Read with Me
1 John 4:7-8 (HCSB)
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Listen with Me
As he frequently does, John returns again to his theme of love for one another. The love that is John’s theme is not what is often called love today. Greek actually had five distinct terms for love, three of which are used in the New Testament.
One kind of love is sexual love, or what today we would call sexual attraction or lust. This is not love in the biblical sense but is simply a physical desire to possess another for one’s own satisfaction. As such, it tends to be temporary, because such strong desire to possess tends to ebb and flow, and it is easily supplanted when someone or something new comes along and reignites the flames of desire toward it.
Another kind of love is friendship or brotherly love. This is a feelings-based love that looks to another for support and companionship. While many friendships, especially those based on respect and mutual interests and not based simply on a desire to not be alone, can be long-lasting, since these friendships are based largely on an emotional bond, they can be broken by conflict, hardships or distance.
But John is talking here about agape love, which is something entirely different. Even though agape is usually translated simply as “love” in many versions of the Bible, just as the other words are, true agape love is not based on feelings or emotions at all. In fact, it has little or nothing to do with all the other kinds of “love” that exists in the world. Agape is actually an orientation of one’s life toward others that puts the best interest of the other person above all personal feelings, all personal preferences, and even above one’s own benefit or even survival.
The key example of agape love is Jesus himself, who not only demonstrated this self-sacrificing agape, but who embodied it. He lived His life in agape submission to the Father and His will, and because of that, He never rebelled against God or committed a single sin. In His public ministry, Jesus lived out agape caring for others, receiving all of them and providing help for everyone who came to Him, moved by agape compassion for their lostness and their need, even when He Himself was grieving and exhausted (Matthew 14:12-14).
And of course, Jesus’ greatest example of self-sacrificing agape love was His willingness to die a painful and horrific death on the cross to pay the penalty for the sins of all mankind, and to rescue lost humanity from an eternity in hell. Agape love doesn’t get much more practical than that.
John is quick to point out that this kind of self-sacrificial love has never had its origins in the human heart. Its only source is God Himself, because in His very nature, God does not just show agape love, He IS agape love. It is that agape love that has caused Him to preserve sinful humanity this long, despite our sin and perversity. It is that agape love that moved Him to send Jesus to the cross. And it is that agape love that holds His hand from sending Jesus back to earth for the final judgement until everyone has had the opportunity to hear to hear about Jesus and to accept or reject Him (2 Peter 3:9).
Pray with Me
Father, our poor English word “love” really is too small and shallow to contain the multidimensional reality of agape. But Lord, even though I may never fully understand all the depths of the reality of agape love, I know that, since it comes from You, You can make it a reality in my own life. Fill me, Lord, with Your agape love, full to overflowing, so that everything that is in me that is NOT agape love is shoved out of my life completely, so that every breath I take, every word I speak, every thought I think, and my every action all serve to glorify You and to move Your agenda forward. Amen.