Last week we began our series on the L Word with lust, as an example of what love is not. That means that tonight we will begin to learn about what love is. But which love are we talking about?
If that question doesn’t make sense, don’t worry -- you’re not alone. We only have one word for “love”, right? I love my wife, but I also love hamburgers. I love my kids, but I also love all of you. Those can’t possibly be the same emotions, but yet we use the same word each time. How can that be?
The only way something like that would even be possible or make sense is if there are multiple definitions of the word “Love”. In English, we only have the one word. But in Greek, the language of the New Testament, there are actually four different words that are all translated as “Love”.
Philia is the first type of love I’d like to discuss. Philia is loosely translated as “brotherly love” or, as we’d refer to it today, the love between friends.
Philia love is not something that can be chosen. Think about it for a moment. Do you really choose your friends, or do you naturally hang out with people who become your friends? It sounds good for someone to say, “Go make friends with that person over there, that you don’t know, and you have nothing in common with! Come on, it’ll be easy!”
But it’s really not that easy, is it? You can try all you want, but friendship isn’t something that you choose. Now, don’t get me wrong -- you can choose respect. You can choose to be kind. You can choose to be friendly -- but you can’t really choose friendship. It just happens.
The problem with that is philia love can be confusing. You’ve heard of making the wrong friends or hanging out with the wrong crowd, right? In situations like that we end up feeling philia love for someone who does not return it; manipulating you. Philia love can be corrupted and turned into something evil.
But in its purest sense, you can see that even though this type of love can be corrupted, it originally came from God as a gift to all of us. Turn to 1 Samuel chapter 18. Here we can see philia love expressed in its most pure form.
“1After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. 2From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family. 3And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself.”
The relationship between David and Jonathan is friendship, yes. But it was such a strong friendship that the only way to accurately describe it is to use the word love.
Unfortunately, nowadays when we talk about two men loving each other, the world wants us to think about it in a sexual sense. Sexual love is real, but that’s not what David and Jonathan shared. Sexual love, or Eros, is the type of love shared between a husband and a wife.
Like Philia, Eros cannot be chosen. You can’t choose to fall in love with someone. You can think someone is attractive, sure; but that’s not the same as being in love with them, is it?
Romantic or sexual love is a powerful gift from God. Eros love is what keeps couples together if they have a fight; it’s what ties a husband and wife together into an amazing new creation. It’s incredible!
But I used the term “powerful gift” on purpose. Eros love can also be misused and misapplied just like Philia love can. In other words, it is possible to fall in love with the wrong person. When this happens, the results are typically a lot more painful than that of a bad friendship. Turn with me to Judges chapter 16:4-8 to learn about someone who did fall in love with the wrong person, and what happened afterwards: Samson. Samson was the strongest man who ever lived; but his strength was a supernatural gift from God that was dependant on him never revealing the secret of his strength.
“Some time later, he fell in love with a woman in the Valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah. 5The rulers of the Philistines went to her and said, “‘See if you can lure him into showing you the secret of his great strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred shekels of silver.’”
There are several things to look at here, but first we need to know a bit more about Samson. He was a Nazarite, which is kind of like a Jewish monk. He was not allowed to cut his hair, drink alcohol, and was not to come in contact with corpses or graves -- even those of his own family. Nazarites were specifically set apart by God and for God. In fact, Numbers 6 describes Nazarites as being “holy unto the Lord”. Samson, as a Nazarite, was a little different than other Hebrew men of the time.
So perhaps you can see the issue with him falling in love with Delilah -- a Philistine. The Philistines (the same country Goliath came from, incidentally) were rulers over Israel and did not worship God. As soon as the leaders of Delilah’s country found out about Samson falling in love with her, they paid her 1100 shekels, or about 28 pounds, of silver each to kill Samson.
That was a lot of money.
For a long time, she tries to get Samson to tell her the secret to his great strength. Pick it back up in verse 15:
“Then she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you won’t confide in me? This is the third time you have made a fool of me and haven’t told me the secret of your great strength.” 16With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was sick to death of it.
17So he told her everything. “No razor has ever been used on my head,” he said, “because I have been a Nazirite dedicated to God from my mother’s womb. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man.”
18When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word to the rulers of the Philistines, “Come back once more; he has told me everything.” So the rulers of the Philistines returned with the silver in their hands. 19After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him. And his strength left him.
