There is an obscure people group in Northern Europe, in northern Finland, Norway, and Russia, called the Sami People. They live not far from the arctic circle and, of course, have much more exposure to ice and snow than we do here in south Louisiana. As a result, whereas we have only a couple of words, “ice” or “snow” – and hardly ever use them! — the Sami have hundreds of different words which describe various colors, textures, and uses, among other things, for frozen water. Thus, if we were to translate a Sami word for “snow”, we might be thinking of one general thing, but they a very different and specific thing altogether.
That is always a potential issue when you are dealing with a word which was written in one language, and has been translated into another. You may know that it is so with scripture: the Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and we have translated it into English. This is very applicable as we address the topic of “love” in the Bible, because, as some of you know, there are several different Greek words, all of which we in English might translate “love”, but which have greatly differing meanings. Thus before we get into the description of love which we find in I Corinthians 13:4 and following, we need to stop at the very first word: “Love.” We need to stop right there, because that very first word is a difference maker! We need to take some time to examine the real meaning of this word, because when we read the word “love”, we may be thinking of one thing, when the Bible word has an entirely different meaning altogether. So let’s read this great chapter together again, and then come back and look at the meaning of the word “love” which is used here to describe: “The Real Thing: A Different Kind of Love.”
I. NOT That Kind of Love
There are a number of things that we often mean when we use our generic word “love” that are NOT the kind of love that I Corinthians 13 is referring to. The Greeks used several different words to express these other kinds of loves:
A. “Storge”, a word which refers to what we might call “natural affection.” This word as such is not used in the New Testament, but two derivatives of it are: astorgos (lacking natural affection; the alpha privative – “a” meaning “not”, or “without”, and “storgos”: “affection”) in Ro.1:31 and II Tim. 3:3. There is a natural kind of affection that most people have for persons and even things – like animals. The “awww” feeling that so many people get when they see puppies or kitty-cats – that is just about universal. That “awww” kind of love is storge. It appeals to our affections.
That is a legitimate kind of love. But that is also not the kind of love the Bible is talking about in I Corinthians 13. There are people in the church, quite frankly, whom you are never going to look at and say, “Awww”! There are people at school and in your workplace about whom you are never going to exclaim: “Oooh, aren’t they cute!” You just aren’t – because they aren’t! So God is not commanding us in I Corinthians 13 to have storge love for everybody. You will not feel that for everyone. But that is ok; that is not what He is talking about here. It is a different kind of love.
B. “Eros”. This word is often described as “sexual love” or lust, but actually that does not do justice to the concept the Greeks had of the word. (This word is not found in the New Testament, by the way.) Eros is a romantic kind of love. C.S. Lewis basically says that eros has gotten a “bad rap”; he wrote in his book, The Four Loves, that we can actually learn from eros – from the infatuation, the constant attention, the undying devotion, that lovers give to each other – almost the making of a god of the other person. He says that this is in fact the attitude that we ought to have towards God! HE is to have our heart in that same way; HE is to have our thoughts in that same way. God should be the first One you think of in the morning, and the last One you dream of at night. God should be the One to whom your thoughts are constantly turning. So Lewis says if you have ever been “in love”, you can learn much from eros about how your relationship with God can and should be.
But however useful eros may or may not be in that way, what the Bible is commanding us to exercise towards others in I Corinthians 13 is NOT eros. First off, at its best, eros is going to be limited in its scope to one person – perhaps one’s most ideal person — but we are commanded to love many more than just one person with Biblical love. You cannot have eros love for everyone; everyone is not going to be ideal to you; everyone is not going to be attractive to you. You are not going to be captivated by everyone. So a romantic, captivated love is NOT the kind of love God is commanding in I Cor. 13. You could not possibly give every member of your church, or even of your Sunday School class, this kind of single-minded affection and attention (nor should you!) God commands something entirely different in I Corinthians 13 than eros.
C. “Philia” is a fondness that comes in a relationship of mutual respect. It is often used regarding family relationships. In Matthew 10:37 Jesus said, “He who LOVES father and mother more than Me is not worthy of Me” – the word “loves” there is “philia.” The city name “Phila-delphia” comes from this word: “The City of Brotherly Love”.
But again, Biblical love is NOT a feeling of brotherly love or mutual camaraderie, etc. Like eros, you will only have that for a limited few – but God commands us to love a much wider group of people – even our enemies! You are not going to feel a mutual sense of camaraderie with your enemies! But God’s love DOES apply to even our enemies – and everyone else. He is NOT commanding us to be “fond” of everyone; He is not commanding us to be “romantically captivated” by everyone; He is not calling us to be “friends” with everyone. He is calling us to a different kind of love entirely.
