LOVE 101
Love used to be a
simple concept for me. I loved who I loved and I didn't love who I
didn't love. After walking with the Lord for awhile, I began to
realize that love is a much bigger topic than I every thought. My
journey to discover this all encompassing trait had only begun...
MY THOUGHT OF LOVE
Before I became a Christian, I loved who I loved and I
didn’t love who I didn’t love. It was as simple as that. I loved my
husband and children, my parents and my sister. I had some other friends
that I liked, too. I thought that I was a good person and was nice enough
to people. Even so, people who were not in my direct circle of life did not
concern me.
I knew I loved my husband because I had a lot of
feelings for him. In fact, I loved him deeply. It was the kind of love
where I got weak in the knees when I was around him. It was the kind of
love where I seemed to be transported to another place whenever I thought of
him. Have you ever experienced that kind of love? Butterflies in the
stomach. Nothing else existed. I understood this kind of love.
The love I had for my children was all consuming, too.
They were the most important people in my life besides my husband. I would
do anything for them to nurture and protect them and help them grow up. I
understood this kind of love.
I respected and loved my parents and my sister. It
wasn’t the emotional love like my husband and children, but they were very
special people to me. I loved them. I would do things for them and enjoyed
being with them. They did things for me. It was a mutual love. I
understood this kind of love.
Then, I had friends too. We enjoyed being together and
did some things for each other. I loved them in a friendship type of way.
I understood this kind of love..
When I became a Christian, my first priority became to
please the Lord and to serve Him. I studied to find out what the Bible said
about things. When I read the Bible, I would find verses like Luke 6:32,
where Jesus said,
“If you love those who love you, what credit is
that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them. And if you do good
to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’
do that.”
This told me that I should love people who did not love
me and those who were not even good to me. People who had nothing to offer
me. I was to love strangers and the unlovely.
Now, I thought I was doing a good job just by being a
loving wife and mother. Now I was supposed to be kind to strangers and love
the unlovely! I did not understand this kind of love.
I didn’t know how I was going to do this. I didn’t
have any emotional feeling for others like I did for my husband and
children. I had no idea how to love someone that I didn’t have any feelings
for. I DIDN’T understand this kind of love because love was a feeling to
me.
Then I read in John 15:12,
“My command is this: Love each other as
I have loved you.”
and John 15:17,
“This is my command: Love each other.”
These verses told me love was a command and it made me
realize that it might not come naturally like the love I had for my husband
and children.
Loving someone that was not nice to me would take
some effort
on my part.
"How can I love these people?" I wondered. I had to ask the Lord to show me this
kind of love. I don’t have any feelings to help me on this. How do I
muster up feelings about others so that I could love them? I knew I needed
God’s help in this.
Do you ever feel like this? Generally, it is
pretty easy to love our spouses, our children, our parents, our
grandchildren, and our friends - most of the time! I say most of the time,
because these people can also go on our nerves the most, can’t they? But,
in general, these are the people we voluntarily love. If we think of who we
love, these people generally come to mind.
Then when you get into neighbors and co-workers, you
may get along with them and you may not. Even so, getting along with them
is one thing, but loving them? That’s another story! These people are
harder to love, and sometimes even impossible.
And then, there are the strangers and the unlovely.
These are people we don’t usually even think about, much less love. These
people don’t even cross our minds when we are asked who we love, do they?
This is how I felt, so I knew that I needed more
understanding of this concept of loving strangers and the unlovely. I
continued to study and pray to learn how this could be done.
LOVE IS NOT ALWAYS A FEELING
The first thing that I learned when I
started asking God about this is that love is not always a feeling. It is an
action. Love is an action. Well, that was a relief. Because I didn’t know
how I was going to get all of these feelings stirred up about all of the
strangers in the world. It seemed more do-able to me knowing that it was an
action. I learned that this action consisted of helping other people and
being kind to people.
So this is what I did. I became active in my church
and in my neighborhood. I was kinder to the clerks in the stores. I
volunteered to take care of the children in the nursery and our church and
taught Bible studies.
