Part VI: Re-examining Love
In the previous two posts, we’ve tried to clarify what Paul means by hope and faith within the Christian trivium. In this post, we’ll attempt to recover the true meaning of what both he and Jesus meant by love. While hope and faith are important, love is without a doubt the most critical of the three.
The word “love” in English is a very flexible but non-specific word. People love their mothers. Some love pizza. Others love the latest gadget or app. Some tell me they love a certain Netflix series. Many love their country. Very few love their jobs.
Sometimes when we say that we love something we simply mean we have sentiment or a “strong liking” toward it. But when Jesus spoke of love, we understand that he was after something much deeper than that. The Apostle Paul describes this love as “the most excellent way”. Not just a deeper “liking”, but love on an altogether different plane. It was love in its highest form, originating as a primary attribute of the divine nature of God Himself. For this reason we’ll refer to it as divine love.
Counter to this kind of love is the “love” that the world offers:
The world defines love by conventional wisdom. The world’s love isn’t allowed to identify with problems and offer a better way. It must accept and celebrate frustration and dysfunction. Love is no longer about patience and constraint but demands complete liberty in the pursuit of fleeting, situational happiness.
The world’s love is inferior–substituting nurturing and growth with maintenance and wardenship. It’s content with second-best for the beloved. Its vision is limited to what it only sees possible through laws, taxation, and the disengaged handouts from intermediaries.
Instead of being personal and sacrificial, worldly love is measured in terms of utilitarian social impact filtered through ever-shifting ideologies and imparted through the uncaring machinery of political institutions. It employs distributed ownership of a vacillating standard.
This has resulted in a skewed, cheap, paranoid version of love–a counterfeit love. It’s no wonder it’s ineffective at changing the world and keeps others in a constant state of need. Because the voice of the world is deafening, many believers today have bought into such love, assuming it to be the highest form that can be offered. It’s high time we reclaim the genuine article and demonstrate it again in the name of our King.
But what exactly is divine love? What does it look like? How is it different?
In this post we’ll seek to unveil divine love through entomology, by examining scriptural examples, and finally by considering its source.
Clues from Greek Etymology
When it comes to the meaning of Christian love, Greek etymology is traditionally thought of as a good place to start. It does help (a little).
If you’ve gone to church for any length of time I’m sure you’ve heard that there are four words in Greek for the word “love”. Only two of them are used in the Bible. Here’s a quick review:
- Storge = Love among family members due to the bonds of pre-existing relationships.
- Eros = Romantic or erotic love.
- Philia = Brotherly love. Love among friends and close acquaintances.
- Agape = To have a warm regard for and interest in another; to have high esteem for or satisfaction with something, cherish, have affection for, love, take pleasure in.1
To be clear, the last one, agape, is the one that Paul uses in the Christian triad of faith, hope, and love. It’s also the one that the gospels use when referring to the greatest commandment to love God and your neighbor. It’s the love used to describe the type shared by the Father and the Son by way of the Spirit. It’s the love that believers are to have with the Lord, with one another, with their neighbor, and even with their enemies.
When Jerome translated the New Testament from Greek to Latin in 386 AD, he sometimes translated the Greek word agape to caritas. This is where we get the English word “charity” which suggests a love beyond mere affection, involving benevolence, compassion, and mercy. Many feel this is a more accurate rendering of agape in the Christian sense (though that has more to do with 12th century French than what it actually meant in Greek or Latin).
What may surprise you is that agape didn’t originally mean divine or Godly love. It was simply another word in the Greek lexicon to define a different quality of love. For example, 750 years before Jesus walked the earth, the Greek author Homer used the word to suggest “affection” toward something or someone. Another example is where the word is in Greek polytheistic culture where agape is mentioned on a sepulchral inscription, most likely to honor an army officer held in “high esteem” by his country.
While the word existed prior to Christianity, agape was not widely used and was not as firmly established as other Greek words. It wasn’t until the apostles Paul, John and other New Testament authors revitalized and repurposed that it gained the definition of divine love that we associate with today2.
To muddy the waters further, the language that Jesus actually used during His public ministry was likely Aramaic. The word He most likely used for love in the New Testament was the Aramaic word chav (transliterated khuba in English). Chav literally means “kindle” and refers to something dear to one’s heart, something for which one feels the kind of love that is expressed both in words and in actions3. It’s actually less precise of a word than agape in that it contains facets of both agape and phileo in its meaning. Eventually, those who penned the original Greek texts decided on agape as the most appropriate Greek word for the love that Christ sought for His followers to extend to the Lord and one another.
