13. What Is Love
Biblical love is not just an attitude toward others, but involves action toward them … Every disciple of Jesus Christ knows that love is central to the message of Christianity (1 John 4:16, John 3:16, etc.), but the original Greek of the New Testament uses several words for love – each having a different meaning: Storgē means love or affection between parents and children – family love – and this word was also used of love for one's country, city or group. Philia means the affection of personal friendship; it is "brotherly" or "sisterly" love, usually between equals. Agape, the highest form of love mentioned in the New Testament, was sometimes used by the Greeks of very deep love for one's children or spouse, but in the New Testament its usual meaning is that of the love of God for man and of man for God or of godly love for others. Just like faith and hope, we may have a certain amount of human agape love, but the full love to which the Scriptures point us is a gift of God (Romans 5:5). Beyond Affection Humanly, we tend to think of love as affection – as being based on liking. So we often say we "love" a thing such as a movie or a book when we mean we really like it. But agape love moves far beyond affection, and we do not need to like someone – they may even be our enemy – in order to love them with this kind of love.
That is why agape is the word used when Christ summarized the whole law of God in terms of love (Matthew 22:36-40). And the apostles Peter, Paul, James, and John all used this word to stress that love is the fulfilling of God's way of life (1 Peter 4:8, Romans 13:10, James 2:8, 1 John 4:7-21). Agape is also, of course, the word Paul uses throughout 1 Corinthians 13, the great "love chapter" of the New Testament – including the "love" of "faith, hope and love" in verse 13.
Beyond Feelings The love we call agape has several important aspects that we need to keep in mind. In today's world people are used to thinking of love as a feeling, but agape is action based rather than emotion based – it is something that we do rather than something we feel. We can see this in the fact that, as John tells us, God so loved (agape love) the world that he gave his Son for it (John 3:16). That was not a feeling God had, but an action he took. In fact, it doubtless did not feel good to give his only Son, but his love went beyond feelings in the same way that a human expressing the agape kind of love might willingly suffer in order to help someone else.
So agape love is often a sacrificial, giving love. It is also unconditional – God loved us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8), and the unconditional aspect of his love is the underlying reason Paul could write that nothing can "separate us … from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:35-39). Vital Aspects of Love Agape also includes three other aspects that are vital for the understanding of true "Christian love," and we will examine these closely in this section of These Three Remain. First, the highest form of love is ultimately based on care. We cannot love someone or something we do not care about. Care and concern for the welfare of another is vital to any kind of love, but it is at the very core of agape love. Next, we will see that acceptance is also a key part of the kind of love God wants us to have. We may not accept the attitude or behavior of someone, but we cannot love the person if, at some level, we do not accept them. Finally, respect is also vital for true godly love. In telling us that humans were made in the "image" of God (Genesis 1:27), the Bible shows that every human must be respected for that very reason.
When we love another person – perhaps our mate or child – we naturally extend care, acceptance, and respect to them. If we lack any of these three qualities in our attitude to the other, it is deficient and we really do not love them as much as we love ourselves.
Christianity extends this principle to everyone with whom we interact – our neighbors, and even our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48) – and ultimately, even to God. But again, biblical love is not just an attitude toward others, it involves action toward them. True spiritual love, as we will see, is to desire another person's good and to act to accomplish that goal.
There are other aspects of love, of course. Paul enumerates a number of them in the preface to his "…faith, hope and love" statement:
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails" (1 Corinthians 13:4-8). Here, Paul gives us eight things that love is and eight that it is not. There are certainly other things we could say of love, but in the following chapter we will look more closely at the three central qualities of care, acceptance and respect.