20Then she called, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!”
He awoke from his sleep and thought, “I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.
21Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding grain in the prison.”
Samson disobeyed God by telling Delilah the secret to his strength -- his long hair. As soon as he did this, he lost his strength, had his eyes gouged out, and was taken prisoner by the Philistines.
Not fun.
See, Samson knew that he shouldn’t fall in love with a Philistine woman, because she was not a follower of God. However, even though he couldn’t stop feeling that way, he could have stopped himself from acting on those feelings. Eventually, the feelings of love for the wrong person would fade and he would be able to move on.
When corrupted the most, Eros love is often indistinguishable from lust, which we spoke about last week.
So we have Philia love and Eros love; two types of love that we can’t really control. There is a third type, though -- Storge. Storge is best described as the love for a family member. One comparison would be the love brothers and sisters have for each other; but perhaps a closer comparison would be the love a parent has for a child. This is perhaps the most natural of loves, and again is something we can’t control. Those of you with brothers or sisters -- you may argue, you may yell and scream, you may even get into knock-down drag-out fights with your siblings, but you do love them. Even if you don’t want to admit it, you love them. If something happened to them, you’d be heartbroken and furious. You can’t help it, you certainly didn’t choose it, it’s just there.
Now, some of you may be wondering how Storge love can be corrupted. A common example would be a parent “loving” their child so much that he or she becomes more important than anything else in that parent’s life -- including God. Their love for their child becomes an idol.
What’s interesting is that the Bible doesn’t specifically mention Storge love. It does, however, describe the complete lack of Storge love, twice.
Romans 1:29-31. “29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.”
The word used for “no love” here, in the Greek, is astorgous, which can also be translated as heartless. They have such a lack of love that they cannot even love their own family.
2 Timothy 3:1-5 doesn’t put it any better. “1People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”
Again, when it says these people are “without love”, it uses the same word as in Romans. Hateful. Heartless. Without love.
Clearly this type of love is also important to God, But, just like Philia and Eros, this love isn’t really controllable. So, then, why does the Bible make such a big deal about love if it’s essentially uncontrollable?
Because there is a fourth type of love: Agape. Agape love is the most powerful type of love, and simultaneously the hardest to do correctly. Agape love is, to put it simply, complete selflessness; the love that God has for us. This is the type of love that we are all called to emulate, because it is the only type of love that we choose to do.
All other forms of love can fade. Friendships end. Sexual attraction fades. Even the love of your family can end if the sin is great enough. But Agape love is eternal. Agape love never fades.
How do I know this? The Bible tells us this, in 1 Corinthians 13. This is often called the “Love Chapter,” and describes Biblical love perfectly. I’ll start with verse 4 and go until the first part of verse 8:
“4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails.”
The actual word used in Greek here is Agape. God-love. Chosen love. This is the type of love that God has for us -- in fact, His Agape Love is so strong that He sent Jesus on the cross to die for us, even though we did not deserve it.
The reason Agape is used over and over in this chapter is because it is literally the most important thing we can do as a believer, and at the same time the most powerful thing we can do. Because Agape love is chosen, it’s always pure. You can’t corrupt Agape love -- as soon as you try, it’s no longer Agape but becomes one of the other types.
If we truly love another person, then we want what’s best for them, even at the expense of ourselves. This is how marriages last; this is how families stay together; this is how any relationship can weather the difficulties that life throws our way.
Your husband or wife gains 600 pounds and becomes the star of a reality show about morbidly obese people? Chances are you will no longer be sexually attracted to him or her. But if you both choose Agape love, your marriage will last.
When my wife's brother died, her parents could have ended up blaming each other and eventually ended their marriage. But they didn’t -- because they chose Agape love for each other and their daughters.
If your best friend does something to hurt you deeply, but they come back to you later truly sorry and feeling terrible about what they did, choose to show Agape love. Forgive them.
Agape love is not easy. In fact, it’ll be one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to do. But Agape love is exactly what Jesus was describing in the Great Commission. When Jesus told His disciples to go out into all the world and share the gospel, His disciples understood that as an example of Agape love. Only loving a complete stranger with Agape love is enough for us to go up to them and save them from certain death by sharing the gospel.
#chooseagape challenge
