whom we are willing to go out of our way for, and them for us. In John chapter 15, Jesus calls the disciples “friends”. He does so with everything that connotation has with the love He had for them. Obviously, He had agape love for them, He was going to die on the cross for them, but he also had this friendship love for them.
Jesus modeled friendship for us in how he washed the feet of His friends, laying down His life for His friends and forgiving His friends. What a different world it would be if we could learn to have this type of love in our life. If we just accepted people as they are. What if we could all admit that we are all a little weird and that just because your weirdness is different from my weirdness, doesn’t make many any less weird?
There are no biblical words to describe the love for tacos. I know shocking. Actually, agape works. We should all have an undying devotion to tacos. The last type of love we are going to talk about is a familial type of love. The Greek word is “storge”.
Family is so important and the bond that happens between siblings and parents to children are extremely formative. Often how well we are loved in this context shapes how we love in every other area of our life. If we had good relationships with our parents and siblings, having good marriages and friendships becomes much easier.
In a very real sense, a lot of the issues we face as a society are rooted in a disfunction in the family where love isn’t properly expressed. Parents, the best thing you can do to make tomorrow better is to love your kids and show them how to love a spouse.
I understand that we live in a broken world where increasingly the ideal scenario is being supplanted by all kinds of other family dynamics. Let me say this, where the ideal is lacking, the grace of God is sufficient. I say this to all our single parents. I say this to all our blended families. I say this to all the families who recognize they have not lived up to the ideal. The grace of God is able.
All I want to point to is a trying, a striving to achieve the ideal when possible. We don’t lower the standard because we don’t seem to be meeting it. We acknowledge the standard and strive for it. Where we fail, we trust the grace of God. We pray over our children, the children of the families in our church and neighborhoods. We pray for each other as parents and spouses.
Whatever your family context, know that God wants to bless you. He wants to bring you strength and healing. Life is hard. We get tired, we get stressed and we snap at our loved ones. It happens. When it does, own it, and model humility in asking for forgiveness and model repentance by working to eliminate that from your life.
Family love is a natural love and the more we remove ourselves as a society from our connection with God, the more this natural love will fade. It is the warning that Paul wrote to Timothy.
2 Timothy 3:1-5
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
In verse 3 when he says “without natural affection” it is a combination of the Greek word “storge” and “phileo”. In other words, as the world goes away from God it gets more selfish and the “natural” affection that should exist in family and friendship will be harder to find.
We see this happening before our eyes. Things are not getting better, things are getting worse. I am thankful for the good things that do happen and I believe we need to do everything we can to push back against the powers of darkness. But, let’s be honest, the reason we are seeing people randomly kill other people is this. The reason we are seeing the sharp divide in the country is because it has become easy to see a position instead of a person. We have left our natural affection for our fellow man.
What is the point? What should I understand about love? In the simplest terms, love is the actions taken and the emotions associated with the concern and well-being of another person. It requires self-sacrifice, care and compassion. Love is a uniquely human experience that stems from us being image bearers of God.
My hope for us is that we will not simply think of love as the warm sensation that drives a passion in us for someone else. My prayer is that, we would know that this is just one part of love and that the emotions associated with love can be driven by decisions to act in a loving manner toward another.
Some of you may think, “that’s being fake”, no it’s called not being driven by our emotions. It is loving like God loved, not just because someone did something good for us, but because we want to bring good to them.
What is love? It is the giving up of ourselves to care for another. Emotions can be a part of that equation, but we can decide to love someone even when we don’t feel like it.
The last thing as we end our time. This is no way an endorsement of staying in abusive, toxic relationships. No one, should be mentally, physically or sexually abused and then accept it because I am be selfless in my love toward them. NO! Absolutely not. If you are being abused, then you have every right to, and should remove yourself from the situation. You are not a doormat. You are not a punching bag. You are not merely a tool to satisfy the sexual desire of another. That is not love. That is a warped, perverted and broken result of sin corrupting a good gift from God.
There are resources for help in each of these areas in the quick notes in the app, and we will make those links available on Facebook as well.
Mental abuse help
https://www.healthline.com/health/signs-of-mental-abuse
Physical Abuse
National
https://www.thehotline.org
Local
Sexual abuse