Even though I was doing the
‘action’ part with others in my church and neighborhood,
I felt that I still did not understand love the way the Lord wanted me to.
I knew love was an
action and not necessarily a feeling, so I did nice things for others.
But it was a surface nice. My heart really didn’t have any part in it.
I thought that the love that God was talking about had to be more than just
acting NICE on the surface. Even though I thought I was being loving,
what Jesus meant was probably much deeper than I was experiencing because
frankly most people still irritated me!
I would say to God, “I need you to give me Your love
for others. I don’t have it in me. I need you to give me the love that you
want me to give to others. Help me to understand what it is.”
How many of you feel like that too? You heard about
this ‘love’ thing and wonder how can you love someone that you don’t really
have any feelings toward. Someone who doesn’t really have anything to
contribute to your life in any way. Someone who is instead needy and takes
your time up?
WHAT LOVE REALLY IS - GOD'S THOUGHT OF LOVE!
Most of us are mixed up about what love is. This is
because most of us have never really been taught what it is. The only way
we know about love is if our parents or someone showed us love, or if we
have been ‘in love.’ We usually get love from those that are closest to us,
like our parents or our spouses, so we think that those are the only people
we are supposed to love.
We read about love in novels and see what we think is
love on television. We hear about it in songs and watch stories of love in
the movies.
The dictionary meaning doesn’t even give the full
meaning either. ‘Love’ according to Webster’s is “intense affection for
another arising out of kinship or personal ties; a strong feeling of
attraction resulting from sexual desire; enthusiasm or fondness.”
The main characteristic of love is affection according
to this definition. It’s even used to describe affection in other things.
Webster also defines ‘love birds.’ As “parrots that show a great deal
of affection for their mates.” So again, affection is the main
attribute for love, even among birds!
Another thing that limits our understanding of love is
that in the English language, we have one word – LOVE. This same word
describes the many different types of love that we experience. It describes
love among spouses, parents, children, friends, and for enjoyment of food,
vacations and television programs!
We are limited in our choice of words
for this virtue.
LET'S GO TO THE BIBLE FOR DEFINITIONS
To make sure I have the meaning that God wants things
to have, I like to go to the Bible to get my definitions.
If we look in the Bible, we see several definitions of
love, depending on who or what it is toward. We find that in the Greek
language, there are all kinds of different words used to describe the
different kinds of love. We see that they fall into about three basic
categories. Let’s go over them.
THE THREE CATEGORIES
First Category
The first category is the EROS kind of love – the erotic, crazy about
each other, being in love kind of love. All senses are
lost and emotion is the key factor here. This is the kind of love we
experience when we are ‘in love.’
It is an exciting type of love. We feel great about
the world and everyone in it. It brings out generosity and love in our
selves that we never even knew existed. We can’t do much else though,
because when we are in this kind of love, we can’t eat, sleep or think of
anything else besides the person that we are ‘in love’ with! We are crazy
about the other person. How many of you have experienced this type of love?
Second Category
The second category of love is the PHILEO kind of
love. This is the type of love where we are fond of people of things.
It is the base of these words that we recognize,
PHILADELPHIA – describes ‘brotherly kindness.’ This is
why the city of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania is called the city of brotherly
love.
PHILANTHROPIA – describes the love of mankind, and
showing kindness to men is – where we get philanthropy.
Then there are others to describe the Love of good men
is PHILAGATHOS.
The love of a wife to her husband is PHILANDROS.
THE love of a mother to her children is PHILOTEKNOS.
It is not a ‘crazy’ about someone kind of love like the
EROS kind of love, or being ‘in love,’ but it does still have an emotional
satisfaction attached to it.
Third Category
The third kind of love is AGAPO love. This is the one
that we find in the verse that we went over before in John 15:12,
“My command is this: Love each other as I have
loved you.”
