Good morning…
As a high school chaplain, my husband is skilled at communicating with people of all ages. Steve brings to life biblical concepts in simple, down to earth ways. In this week’s devotional message, Steve encourages us to fully receive and to freely share the gift of God’s “agape love”.
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Thoughts on 1 John 4:7-21 by Rev. Steve Allen
I want to share with you a list of some of the things I love – pizza, Mexican food, ice cream, running, my dogs Tate and Gracie, my wife, my kids, football on a Saturday afternoon, the show Survivor, Waffle House, classic rock and bourbon. If you think about it, love is perhaps the most unusual word in the English language because one word “love” expresses such a wide range of feelings and emotions for such a huge collection of things. For instance, I use the same word to express the way I feel about my wife as I do to express the way I feel about a good pepperoni pizza. I use the same word to express how I feel about watching Survivor as I do to express affection for my kids. I’d like to think that the love I have for my wife and kids is a qualitatively different kind than the love I have for hash browns at Waffle House and Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin, but you’d never know based on the single word choice. One word is used to convey so many different things. It’s up to us to discern which kind of love we’re talking about.
Which leads me to wonder, when the Bible says we’re supposed to “love one another”, exactly which kind of love are we talking about? Does that mean I’m supposed to love a person like I love a chicken burrito? When 1 John 4:16 says “God is love,” does that mean God loves me in the same way I love an ice cream sundae? I don’t think so – and yet the Bible isn’t very clear – or is it?
Thankfully the Greeks understood the many different nuances of the word love. They were much more precise with their language. They had a word to express the kind of love we feel for nachos “philos”; another word to express the kind of love we feel for a significant other “eros”; and another to express the kind of love we feel for a friend “storge”. But the word for “love” that shows up 27 times in 1 John 4:7-21 is none of these. Every one of those 27 uses in 1st John uses the Greek word “agape”. (I’ve highlighted them below.) The Greeks used the word agape when they wanted to describe a sacrificial kind of love, the kind of love that says, “I will give up some of what I want for some of what you need.” Agape love persists regardless of the circumstances, the way we feel or the way something tastes. Agape love is the highest order of love, and it endures all things, believes in all things, hopes for all things. Agape love is used to describe God’s love for us and it’s used to describe how we’re called to love one another.
Christian author Bob Goff wrote a book called “Love Does” in which he says “we become in our lives what we do with our love.” Agape love is a doing love – not simply a feeling or emotional love. It’s an active, sacrificial, giving, living, breathing thing that we do every day. So, this week, may we agape love one another, finding ways not just to feel love but to live love, to show love and to do love to the people with whom we come in contact.
1 John 4:7-21
4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
4:9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.
4:10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
4:11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.
4:12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
4:13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
4:14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.
4:15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.
4:16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
4:17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.
4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.
4:19 We love because he first loved us.
4:20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.
4:21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
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God just drew me to read aloud the Bible verses above, exchanging the phrase “agape love” for the word love in each instance. The repetition helps me to experience the fact that the love we are designed to share into the world is agape love. As Steve in down to earth terms: “Agape love is a doing love – not simply a feeling or emotional love. It’s an active, sacrificial, giving, living, breathing thing that we do every day.”
No one has seen God at any time. But if we love one another [with unselfish concern], God abides in us, and His love [the love that is His essence abides in us and] is completed and perfected in us (1 John 4:12, AMP).
As we agape love each other, God’s agape love is completed and perfected in us, day after day, month after month, year after year.
…Sue…
