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What is love? According to merriam-webster.com, love is both a noun and a verb. As a noun, the first definition of love is a strong, affection for another from kinship or personal ties; attraction based on desire; and affection based on admiration. As a verb, love is defined as holding someone dear; to feel passion for; and to take pleasure in. These are some of the ways the world has come to understand the word LOVE. The website mentioned above actually has about nine definitions for love as a noun and four for love as a verb.
In classic literature, love seems always to be determined through both celebration or tragedy and almost always based on feelings. In literature, there tends to be the "happily-ever after" love where the two characters meet, fall for each other, break up, get back together, and get married. This seems to be the most common form of expression of love in movies and books. This type of love is often based on the feelings they have when around each other. Butterflies in the stomach; hearts a-flutter, etc.
Then there is the love based on tragedy. Romeo and Juliet is probably one of the best-known examples of this. Two characters secretly meet and fall for each other and in the end they both end up dead because they can't bear to be without each other. This type of love is also based on feelings. "I will never feel love again", "There is a hole in my heart". I am not discounting love with feelings. It is an essential part of life. Without feelings, we would all be rather robotic. My point is that, in the view of the world, love based on feelings is all that there is.
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| Kari Farnell |
God and His Word beg to differ with this viewpoint. In
The Voice translation of the Bible, there are 818 verses about love. Many of them DO deal with a type of love based on feelings. The New Testament was originally written in Greek. Two Greek words used for love are
philia or
phileo, meaning friendship and
eros meaning sexual love. These Greek roots you are probably familiar with. The word erotic stems from the Greek eros and the name of the city of Philadelphia has its roots in the Greek as well. That is why it is referred to as "The City of Brotherly Love". In the Bible, there are many references, especially in the Old Testament, to the
eros love. When Adam and Eve first begin to "multiply"; when Abraham and Sarah had Isaac; and even in the Book of Solomon.
There are quite a few more examples in both the Old and New Testaments about the philia/phileo love. The most well-known example, found in both Testaments, is otherwise known as the "Golden Rule": Love your neighbor as yourself. Verses speak of the love between friends like Jonathan and David or even Jesus and Lazarus. Jesus even encourages us to love our enemies.
And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as he loved himself.
1 Samuel 18:3
and everyone noticed how much Jesus must have loved Lazarus.
John 11:36
But I tell you this: love your enemies. Pray for those who torment you and persecute you—
Matthew 5:44
The Greeks had a few more words for different kinds of love which I'm sure can be found in the Bible, but the word I want to focus on is the greatest word for love and that is
agape. This type of love is an unconditional love. This can be described as a familial love as well. As parents, we hate it when our children screw up and do the wrong things. It disappoints, but it doesn't keep us from loving them. It might even anger us, but still we love them. The same usually holds true if our parents or siblings do something that disappoints or angers us. It doesn't cause us to stop loving them. We may not like them very well at the moment, but usually we still love them.
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This is the type of love that God has for us and that we should have for God. There are many verses in the Bible that describe and refer to this love of God for us. This type of love is NOT based on emotion or feelings. Unconditional--God loves us regardless. He may often be disappointed or even angry with us; but He does not stop loving us! We are His children and because He is God, He loves us far beyond what any human could. Even if we screwed up so badly that our human family no longer loved us, God would still love us! He so desires a loving relationship with ALL people that Jesus came to earth as a baby; grew up the same as the other children of that day; spoke with friends and strangers day after day to tell them of God's love for them; and eventually died on the cross, even though He didn't do anything wrong. Because humans do bad things, otherwise called sin (but God still loves us), and God cannot be around sin, Jesus took our consequence. He was sent to hell instead of us. This doesn't mean we no longer do bad things, it means that the consequence of those bad things, which was hell, is no longer a consequence for those that believe in what Jesus did, tell Him they are sorry for their bad things, and ask His forgiveness. It also doesn't mean that those who DON'T accept what Jesus did are free from the consequence of hell.
There is no greater way to love than to give your life for your friends.
John 15:13
But think about this: while we were wasting our lives in sin, God revealed His powerful love to us in a tangible display—the Anointed One died for us.
Romans 5:8
For God expressed His love for the world in this way: He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not face everlasting destruction, but will have everlasting life.
John 3:16
We know what true love looks like because of Jesus. He gave His life for us, and He calls us to give our lives for our brothers and sisters.
1 John 3:16
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The great news is that Jesus did not stay in hell. He paid our penalty and then came back. This gives us the assurance that we will come back to life after we die, either in heaven, if we accept Jesus' gift, or in hell if we don't. More to come on this later. If you want to know more about this NOW, click
here.
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So we can see there are many types of love in the Bible, but that the greatest love of all is the love offered to us by God. That
agape love that we all desire is the love that God has for all of us.
