Announcer: Hello and welcome to the Taco Tuesday Theology Show with your host, Danny Powell! For many of us, going through life in an increasingly secular world is proving a challenge to navigate. Each week, we take your questions about modern life and answer them using the lessons revealed in the scriptures. Now, grab yourself a taco, and let’s get to this week’s question!
Danny: It’s been a few weeks since I made a new episode. I apologize for that. I had the difficult birth of my newest daughter, Josie, the blessed birth of my newest granddaughter, Anna, and my mother passed away from COVID-19 all in less than two weeks. In the meantime, I have some really good questions cued up but for this week, I went to my book, A Bigger Picture: Viewing the World Through New Eyes for this week’s question, “What is love?”
What is love? When someone tells you that they love you, what does that person mean? What response is that person expecting? How does that person feel or react when they don’t get that expected response? Relationships are damaged and sometimes ruined when one person tells another person that they love them, and the other person doesn’t respond in kind.
I had this happen at church one time. Someone I was talking to suddenly said, “I love you,” to me as I was leaving. I smiled thinking how odd that was and tried to move on. As I walked away, she repeated it, albeit a little louder, “I love you!” I just smiled and continued walking. She was having no part of that. She came after me, grabbed my arm, swung me around to face her, “don’t you love me too?”
That got me to thinking about the subject of “love.” What exactly is it? Isn’t that the age-old question? Do I love this woman that just told me she loved me? What did she mean when she said she loved me? Should my wife be worried? Did she mean something else? Hundreds of thousands and maybe more poems, songs, books, movies, and art through the ages have attempted to define love. The Beatles sang “All You Need Is Love” in an odd time signature (5/4). After all these eons exploring the subject, why am I still wondering what it is?
Am I capable of truly loving someone else? What about that unconditional love the Bible speaks about describing how God relates to us? Can any human love unconditionally? If humans cannot, and love is conditional, can it honestly be love?
Unlike English, where “love” has multiple meanings, in Ancient Greek, the language of the New Testament, there are four different words translated love into English, each with precise meanings:
The first is Éros, meaning love, mostly of sexual passion,”
The second is Philia, meaning affectionate regard, friendship,” usually “between equals,”
The third is Storge, and is the love inside families, “especially of parents and children,” and the fourth is
Agápe, “the love of God for man and of man for God.”
The New Testament uses two of these Ancient Greek words, philia, and agápe. I was surprised that storge wasn’t used even once since the relationship between God and man is often described in terms of a family with God as Father and believers as sons (or daughters). The Apostle Paul writes at least five different times in the Scriptures of believers being “sons of God.” Jesus instructed His followers to address God as Father. In the Book of John believers are referred to as “sons of God” multiple times and in the Book of Revelation Jesus calls those who endure “sons.”
The other word for love not used, Éros, was shocking to me because with all the emphasis Christians put on sex and because this Ancient Greek word is the source of our English word erotica, I would expect it to be mentioned at least once even if in a negative sense. My understanding is that by the time the New Testament was being written that Éros had become so distasteful that the writers wouldn’t use it. It had become an expletive. Still, I don’t understand why the Scriptures don’t even mention it.
I was further astonished to learn that in the actual definition of agápe it reads not only does it describe God’s love for man, but it also illustrates how man is supposed to love God! I was already wondering if I could love the way God loves me, and then I learn the very word used to describe that love is supposed to explain how I’m supposed to love God. God loves me so much He died for me. I realize that there are martyrs around the world that die daily because of their love for God, but at the end of the day, I’m not sure I’d do the same for Him. I pray I never have to find out.
My understanding of agápe is that it’s a self-sacrificing-no- matter-what kind of love that is not dependent upon the reciprocation of that love from another. To date, this kind of love is outside of my own human experience. It’s easy to love someone when it benefits me in some way. My four-year-old
daughter will tell me I don’t love her if I don’t give her what she wants. Unfortunately, I fear my understanding of love isn’t much more sophisticated than hers.
If I am capable of agape how do I explain where the Bible reads:
We love Him because He first loved us. (1 John 4:19 NKJV)
That verse in and of itself would seem to validate my experience thus far that I can only love someone that gives me some benefit and that my love for God is conditional upon His loving me first. Love is now something to trade, to barter, or the result of some other commerce transaction. You love me, and I’ll love you back.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses the word, agapao (a variation of agape), to describe how we are to love our enemies. He teaches us to have a self-sacrificing- no-matter-what kind of love that is not dependent upon the reciprocation of that love from another towards our enemies! Am I even capable of doing that? To love someone that hates me and wishes me harm? Is this an example of my ideology meeting my reality?
How about considering what the most prolific writer of the New Testament, the one that defines love writes:
“For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing. For desire is present with me, but I
don’t find it doing that which is good.” (Romans 7:18)
The “it” Paul writes about is his flesh. Paul was writing specifically about how arduous it is to do what the Lord asks us to do. If the Apostle Paul had such a difficult time doing what is right, what hope do I have?