The kind of love that is referred to is the word AGAPO,
which means ‘to love in a social or moral sense.’ AGAPO is love
in a social or moral sense. It is a responsible kind of love. It does
things for others because they need to be done. Because God said that they
should do it. Because it is socially and morally necessary. This type of
love does not say anything about emotions, does it?
This is a deliberate kind of love. It is an act of the
will and it is done as a matter of principle, duty, and propriety.
So when God
tells us that we should love one another, He means
that we should do what we need to do to care for each other's social and
moral needs.
We should love each other for a social and moral sake.
It is a responsibility. Jesus wants
each of us to take on this responsibility for one another. To help
each other. To care about each other. To meet each other’s
needs. To LOVE each other.
This love is also used when describing the love that
we should have towards the Lord in verses such as,
“Love the Lord your God with all our heart and with all
your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” In Mark 12:30
This is how we should love God too. It is not always a
wonderful ‘feeling.’ It is an act of our will to love God. To do the
things that are pleasing to Him. It is on purpose. It is deliberate. With
everything we have got. Our heart, soul, mind, and our strength. That’s a
lot of love!
This is the same kind of love when Jesus says in verse
31,
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
So we find out that we need to put in an effort to love
God, and others, and even ourselves. It is a responsibility. It is a duty.
Another Category of Love
In First Corinthians 13:4-8 we find even
another kind of love,
“Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it
does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, 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.”
This verse lists all of the attributes of love. The
word used to describe this kind of love is AGAPE love. AGAPE comes from the
word AGAPO, which means ‘to love in a social or moral sense.’ AGAPE
comes from this root word, and adds affection, benevolence, and charity
to it. AGAPE love means, ‘love, affection, benevolence, and
charity– a love feast.’
AGAPE adds the emotional aspect to the love you are
expressing in the social or moral sense. Which tells me that somehow this
love I am to have for others should have emotion, or enjoyment too, but that
it is based on social or moral responsibility.
This is the kind of love that God shows.
“but I know you. I know that you
do not have the love of God in your hearts.” John 5:42
The definition of AGAPE love includes ‘a love feast!’
Who would we find at a love feast? All kinds of people! People we know,
people we don’t know. There are family members and strangers. When it says
a love feast, it sounds like we should be doing a lot of loving, doesn’t
it? And that we should be enjoying it!
Could it be that the closer we get to the Lord and the more we practice love, the more we
will actually like it? Could it be that since this is the kind of love that
God shows, the more we practice it, the more we become the way that God
wants us to be?
A LOT TO LEARN
We have a lot to learn about this kind of love, don’t
we? There is a whole dimension of loving and caring for others that we
don’t even know about.
1) We have had a
misunderstanding as to what love is all about.
-
We know only about one kind of love and we have to be
taught about the other dimensions of love.
-
It is not just the crazy, wild, and ‘being in love’
kind of emotional love that we all have been brought up to think that LOVE
is.
-
There is the erotic kind of love, that crazy kind of
love that we feel when we are in love – the EROS kind of love,
-
But there is also the PHILEO kind of love – this is the
love that we feel when we love something from the heart – love of children,
spouse, friends, even money or silver.
-
And then there is the love that is a deliberate kind of
love that is the AGAPO kind of love which should ultimately be done in an
AGAPE kind of way.
2) The love that we need to develop is the AGAPE
love, which is a moral and social love that does not have to have a crazy
emotion in it, but it should somehow be developed into being enjoyable for
us.
3) Love is an eternal quality that we have much more
control over than we thought! And with God’s help, it is enduring and
enjoyable – a love feast!
As we continue our study of LOVE, let's remember that Jesus gave us a command to love each other, just as He
loved us.
“My command is this: Love each other as I
have loved you.” John 15:12
Let’s begin to examine our lives and look over the
dealings that we have with people and try to determine the kind of love that
we are showing to them. If it is the EROS, PHILEO, or AGAPO kind of
love.
And then ask God to show you if you are practicing the
AGAPE kind of love that He commanded us to or if you need to work on that
kind of love a little more.
Love is the main trait that goes on to eternity, so we
might as well get started on learning how to do it now!
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