II. A Different Kind of Love
The love which I Corinthians 13 speaks of is a different kind of love than any we have addressed thus far. This word, as many of you know, is the Greek word “agape.” It is a word with a very interesting history. This word was so rarely used before the time of the New Testament, that for years, many believed that “agape” was invented by the authors of the Bible to express God’s unique kind of love. We now know that agape was used before the time of the New Testament, but the use of the word was very rare. It had never been used with the kind of frequency and emphasis that it is in the New Testament. So if God did not “invent” the Greek word “agape” for the New Testament, it certainly seems that He “plucked it out” of an obscure context and raised it up to a higher level, to express a kind of love that men had never known before: the very love of God made known to men: “Agape love.”
I really hate to try to define agape love; I think this chapter of I Corinthians 13 is really the best definition. Pressed to define it, I might say that agape love is gracious, sacrificial action which benefits another. But Ephesians 3:19 says the love of Christ is “beyond knowledge”; so I am not going to even claim to give an all-encompassing description of it in one sentence! Suffice it to say that agape love is God’s kind of love; the kind of love that God has for us – and that He wants us to share with others as well. Let’s look at some things the Bible teaches us about this “Different Kind of Love”:
A. First of all, Agape Love Is Gracious
One of the salient qualities of agape love is that it is gracious: that is, it is not based on the goodness or worth of the beloved, but on the gracious loving nature of the one who bestows it. This is where agape differs from eros, and from some of the other loves. Eros loves the beloved because of the beauty, or the intelligence, or the personality, or whatever they see in the beloved which they consider so ideal. That person is of utmost attractiveness and value to the lover. And the same might be said of philia: there is intrinsic value in the friend; he has earned the loyalty and trust of the one who loves him with that brotherly love, and so on.
But unlike all these other loves, agape is NOT based on any inherent qualities or goodness found in the beloved. There may be nothing good in them whatsoever. But they are loved because the one demonstrating agape love has chosen to love them.
This has tremendous implications for us in our relationship with God, especially concerning our salvation. One of the mistakes people make is in thinking that we human beings must have such value because God sent Jesus for us. That is putting the emphasis in entirely the wrong place. God did not send Jesus because WE are so lovable; He sent Jesus because HE is such love!
C.S. Lewis wrote: “We want to be loved for our cleverness, beauty, generosity, fairness, usefulness. The first hint that anyone is offering us the highest love of all is a terrible shock.” (Four Loves, p. 132) We want to think that there is something worthy or lovely about us that is appealing to God, and which calls forth His love, but the truth is, there is not! God loves us NOT because we are so lovable, but just because He is so gracious in His love.
Lewis then gave an example. He said, “Suppose yourself a man struck down shortly after marriage by an incurable disease which may not kill you for many years; useless, impotent, hideous, disgusting, dependent upon your wife’s earnings; impoverishing where you hoped to enrich; impaired even in intellect, and shaken by gusts of uncontrollable temper, full of unavoidable demands. And suppose your wife’s care and pity to be inexhaustible.” Lewis goes on to say: “What the example illustrates is universal. We are all receiving (agape).” God does not love us because we are so lovable. He loves us because He is love.
Some of you need to apply this to your relationship with God today. You need to quit trying to “earn” God’s love, by coming to church, or reforming yourself, or giving donations, or doing good deeds. You can’t earn God’s love! What you must do is just RECEIVE His gracious love in Jesus Christ. Romans 5:8 says “God demonstrated His own love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God loved you while you were yet in your sin, and sent Jesus to die for you. You need to admit your sins to God, come to Him and trust Jesus as your Savior, and receive His love. But it is all of grace. It is not because you are so “valuable” or lovely to God that He sent Jesus to save you — and it is not because of how good you promise to be after He saves you! It is just because HE is such a God of love. God’s love towards us is all of grace. D.A. Carson, in his book, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, wrote: “At the end of the day, God loves, whomever the object, because God is love.” (p. 63) God’s love is a gracious love.
And because it is, we need to see that our love towards others is also to be a gracious love. We are to love others with the same kind of gracious love with which God loved us. The implications of this for our human relationships are enormous. You and I are not to love people because they “earn” or “deserve” our love. We are to love them because God has commanded us to, whether they are attractive or not, whether they are winsome or not, whether they deserve it or not, whether they return it or not. God has given us a love based entirely on grace – and that is the same love that we are to share with others. It is a “Different Kind of Love” – a love based entirely on grace!
