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Love Always Makes A Good Topic
We experience love, we need love, we give love, we receive love, we live love, we want love, we want to feel love, and we want to feel love for another.
But if our only idea of what love is comes from the song lyrics of popular music, or what is written in most greeting cards, we are going to get it wrong.
Too many have experienced love as abusive, love as greedy, love spoken but absent.
Why is Love So Misunderstood?
Love is based in relationship, and the kind of relationship defines what kind of love we are talking about.
What, you mean there are different kinds of loves?
ABSOLUTELY!
And if you didn’t know already what that is about, you should have a good grasp on this important topic by the time we are done.
You will have a chance to give yourself a checkup on how your practice of love fits in with the kinds of love you are living, and specially how your love stacks up to God’s standards of faithful love.
Some of you may remember that several years ago I used the idea of God’s Faithful Covenant Love to talk about this over a series of several months.
I am not going to do anything about trying to recap that series, in fact, I am not even looking back to it for this message.
Instead, I’ll use the famous “Love Chapter” of 1 Corinthians 13 as the skeleton to this message.
A couple concepts from other passages will show up, as will some conversation about some concepts from some modern writing on the subject of love.
Last evening, we had the great privilege of sharing the celebration of Richard and Mary Lopez’s 55th wedding anniversary.
They were wed on January 28, 1967.
Their story is a story of faithful covenant love lived out, according to their vows of marriage, through all the ups and downs that long-term marriages endure.
They were able to celebrate the milestone because their marriage has included not only a faithful love, but also the enjoyment of one another, loyalty given to the relationship and preference for one another.
Faithful, enjoyable, loyal, preferential are words that can be used to describe in part the words of the original New Testament Greek that are behind our English word “love”.
A Short History of Love
In the beginning, there was love.
When you were born, God engineered some particular things to happen.
By the way, these are the statements of how God intended things to be; not all conceptions are voluntary, not all fathers are present, not all mothers are up to the task.
But here is what should be:
In the act of conception, love is part of the transaction.
The love that draws us together in desire is one kind of love.
Before you were born, God loved you.
He formed you in your mother’s womb and from the very beginning of cells coming together, he has loved you.
When you were born, the very first time your mother held you, she loved you.
The first time your father saw you, he loved you.
Even if he didn’t have a clue what to do with a baby.
And the first time you got a taste of it, you loved momma’s milk.
All of those loves are somewhat different.
Let me explain, starting from the act of conception.
Eros: The craving love
This is the cupid love; it’s the love-potion love; it’s the hormone-driven love.
It is love that is selfish and self-serving.
It is a very base kind of love, it gets the male and female together to procreate, but it doesn’t really build a society.
We get “erotic” from this Greek word.
The New Testament dialect of Greek chooses a different word that breaks away from the relatively profane meanings of eros, and uses a word that shows us the deep trouble we get into if this is the only way we know to love.
The word is epithymia, which is passionate desire, yearning for, wanting.
More simply, it is usually translated as LUST, speaking of lust for the world, lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh.
Although eros love or epithymia love might get us together, it won’t keep us together, for it will always see the greener grass in the neighbor’s yard.
It’s a cause of unfaithfulness.
And this kind of mis-balanced understanding of love will make the dumb-struck teen think they cannot live without their girlfriend if they are separated.
It’s results are stalking, suicide, and even murder to keep the other from loving someone else.
Lust and Erotic desire only cares about itself.
And this kind of selfish love is also at the heart of most of our vanity.
It cares about itself more than it cares about any other person.
Agape: The giving love
This is the love that God shows to us.
It is totally opposite of erotic or lust-driven love.
It is love that, by example and definition, cares more for the one that is loved than it cares for itself.
Giving love is a fully mature love that can be totally mutual and satisfying.
It is not reserved for God alone, but God is the best exemplar of it.
He created mankind for relationship with himself, knowing ahead of time what it would cost him.
A slightly technical definition is “affection or spiritual affection that follows the direction of the will.”
This is a love that is love on purpose, love that is an act of the will, love that can be promised and love that can be commanded as a duty.
There is no price to great to pay for the one that is loved.
Sacrificial love is agape love.
Spiritual love is agape love.
Love that cares for another, wants and does the best for them, is agape love.
God is the model, for God agape-d that world so much that he gave his one an only Son so that by believing in him we might have eternal life.
A giving love.
And Jesus loved us to the end, and his journey to the cross was a journey of agape love.
As he sacrifices himself for our good, he says, “Father, forgive them.”
Love that gives without limit.
Agapeo: The cherishing love
Now, as a brand-new mommy, there is something that happens instantly as the anticipation of pregnancy results in the birth of a little itty-bitty human that is flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone.
It is very closely related to the agape love that comes from God.
Agapao comes from the same root, and is love that is full of goodwill, prizing the one who is loves, with measured affection of esteem, and unbounded delight.
This love is willing to give time and energy and resources and favor to the one loved.
Most mothers will live out this version of Godly love, and the best mothers embody the root of agape love in their loving.
It is agapao love that Jesus tells us to have when he says, “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Hold them in high esteem, with goodwill and care for them.
Storge: the familial love
In the Greek lexicons, this is a category of loving that is natural among families.
It is love that is appropriately loyal, naturally affectionate, and will protect whom it loves.
In the New Testament, it only shows up in a compound word that means “without natural affection”.
This is the love that binds a father to his child; it love that binds brothers and sisters.
It is love that is realized when families are reunited without any history of being together.
It is a mature love that protects, serves, and desires good for the other, sometimes with no better reason than “that’s what families do.”
That new dad suddenly knows he has a child he must provide for, that he should not abandon, that he is responsible for, that he will protect.
Phileo: the spontaneous love
Phileo is often called “brotherly love” but actually that is the meaning of “philadelphia” which is phileo plus a word for a bent for, leaning toward, or tending to.
Phileo is actually a spontaneous and emotional love, sometimes unreasoning.
The baby starts with “I want my momma’s milk” to the point of distraction.
He loves that milk!
Maybe you love ice cream, or love cruising, or love peanut butter or love your best jeans or you favorite car.
Phileo has an object that is loved, and it can be a person, or celebrity, or fishing, or food.
It is emotional and irrational sometimes.
But it is sincere in its preference.
Be careful not to try to ride the fence between the LA Rams and the SF 49ers today.
You will be asked to choose where your affections lie.
Love in 1 Corinthians 13:
This great ‘love chapter’ of the Bible is important for us because it shows us that we need to develop the kind of love that God shows us.
Love in 1 Corinthians 13 is agape love.
Phileo, storge, nor epithymia are mentioned.
This is about what agape love is and what does not fit the definition.
The illustration that Paul gives of love directly follows what we shared last week about the Body of Christ, where every part is needed and valued.
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