With it being Valentine’s Day, I thought I would post a Scripture verse about love. Now we need to remember, that God’s love — unconditional, unfailing, never ending, perfect — is MUCH different than the Hallmark, diamond commercial, See’s candy, 1-800-FLOWERS, Victoria’s Secret kind of commercial love of the world. We have bastardized the word love — we use it for many levels. Not just the “I love you”, but “I love my car”, “I love the Dallas Cowboys”, “I love Dr Pepper”, “I love Survivor”, “I love In N Out Burger”, “I love”, “I love”, “I love”. The word has lost its true meaning.
Additionally, we have allowed Eros love — lust — to come to mean love. I like how the ancient Greeks had different words for love. Agape love was the unconditional or sacrificial love – like a parent would have for a child. And like God has for us. I believe this is the most important kind of love.
Eros love was the passionate, sensual love for a lover or spouse. This is the love we have warped into lust and the love that predominately owns our commercial Valentine’s Day.
Philia is the brotherly love (hence the city of Philadelphia being the city of brotherly love) that we have for dear friends and comrades. This is a love that is genuinely there but, especially among men, is shied away from due to the “gayness” factor. You don’t hear many guys saying “I love you” unless it is father/son. That is too bad in our society today. I can truly say that there are guys that I philia love — men who in my life are very important, and not just my Dad.
And while agape and philia love are very important, and probably more common in our everyday lives, isn’t it interesting that our commercial, media society have bombarded us with eros love — or the lust version of it.
The love in the verses below is the agape love. It is what we are called to do to the world — to love it — unconditionally, sacrificially, no matter what people think, and no matter how we are treated. And while we frequently fail, we should reset our minds to think in terms of this love — the perfect love modeled by Jesus.
And I am going to quote a few different versions of the same verse because I think they give it some very nice color.
1 Corinthinans 13:13
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” – NIV
“But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.” – The Message
“And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” – New King James
Happy Valentine’s Day!
…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net
