What’s Love Got to do with It? Everything!
I am on my way home to central NY after spending a few days helping my sister and her husband prepare to move my Mom from her apartment into assisted living. Mom is 91 years old and in pretty good mental condition but becoming increasingly physically frail.
The move means that her possessions will have to be ‘triaged’. Some can go with her, but not much; some, especially the family photos and more meaningful mementos can go into storage or to us or the grandchildren. The rest will be given away, sent to consignment shops, or thrown out.
On the one hand, it is sad to see her life dismembered this way. And if you define a life based on the accumulated ‘things’ in that life, then yes, it would be really sad. For my Mom, these things, even the photos of her family, do not define her life, or at least not that much. She is not these things. My Mom is a daughter of God, a sister of Christ. Her life and legacy here are not defined by her stuff, her money, or even the memories we have of her. Her legacy to all of us — children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren — is the love that she gave us and the faith in Jesus that she passed on; which when you think about it, is also rooted in love.
Her love for us was not perfect. But it was good enough, even good. She provided and cared for us, taught us how to live a courageous and bold life, and instilled in us a love for the Church. She kept a neat and clean home and she was always there to encourage and cheer us on when we were younger. In her later life, she was always glad to see us. As she got older, she developed a critical spirit, which made me sad. But we loved her in spite of that.
Which brings me to this idea of love.
As we all know, the world is fixated on love. There have probably been more songs, books, plays, and movies written, performed, or produced about love than any other topic. Remember the words to the Tina Turner song “What’s Love Got to Do With It”?
“What’s love go to do with it, got to do with it/What’s love but a second hand emotion/What’s love got to do with it, got to do with it/Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken”.
This is a sad but accurate description of the world’s version of ‘love’. A searching for affirmation, acceptance, and value that will inevitably result in a broken heart because it is dependent on other people’s decisions and choices. The world’s ‘love’ is really another form of slavery, among many other forms that the world sells as good or necessary.
God’s love is entirely different. The New Testament describes only two types of Love: Agape love (agape, the noun; and agapao, the verb) and philos love (philos, the noun; and phileo, the verb). Many of us have heard about the other Greek love — eros — but that is not in the Bible. Eros is closer to the human type of love that Tina Turner sings about.
God’s love is unlike human love in almost every respect. Agape love is considered by many to be Divine love, yet in many places Scripture shows us that even unbelievers and the wicked can love with agape love. Most fundamentally agape love is based on our will. There are no warm, fuzzy emotional feelings associated with agape love. I decide or will to love the other. Therefore, it is not based on the others behavior, attributes, or performance; it is based on our perception of the others intrinsic worth — they are made in the image of God. It is how God loves us, how we are called to love God, and how, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are called to love others. Agape love sets us free! Our hearts can never be broken because we are not looking for love; we are giving love based on our decision, no matter what the other person’s attitudes are toward us. Agape love is how we can love our enemies.
The other type of God’s love is philos love. Phileo love is often called brotherly love. But again, that is not what Scripture says. Phileo love is best translated as ‘to cherish’. In John 21 Jesus asks Peter three times “do you love me?”. The first two times He asks “Do you agapao me?”. The third time He asks “Do you phileo me?”. He is asking Peter “do you cherish me”. In some ways phileo love is higher than agapao love. And obviously, there is intense emotion involved in phileo love.
Agape love involves the will which arises from our minds. Philos love arises from our hearts. Agape love is love that God calls us to have for all people. As we love with agape love, we begin to see the other in a new light, especially if at first they appear to be unloveable. As we apagao someone, that love can often turn into philos love. Agape and philos never fail, they are both true love.
Neither of these two types of love equate to the world’s love, exhibited by culture today. They are Kingdom love. We cannot love with Kingdom love apart from our lives in the Kingdom of God where we receive the indwelling Holy Spirit. When we love with agape or philos love, we are releasing the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world. The world’s love is based on selfishness, on your meeting my needs and fulfilling my wants and desires. When we love this way, we release evil into the world.
John tells us that God is love. If we love with His love, then love is also God. But the world’s ‘love’ is a tyrant that will never fulfill us, it is a non-love. When we speak of this type of ‘love’, love is definitely not God.
Over the last several weeks God has been teaching me about love. In the following posts I will write about agape and philos love, the strange idea that even the wicked can love with agape love, eros as the world’s ‘love’, the power of love, and about contract vs covenant love. Running through all of these posts will be how God loves us, how we are called to love God, how agapao and phileo can change the world, and how necessary agape and philos love are to our lives with/in Christ. Paul tells us that without agape love we are a useless nobody (what??!!), at least from a Kingdom perspective:
“If I can speak in the tongues of men and even of angels, but have not love (agape) . . . I am only a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers . . . and understand all the secret truths and mysteries and possess all knowledge, and if I have faith so that I can remove mountains, but have not love (agape) . . . I am nothing — a useless nobody (1 Corinthians 13: 1, 2 AMP).
So agape is a big deal!
Grace and peace,
John