Week 13—Tuesday John 13:34-35
Week 13—TUESDAY
EROS AND AGAPE CONTRASTED
We are studying a word and are discovering a universe—that redeemed word “agape.” Mygren has shown us in his analysis of the difference between eros and agape how one word in contact with contemporary life sank to the low level of humans and the other word in contact with Life arose to the highest level to which a word has ever risen. Eros is acquisitive desire and longing. Agape is sacrificial giving. Eros is an upward movement. Agape comes down. Eros is our way to God. Agape is God’s way to us. Eros is our effort—it assumes that salvation is our own work. Agape is God’s grace—salvation is the work of Divine Love. Eros is egocentric love, a form of self-assertion of the highest, noblest kind. Agape is unselfish love, it seeks not its own, it gives itself away. Eros seeks to gain its life, a divine immortalized life. Agape lives the life of God, therefore dares to lose it. Eros is the will to get and possess, which depends on want and need. Agape is freedom in giving, which depends on wealth and plenty. Eros is primarily human love—God is the object of eros. Even when it is attributed to God, eros is patterned on human love. Agape is primarily God’s love; God is Agape. Even when it is attributed to humans, agape is patterned on Divine love. Eros is determined by the quality, the beauty, the worth of its object; it is not spontaneous, but evoked, motivated. Agape is sovereign in relation to its object and is directed both to the evil and the good; it is spontaneous, overflowing, unmotivated. Eros recognizes value in its object and loves it. Agape loves and creates value in its object.
That difference between eros and agape could never have been described by philosophy or moralism or art or poetry. It had to be seen. Agape had to become flesh. There and then only could it be known what agape really is. Until then it would have been a surmise instead of a Surprise, a dream instead of a Deed, an imagination instead of an Illustration. Now we see—and fall at his feet!
O Jesus, Son of God, my heart bursts with gratitude that once the curtains of mystery had been rolled back and we see through the heart of God the meaning of the universe, the key to our own living. In you we see Everything. And we love It and you. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I offer all my eros loves to Christ to be redeemed into his Agape.