B. Agape Love Is Benevolent
Agape love gives; it is sacrificial; it devotes itself to doing good for the object of its love.
The word “agape” is used in the Gospel of John more than in all of the other gospels. And the very first use of agape in John is the one which appropriately defines it: John 3:16! “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” In that famous verse we find agape love defined, in the sacrificial, gracious gift of God’s Son Jesus for a sinful and undeserving world, that we might have eternal life. I John 4:10 says, “In this is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Agape love is exemplified in God’s gift of Jesus to a world who hated Him, that our sins might be forgiven and that we might have eternal life. Agape love gives; agape love sacrifices so that the beloved might benefit.
–C.S. Lewis wrote: “Divine Gift-love … desires what is simply best for the beloved.”
— it is a selfless, giving love John 15:13 “Greater (agape) has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
–I John 3:17 says: “But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” Agape love is so characterized by giving, that John asks, how can you say you have it, when you don’t give to meet needs? Love is not a “warm feeling” that does nothing. Love acts, gives – as we saw a couple of weeks ago: love is a verb!
If what God did for us in Jesus is the ultimate example of love in the New Testament, we find a story of love in the Old Testament that foreshadowed it. In Hosea, God told the prophet: :1 “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress – even as the Lord loves the children of Israel though they turn to other gods …”. It is almost unfathomable to us that Hosea should love a woman of this type. It is also instructive that God gave him a COMMAND to love her. The prophet’s love for that woman was not based on attraction or feeling, or any of the other worldly kind of loves. Hosea was to “go and love” her. He was to DO the deeds of love for her.
This is what God commands us to do to, as we show agape love. He does not command us to have good feelings for people. He commands us to love them – to DO the deeds of love towards them. You may not “feel” like loving a person: whether it is a spouse or a child or a parent or a co-worker, or a church member, or an enemy – but that is not what God commanded. He just commands you to love – to DO the deeds of love: be patient, be kind, etc. This is His command; it is not to “feel” anything.
Agape is not merely a “feeling” love; it is an ACTING love. John MacArthur wrote: “Love is not a feeling, but a determined act of will, which always results in determined acts of self-giving. Love is the willing, joyful desire to put the welfare of others above your own.” (I Corinthians p. 329) Remember, all of the 15 words in I Corinthians 13:4-8 which describe love are verbs! Thus the expression: “love is a verb.” It ACTS for the good of the beloved.
A few years ago, three brothers in Massachusetts were lost in a swamp overnight, while parents and friends hunted frantically for them in 38 degree weather. They found the boys the next day, huddled together, and chilled, but otherwise unharmed. One of the only injuries that was suffered was by the oldest brother, who had blisters on his legs, because he gave his socks to his little brother, so that he could keep warm, after they had walked through the swamp. That older brother showed his little brother agape love. It would have been one thing for him to casually and thoughtlessly say to his brother, “I love you” – like so many in family members do. It was another thing for him to demonstrate love, by a sacrificial act of giving that benefitted his brother. That is a picture of agape love: it always acts.
God did not love the world so much that He just sat there in heaven and felt sorry for us! He loved the world so much that He ACTED sacrificially: He sent His own Son to die for us! Love is benevolence in action for the benefit of others. It acts. This is just what we will see spelled out in the 15 verbs that are found in the description of agape love in I Corinthians 13:4-8. There you will see specifically how God wants you to act benevolently for the benefit of those whom He has called you to love.
C. Agape Love is Universal
So to whom are we to apply this agape love? The New Testament makes it clear that we are to apply agape love in every sphere of our lives:
— We are commanded to love God. (Matt. 22:37)
— We are commanded to love one another, as followers of Christ. (John 13:34)
— We are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves. (Matt. 22:39) Jesus later defines “neighbor” in the story of the Good Samaritan. It is significant that He told that story in response to the Jewish leaders’ attempt to “limit” the application of “love your neighbor” to a small group. They asked Him: “And who is our ‘neighbor’?” – as if to say, just who are You talking about; surely we are not to love everyone?! And Jesus responded with the story of the Good Samaritan, basically saying that any person you come across in need is your neighbor! Jesus taught that we are to apply agape love to everyone God brings across our paths!