All this said, etymology alone doesn’t help much when it comes to providing a deep and precise understanding of divine love.
Some things are best understood through explanation and demonstration by those who understand it themselves.
Clues from 1 Corinthians 13
So what was the Apostle Paul’s expectation of divine love?
Paul wrote 1 Corinthians attempting to answer several questions and respond to several critical issues with which the church in Corinth was burdened. In chapter 12, he spends time discussing the proper use of certain spiritual gifts and how they are all important in their own way. In chapter 13, he then reminds them that, even more important than any spiritual gift is the practice of love.
Here he goes into great detail about what love does and doesn’t do within a small, close-knit church group dynamic. Using the Amplified Version to pick up on nuances from the original Greek, he describes love this way:
Love endures with patience and serenity, love is kind and thoughtful, and is not jealous or envious; love does not brag and is not proud or arrogant. It is not rude; it is not self-seeking, it is not provoked [nor overly sensitive and easily angered]; it does not take into account a wrong endured. It does not rejoice at injustice, but rejoices with the truth [when right and truth prevail]. Love bears all things [regardless of what comes], believes all things [looking for the best in each one], hopes all things [remaining steadfast during difficult times], endures all things [without weakening].
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (AMP)
If you look closely you’ll notice that he switches gears throughout this passage. He starts the passage out in first gear by describing several general attributes of love that are generally displayed, whether from man or from God. Love is always patient, kind, and thoughtful toward others. This certainly includes the need to submit to one another as believers. Love is outward-facing and selfless. It always seeks to elevate its object. To love man is to provide for his betterment. To love God is to obey and glorify Him since He is already and in all ways perfect.
After picking up some speed he switches to second gear, describing how love appears in a ‘real world’ close social context. Real life is where residual fleshly tendencies will create problems and where simply living a shared life will naturally create friction. Love doesn’t brag about what you might have that another may not. It’s not rude toward others or easily provoked by others when offense is made. It doesn’t take offense easily and doesn’t keep track of offenses given (either intentionally or unintentionally). It doesn’t seek to split the church into factions to justify an unjust reaction against another’s offense.
Lastly, Paul switches into high gear, describing love as the undergirding or structure under which the church can endure the most difficult of circumstances. Love bears all things. It maintains belief that God is sovereign–He is our grace in any situation. It retains a fixation on the hope to which we were called. Love endures any circumstance.
Rather than shifting gears Paul speaks of love as a continuously variable transmission–where all these things are engaged at once and emphasis is transferred wherever it’s needed.
To engage in divine love is to enter into the flow of the Lord’s grace.
Clues from the Parable of the Good Samaritan
But what does divine love look like in practice?
Luke tells of an account where an expert in the Hebrew law asked Jesus what he needed to inherit eternal life. After confirming the law’s command to love God and love your neighbor, the expert, seeking to justify his lack of obedience through a legal loophole, went on to ask Jesus what the technical definition of a “neighbor” was. Jesus then answered his question with the parable of the Good Samaritan–the model neighbor:
In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
Luke 10:30-35 (NIV)
While there is no explicit mention of the word love in any form in this parable, it’s clear that Jesus’ story was meant to provide an example of divine love put into practice.
For context, the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was about 17 miles away. The geography is very mountainous, rugged, and extremely arid. While the road from Jerusalem to Jericho heads north-east, both the victim and the Levite were going “down” in elevation because Jerusalem is at a much higher altitude. By “road” it was a very narrow footpath that barely allowed two persons to pass one another. It was not uncommon for thieves to hide along the road and attack those traveling alone.
Because the priest was heading to Jericho, he likely had no ceremonial duties that would be threatened by helping the victim. But because the victim was “half dead” (meaning, having the appearance of being dead) he didn’t want to take any chances of becoming unclean by touching the body. The Levite had less restrictive laws regarding cleanliness, but avoided the victim nonetheless.
Their attitude highlights a principle of divine love. Namely that there will always be justifiable and readily available excuses not to offer love to someone. For some, it may be an inconvenience–we just don’t have time to show love to another. For others, fear, logic, cultural tendencies, or over-emphasis of some law will prevail. For still others there is offense, anger, jealousy, or misunderstanding.
The Jews hated Samaritans (and vice versa). This is rooted in the Samaritan’s historical transgressions, not the least of which was intermarrying with the Assyrians as prohibited by the law. To the Jews, Samaritans were half-breeds, dogs.
