LOVE: (agape)

DO WE appreciate that a wrong understanding of love can frustrate the very purpose of Christian life? Christian living is essentially about pleasing God. And if we want to please God we need to know, above all things, how to demonstrate His love." God is love", and He wants His children to be like Him. How can we do that if we don't know the love that God is?

The way we understand and practise the love that God shows us in His Word is a key factor in whether or not we please God.

We need to be clear about Christian love. It isn't what generally passes for love in the world. It's not the stuff of romantic fiction, or of simple emotional attachment, however fine and noble such attachment may sometimes be. While it's true to say that Christian love has a strong emotional content, there is a lot more to it than that.

Christian love is more than one-dimensional. It is a love that is at the same time both transcendent and practical. Like Jacob's ladder, the top rungs are in heaven, while the bottom legs are firmly on the ground. It is transcendent because it raises our thoughts to a level of harmony with the thoughts of the Almighty. It is practical because it provides a sound and workable approach to daily living. (Though it has to be said that from a purely human point of view this kind of love can appear alarmingly impractical!)

What is love?

In the Greek of the first century there were four words for love: eros, storge, philia and agape. Eros, as one might expect, concerns the physical passions. Storge is more concerned with family affections. Philia has more to do with affection and "falling in love" in the boy-meets-girl situation.

These definitions are an over-simplification, I admit, because the words do cross boundaries on occasions. But in the main this is what they mean. For a more scholarly examination of the words, one of the most readable sources is William Barclay's excellent book New Testament Words. (Well worth adding to your bookshelf.)

The fourth word, agape, is different from the other three. This is the word the apostle Paul used to begin his list of the fruit of the Spirit. And this is the word the Spirit chooses to represent Christian love in the New Testament.

Agape is different. It's the only kind of love that doesn't come naturally. While the other forms of love simply happen to us (are part of our natural make up: our family ties or our attraction to the opposite sex), agape doesn't happen to us at all unless we do something to make it happen. Agape is the one form of love that does not come naturally to the human heart. It is, in fact, against our instincts.

Defining agape

So, how do we define agape? One writer has actually written: "The Bible does not define love. It illustrates it." I believe the Bible does both. The same writer (John Sanderson in his book The fruit of the Spirit) also says that the Bible uses the different forms of Hebrew and Greek words for love indiscriminately––a word I would hesitate to apply to the Spirit's selection of words. If we cannot always follow the reasons for the Spirit's choice of words, or we cannot reconcile a seeming contradiction in the choice, that doesn't mean the Spirit has been indiscriminate. What it really means is that we don't understand why!

W.E. Vine in his Expository Dictionary of New Test-ament Words says that, "since the spirit of revelation has used [agape] to express ideas previously unknown, enquiry into its use, whether in Greek literature or in the Septuagint, throws but little light upon its distinctive meaning in the N.T." He's certainly not the only one I've come across to assert that agape is used in the N.T. to express ideas "previously unknown." But is that really the case?

Vine's mention of the Septuagint alerts us to the fact that the word agape and its derivatives abound in that Greek version of the Old Testament––a book which may have been a major preaching tool for First Century believers, the apostles themselves included. So the word wasn't the 'invention' of the New Testament writers; they found it ready-made in the 'Bible' of their day.

But was the Spirit expressing something entirely new when it used the word agape in the New Testament? Was this a new concept of love, previously unknown? Yes and no is the answer to that one. Yes––there was something new about it, because the Spirit took the agape of the Old Testament and moved it up a gear, so to speak. And no—it was not entirely new, because the essence of agape was already there in the Old Testament.

Old Testament Agape

Have you ever heard somebody say something like: "In a word, it was really good." It irritates me a little, because the person has said he would describe something 'in a word' and then proceeded to use two words: 'really good.' It's a fairly common error. But the apostle Paul, in Galatians 5:14 seems to have committed the ‘daddy’ of all such errors!

"For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

Paul's 'one word' turned out to be seven. So what was he thinking? The Spirit doesn't perpetrate blatant logical howlers. How can these seven words actually be one? Well, 'one word' here is actually 'one logos'––a familiar Greek word to Bible students from the oft wrangled-over opening words of John's Gospel. When Paul said the law was fulfilled in one word, I believe he was making reference to Deuteronomy 10:4.

"And he wrote on the tables, according to the first writing, the ten commandments."

In this verse the Hebrew for 'commandment' is dabar, which means 'a word'. So in Hebrew the ten commandments can, in fact, be the ten words. The Septuagint actually uses the word logos in Deuteronomy 10:4.

What Paul is saying, therefore, is that all the logos/commandments of the law can be summed up in one logos/commandment: love your neighbour as yourself. 'Agape' your neighbour, in fact. This is the underlying message of the whole law given through Moses. Christ put it perfectly when he said:

"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets" (Matt.7:12).

Those words are the Bible's definition of agape. That's it in a nutshell. And, as you can see, agape existed before New Testament times. Even though the word itself doesn't stretch back to the founding of the law, the concept of it was there. But it goes back even further. If "God is agape," and always has been, then the concept pre-dates creation!

Israel, for the most part, failed to grasp the spirit of the law and went to the extremes of either forgetting it altogether, or of letting it tie them up in knots of their own creation, adding hundreds of little self-imposed observances.