The universal nature of agape love is made even more explicit with Jesus’ command in Matthew 5:44, to “Love our enemies”! It is significant that this is the very first use of the word “agape” in the New Testament – and right off the bat we see that agape is something different than anything that had been seen before. When Jesus commanded His disciples to “love your enemies”, those words fell like a thunderbolt from heaven! You and I have had the luxury of having heard those words all of our lives. But when the crowd heard them on the mountain that day, they had never been spoken in any literature known to man! “Love your ENEMIES?!” That was unheard of! Love your lover; yes. Love your friend, they knew of that. Love the family member or the baby or the kitten, sure. But love your ENEMY?! This was something entirely different. This was another whole kind of love! It is to be applied to EVERYONE: even your enemies!
Scripture makes it clear: we are to apply agape love to every person we meet, in every sphere of our influence. Mark it down: there is no one you will come across in your lifetime to whom you are not commanded by God to show agape love. We are to show agape love universally, because God has shown HIS agape love universally: “For God so loved the WORLD …”. We are not to be selective in our love, because God is not selective in His. The agape love we are to share is to be for ALL! It is universal.
D. Agape Love Originates In God
We need to understand where agape love comes from. It originates in God Himself. I John 4:8 says “God is love”. There is something very important theologically here: from eternity past, the Triune God has been sharing love in heaven. As I told our students in their theology forum last Sunday night: God did not create us in order to have someone to love; that is a mistaken idea. God has no “needs.” He already enjoyed perfect love in heaven in the Three Persons of the Trinity before the world ever was! Jesus said in John 17:24 that the Father loved Him before the foundation of the world. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, were sharing perfect agape love in heaven for all of eternity past, before you and I ever came to be. What happens in salvation is that we are invited to share the love relationship that the Trinity already has enjoyed together. John 17:26 goes on to say, “that the love which you loved Me may be in them” – so we get to be in on that same love that God and Jesus have already been sharing in heaven forever!
So love begins in God; it is found in God. He is the source of love. He made us to join Him in that love. Our sins have separated us from experiencing that love, so God sent Jesus to die on the cross and pay for our sins, so that when we repent of our sins and trust Jesus as our Savior, we can come back into the love relationship with Him that He designed us for. When we are saved, God’s Holy Spirit comes into our lives, and He brings with Him His agape love, and He produces the fruit of love in us, just as Galatians 5:22 says: “the fruit of the Spirit is love …”. Romans 5:5 says, “The love of God has been poured out within our hearts, by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
If you are a Christian today, you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, so you have the God-given source of agape love dwelling in you. John MacArthur writes: “We do not have to manufacture love, we only have to share the love we have been given.” (I Corinthians, p. 330) But if you don’t really have Him in you, you do NOT have any ability to share agape love. I John 4:8 says: “He who does not love, does not know God, for God is love.” The vital question is: do you have the resource of God’s Spirit in your life, which in necessary to produce agape love?
Some time ago, I went to a meeting, and I was just lost. I could not follow what they were saying, I didn’t comprehend what everyone else seemed to be nodding at and understanding. I was at a total loss – until finally I learned that upon coming into the room, everyone else had been given a packet of resources, and I had missed it! When I finally got the resources, then suddenly everything made sense.
In the same way, the Bible says that agape love comes from the resource of the Holy Spirit, who comes into your life when you are genuinely saved. If that Resource is in you, then you have the ability to share the love that He has planted in your heart. But if He is NOT really in you, then just like me at that meeting, you will be at a total loss. You can’t share what you don’t have.
If you are a genuine Christian today, and you have the Holy Spirit in your life, you have in you the ability to love every person you meet. That resource is inside of you. Now, many of us have hindered our ability to express God’s love, through our disobedience. Jesus said in John 15:10, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.” When you disobey God, and don’t keep His commandments, it keeps you from abiding in His love the way you should. Some of you as Christians today need to repent of sin: of ungodly attitudes and actions, so that God’s love can flow through you the way it should. And we will study over the course of these next verses how to apply that love which we have in our hearts to others in some very specific ways.
But some of you today need to admit that just like me in that meeting, you are lost. You don’t have the resources you really need to love. Maybe you’ve been in church, or been “religious”, but you’ve never really come into a love relationship with God through Jesus; you don’t have His Holy Spirit in your heart, giving you the ability to love in the ways we have been talking about today. The fact is, you are at a total loss. You cannot share with others what you do not have yourself! Today, you need to admit your sin to God; admit that you are lost – and ask Jesus to save you, ask Him to send His Spirit into your life, who will bring into your life agape love: “the real thing”; “A Different Kind of Love.”
shawnethomas 