But the Samaritan of this parable transcended the cultural expectation. He took pity on the bruised, beaten, and bleeding Jew. Instead of leaving him to bake in the sun, he bandaged and mended him. Instead of being inconvenienced, he deviated from the day’s mission, placed him on his donkey, and took him to an inn–likely taking care of him throughout the night. Before he left the next morning, he gave the innkeeper two denarii (two day’s wages) for his safekeeping, with the promise to return with full reimbursement for any additional expenses. The act was a sacrifice of his effort, time, money and possibly even his pride.
Lastly, there’s a part of this story that’s not often discussed. Jericho was nowhere near Samaria. It was a place where wealthy Jewish priests lived. Imagine the sight of a Samaritan carrying the beaten body of a Jew through the streets. The optics of the situation alone could have easily triggered a crowd of self-respecting Jews.
For the Samaritan, acting in love meant taking on significant risk to his own life.
Clues from the Divine Nature
Despite what some would have you believe, divine love was not acquired from an evolutionary response to environmental stimulus. It is not a set of “holy attributes” made up by biblical authors. It is not merely a set of ethics that we reverse-engineer out an ancient tome.
In the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he mentions the “divine nature” as one of two “invisible attributes” of the Lord. The divine nature is simply God’s character or disposition. It includes the attributes of His personality, the most prevalent being love. Divine love is the very nature of God Himself. The Apostle John tells us that “God is love.” He is its source. Divine love is what it is because it is who He is.
To understand divine love is to know the heart of God.
I suppose that God’s nature could have been evil. It also could have been indifferent. It could have been inconsistent and unpredictable.
Why wasn’t it any of these (or something else entirely)?
I don’t know, but it wasn’t. God’s eternal, divine nature is unconditional, persistent love in its greatest magnitude and purest expression. It is as timeless and eternal as the Trinity itself.
You’ll recall in Part I – The Eternal Purpose, that before time began the Father and the Son engaged in eternal fellowship, unbroken communion, and boundless intimacy by way of the Spirit. The sublime depth of this love cannot be overemphasized. The Father poured it into the Son and the Son poured it back into the Father. In love, they participated in a continuous offering of One to Another out of their divine nature.
Notice how divine love was the basis of the eternal purpose…
Why did the Father want the Son to have preeminence among all creation?
- Because divine love seeks the best for the beloved, the Father wanted to elevate His Son to the highest place.
Why does God want to expand the eternal fellowship of the Trinitarian Community to beings of His creation?
- Because God loved mankind so much, He wanted them to fully experience divine love. The only way that can happen is for man to enter into fellowship with the Divine Community.
Why does God want His people to bear His image? Why does He want His people to rule and reign over creation?
- Because divine love seeks to elevate others to their highest calling and purpose.
Being full of divine love, Jesus Christ descended into the created realm, setting the example as a human demonstrating divine love to other humans. He taught a selfless love that sought intimacy, eclipsing legalism and mechanical obedience. He taught that sacrificial acts of love were for God and others and not for self-promotion. He taught a love vested in forgiveness and grace over vengeance and retribution. He stripped away centuries of man’s tradition and legal interpretation so that the loving heart of His Father could be once again revealed. Not only did he teach divine love, but He demonstrated it by healing the sick, lame, blind, and the possessed. He spent time and formed relationships with the oppressed, maligned, and outcast. He forgave sins and actively removes guilt and shame. He loved and nurtured his disciples (both women and men), being patient and forgiving with them. He taught that the proper response to receiving divine love is not only to return it to the Lord but also to share its overflow with those around us–even our enemies.
Ultimately, he demonstrated the last full measure of love by allowing Himself to be hung on a cruel tree…
…offering himself as the atoning sacrifice for all human sin…
…losing everything so that humanity might gain everything.
Jesus demonstrates that divine love is intimate, penetrating, and reckless. It pursues with a furious passion. Nothing will stand in its way.
We have a tendency to think that Jesus, being divine, was a free agent to act divinely and love others as He encountered situations when it seemed like the right thing to do. (What would Jesus do?) But in His own words He explains this was never the case.
I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.
John 5:19-20
I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.
John 6:38
The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.
John 14:10b
For Jesus, a critical ingredient to genuinely expressing divine love was intimate, continuous connection with and obedience to His Father. If it was important for Jesus, it should be important for us also.
Connecting the Dots
From the analysis above, we’ve learned that divine love is a deep and multi-faceted idea that does not neatly fit into a single, compact definition. But after reviewing the clues and connecting the dots, several key points emerge:
1. Love presumes action over mere sentiment or intentions. It is an act of the will–a choice that might require us to transcend fear, culture, or circumstances.
2. Love is kingdom-facing–always seeking the best for the beloved in terms of what God (not the world) offers. It puts our hope into practice.