Love of one's neighbour should have characterised the way of life of the people of Israel. They should have been a shining example to the rest of the world. Their demon-stration of agape was to have been a key part of their witness as God's people. As it turned out, instead of Israel being the envy of the nations because they had God's law, Israel envied the nations because they didn't have the law!–– didn't have its burdens and restrictions!––many of which they imposed themselves. What perverse creatures humans are!

All this has a direct bearing on us today. When Jesus offered himself as the perfect sacrifice, he did in reality what all the sacrificial enactments of the Law of Moses had only expressed symbolically. The Law was God's way of associating His people with the saviour before the saviour had been born and before he had done his saving work. Else how were they to be saved before their saviour was born? When Christ's saving work was done, the Law had fulfilled its purpose. The enactments of the Law were no longer necessary. But the spirit of the Law––loving one's neighbour as oneself––that never ceased to be a requirement.

Moving up a gear

"God is love." He was love, is love, and surely always will be love. When Jesus came he took this agape-love which was at the heart of the law and he ‘moved it up a gear’. He gave his disciples a 'new commandment':

"A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another" (John 13:34).

That's what I mean by shifting agape up a gear. Jesus lived agape to perfection. He had (and has) the fruit of the Spirit in all its elements in perfect balance. He gave his disciples a living example of what agape means, and they with the Spirit's aid have captured that on paper so we can read for ourselves what it means. He made the ultimate sacrifice for all his 'neighbours', showing how great his love is. This is what God wants us to aspire to. This is how He wants us to understand and practise agape.

It's a whole lot more than simple good neighbourliness and brotherly kindness. It is joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance towards others. It not only involves us thinking, "How would I like to be treated?" when dealing with others; it goes higher to thinking, "How would Christ deal with this person?" Not only, "How would I like to be spoken to?" but, "How would Christ speak to this person?" That's the new dimension to agape which the New Testament gives us.

Who is my neighbour?

A question that needs to be asked when considering agape (the loving one's neighbour as one's self) is the question put to Jesus by a certain lawyer: "And who is my neighbour?" It's typical of someone hung up on the law to want to be this specific. Even love, in his eyes, had to be pinned down and properly organised! This exotic butterfly had to be killed, embalmed and mounted. One doesn't want to love the wrong person, after all! How terrible that would be!

But, in a way, it's a sensible question, because when agape was described in the Old Testament the term 'neighbour' was restricted to fellow Israelites.

"Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord" (Lev.19:18).

Clearly the term 'neighbour' applied to those described as "the children of thy people", i.e. other Israelites. The lawyer probably wanted to know if that was Christ's view. As Christ was quoting Leviticus when he spoke of loving your neighbour as yourself, did he mean this love to extend only to fellow Israelites? Christ demonstrated what he meant by telling him the parable of the good Samaritan. He showed him that a man or woman who loves their neighbour in the true agape sense will not consider a person's national, religious or social background before offering help. Christ showed how incongruous such an attitude was.

Agape is not something you can turn on and off according to whom you're dealing with. If you have it, it's there and it's an integral part of you. You will react to circumstances the way it requires of you. If you can turn it off anytime you like, you haven't got it!

But what about Christ's new command to believers? Isn't that restrictive? It does resemble the love God required among fellow Israelites, doesn't it? Talking to his followers, he said we were to love one another (no-one else) as he had loved us. But if we believe that our love is exclusive to fellow believers, then we're falling into the same error as that lawyer. We might even become guilty of 'passing by on the other side', instead of being a 'good Samaritan'.

The truth is, Christ said the same about love as the law had said. Because the law said love your fellow Israelites, it wasn't correct to reason you therefore loved no-one else. The same applies to what Christ said.

A natural difference

Though it has to be said, a believer's love for other believers will naturally be of a higher order than his or her love for those outside the Truth. For undoubtedly agape is better expressed among fellow believers than it can be between believer and non-believer. It was an important part of Israel's witness to the world that they reflect a high level of the agape of God for all to see. The idea was that people would be attracted to it.

Agape should be the same among us. "As we therefore have opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith" (Gal.6:10). There must be a particularly strong bond of Christ-like love between believers. But this is not to the exclusion of expressing agape to all other people. It wouldn't only be an awful double standard; it would be impossible to have agape and to switch it off when dealing with people outside the Truth. As I said, if you can turn it off, it can't be real.

But there will naturally be a higher level of love among believers. Our love for those who love the things we love will naturally be greater. And we, too, need to be a reflection to the world about us of the agape of God, that people may be attracted to it. This is an important part of our witness. When Christ spoke of this new commandment that we should love one another as he loved us, he added: "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:35).

Let's ask ourselves if the level of love among us is so high that outsiders would notice it. They would notice how we always go out of our way to do good to one another, to help one another. They would notice how we always speak well of one another—always seem to prefer our fellow believers before even ourselves, always show such high regard for them, always think of them as such special people, always treat them as we imagine Christ himself would treat them. Is that the image that our community projects to the world outside? Are we a community reflecting the agape of God? Big question. It's up to us to see to it that we are.

James, the Lord's brother, described agape as "the royal law". It is the chief, the king among laws. It even makes a lot of other laws unnecessary: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"––if we all obeyed that, the statute books would be slim indeed!

More specifically, in its outworking, agape is the full expression of the eight features of the fruit of the Spirit. As I hope to show.