A favorite call and response I hear in church often is “God is good” to which the congregation replies, “All the time” and then the preacher says, “All the time,” and the response is “God is good!” 1 John 4:16 says that “God is love.” It’s quite simple and uncomplicated to believe that GOD can love everyone. He’s good all the time! It’s what He does, right? But, how can I love to the degree that God does when there is “no good in me”?
Back to my original question, “What is love?” What exactly is agápe? Agápe can’t possibly be an emotion. It can’t be a warm feeling we get about someone, that most certainly would be eros. While sometimes love makes us feel good or happy, other times love breaks our heart, makes us despondent, and sometimes drives us into the depths of despair. The emotions and feelings we associate with love are the results of love, not love itself.
The New Testament talks about two kinds of love, agape, the self-sacrificing-no-matter-what kind of love that is not dependent upon the reciprocation of that love from another kind of love associated with God and His creation and philia, the brotherly love that we tend to have towards one another.
I’m not so much interested in pursuing a discussion about brotherly love, that is something I think I can comprehend. It might be interesting to explore the part of the definition for philia that it is the love “between equals.” After the Resurrection Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” The first time and the second time the Greek text reads “Do you agape me?” and the third time the Lord used philia, which could mean, “Peter, do you love me as an equal?” Peter agrees that he loves Jesus as an equal. That is a perfect example of how the Lord meets people where they are. The Bible doesn’t record how Peter died, but it is commonly thought that he gave his life for his Lord and died hung inverted on a cross. In the end, Peter loved Jesus the same way Jesus loved him, in that he died for him. However, what I am interested in is that self-sacrificing-no-matter-what kind of love that is not dependent upon the reciprocation of that love from another love that God has for us and whether or not I am capable of loving like that.
I stated that love isn’t an emotion or feeling. What is love? The best description of love is in the Bible:
“Love is patient and is kind; love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
Notice in Paul’s description that he never says anything about it being a feeling, emotion, or even something to do (often I hear that love is a verb). What he does do is define agape (love) as an attribute. An attribute: something attributed as belonging to a person, thing, group, etc.; a quality, character, characteristic, or property.
Love is something you have, not something you feel or even something you do. It’s something that is a part of you. It’s an attribute like a sense of humor or sensitivity or kindness. Love is the basic blueprint for how you act and react to everyone and everything around you. Love is the characteristic that causes you to perform a certain way. Love governs how you respond to your situation. You don’t act that way because you love, but because love is a part of you. You can’t help but act a certain way.
When the Bible speaks about God’s love, it always talks about His demonstration of that love:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
“But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
Which brings me back once again to the original question, am I capable of a self-sacrificing-no-matter-what kind of love that is not dependent upon the reciprocation of that love from another?
The answer to my question lies in the Scriptures. I read this about me in the Bible:
“God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and overall the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1:26
“I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows that very well.” (Psalms 139:14)
I am created in the image and likeness of God, and I am “fearfully and wonderfully made.”
Then I come to another thing that Paul wrote:
“and hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God’s love {agape} has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:5)
Agape poured into my heart! From this, I know that I am capable of a self-sacrificing-no-matter-what kind of love that is not dependent upon the reciprocation of that love from another. Then I took another look at 1 John 4:19 in a translation that is from different (and earlier/older) manuscripts:
We love because He first loved us. (1 John 4:19 NASB)
We love because HE who created us made us with love and created us to love. Then He pours His love into us through the Holy Spirit. The problem must be on my part, either in realizing this is true or in the application of my life. Agape is in our hearts. It’s there. The potential of a self-sacrificing-no-matter-what kind of love that is not dependent upon the reciprocation of that love from another is right here inside me. Not loving the way God does is wasting an incredible opportunity. It’s no different than someone having the gift of writing and performing music or athletics but not exercising that ability.
Because of the difficulty above for my flesh to do what is right, I have come to realize is that any agape I demonstrate is the love of God manifesting through me.
“I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me. That life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
Knowing that I can love that is a self-sacrificing-no-matter- what kind of love that is not dependent upon the reciprocation of that love from another is the first step on the path to demonstrating that agape. I must spend more time with God. I must endeavor to see others the way He sees us.
As I walk with Jesus, I will eventually be able to answer that woman at church with “I love you too,” and mean it
Announcer: Thank you for listening to this episode of Taco Tuesday Theology. If you have a question, you’d like us to answer from a Biblical world view, please go to our website, www.tacotuesdaytheology.com and click on the “Send Message” button. You can send the message right from your smartphone or computer. Maybe next week, we’ll answer your question. New episodes post every Tuesday afternoon. Until next time, keep praying and pass the guacamole!