3. Love is selfless. It shifts the spotlight to elevate the beloved over the lover. It requires us to submit to another brother or sister out of reference for Christ.
4. Love is unconditional. It gives everything and expects nothing in return.
5. Love resists personal offense. It absorbs the blows of transgression into the infinite sufficiency of Christ.
6. Love presumes being shared within a community of believers. It is the lens through which we view the function of the Body. It requires connection and closeness as we are called to “love one another deeply”.
7. Love is the proper response to pity and compassion.
8. Love is sacrificial. It demands our giving away part of ourselves or our possessions. This could include our time, our money, or our effort. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the love. It may even require us to risk to our own lives.
9. Love will often be an inconvenience. It often demands that we deviate from our immediate plans and goals. Opportunities will come in ways that can easily be rejected.
10. The Lord is the source of divine love. Man is incapable of practicing it without Him. The world cannot understand it. By the world’s measure, divine love is penetrating, foolish, passionate, reckless, and insane.
From these principles, I’d like to propose a definition of divine love that hits the high points. For divine love is:
A divinely supplied, unconditional act of the will
that seeks to elevate others
by demonstrating God’s affection for them
through personal sacrifice
Man loves to create laws out of principles. If I made a list requiring specific actions for you to practice love I would be a legalist. I refuse to become one of those. However, I would highly encourage you to actively meditate on divine love, avail yourself to God’s direction, and love others as you are led. What exactly that looks like for you will depend on your circumstances as you live each day and the divine appointments God has prepared in advance for you to do.
In the words of the Apostle Paul, that is the most excellent way.
Loving God
Up until now our discussion has focused on love directed toward our “neighbors”–inside the church, outside of it, and even our enemies. But we’re also commanded to direct our love toward God–taking the love He gives us and returning it back to Him.
What does that look like? How is it the same as loving our neighbors? What makes it different?
Reviewing our 10 key points above, we note several similarities and some fascinating parallels between loving God and loving our neighbors. In some cases, there are underlying inter-connections and equivocation.
For example, loving both the Lord and our neighbor is about action over intentions. Demonstrating love in both cases is vested, deeply personal, selfless, unconditional, and sacrificial. Either way, it will often be an inconvenience to our lives.
Whereas, through love, we elevate others by encouragement, assistance, and imparting the kingdom to them, we elevate the Lord through praise and celebration. To love the Lord is to ascribe to Him infinite worth. (After all, He’s infinitely worthy.) To love the Lord is to praise Him as a manner of living. Praise is a sacrifice and we are to be living sacrifices.
Both Jesus and the Apostle John explain that we demonstrate love for God through obedience to His commands (John 14:21). Similarly, believers love one another by submitting to one another in reverence to Christ. For our submission to one another demonstrates our obedience to the Lord.
What Jesus says in Matthew 22:34-40 is interesting. When asked what was the greatest commandment, he responds that to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” is the greatest commandment (Deuteronomy 6:5). But then he describes a second command as also the most important, to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).
What he’s saying here is that in some deep, mysterious way, by loving our neighbor (the needy, hurting, and maligned) we’re somehow directly loving the Lord (Matt. 25:34-40). He’s saying that love for God and love for neighbors are often two sides to the same coin–we demonstrate our love for God by loving our neighbors.
That is what loving God looks like.
But Here’s the Rub
So hopefully in this post we’ve helped to unveil the kind of love that the Lord expects in His followers. Seems like He’s set a pretty high bar. This kind of love doesn’t come naturally to us.
You may recall multiple times when you’ve reached out in love and it wasn’t received the way you hoped. Maybe you’ve been stung by close relationships–even among church goers. Maybe you have a past that makes love and fellowship difficult. Maybe you’re in the kind of job (pastor, parent, teacher, etc.) that demands that you continually love others and you’re frankly burnt out.
Do you feel inadequate?
Are you incapable of the high calling to love others?
I hope so.
Because I’ll let you in on a little secret.
Are you sitting down?
Ready?…
It is impossible for any human being to demonstrate divine love.
What are you saying? What about Jesus’s commands to love? To love God with “all your heart, soul, mind, and strength”? To “love your neighbor as yourself”? Aren’t these the greatest commandments? Are you saying the Lord gave us an impossible task that He’s now going to hold us accountable for?
Yes, I am…
…and in the next post we’re going to talk about what we do about it.
1. Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (BDAG)
2. https://turningtogodsword.com/agape/
3. https://www.aramaicbibleinstitute.com/love
Image credit: Parable of the Good Samaritan, Domenico Fetti, 1622