“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-8a
I’ve been thinking a lot about love recently. Partially, of course, because Maria and I just got engaged last week (we are VERY excited!), but also because we’ve been talking about love with the students at Lifehouse.
In our culture today, love is a buzzword, so much so that it can become difficult to even know what it means. When I asked the students what love is, they described it with words like attraction, feelings, and interests. To them (and a lot of our culture today), love is when you are attracted or interested in something or someone, and it produces all sorts of feelings.
While it is true that those words describe love, they only scratch the surface: love is so much deeper than a feeling or an attraction. Love is a verb and a choice, and we see it’s characteristics in 1 Corinthians 13:4—8: how love seeks to build others up instead of seeking it’s own interest or tearing others down.
For the Greeks, they had several different words for love. C.S. Lewis wrote a whole book on the subject, outlining what he calls “The Four Loves”, and giving definitions for each of these Greek words:
In 1 Corinthians 13, every time the word “love” appears, it’s the Greek word agape. Agape is patient, agape is kind, agape does not envy or boast, etc. This is what perfect love looks like, and this is the kind of love God has for us.
The challenge is that the context of 1 Corinthians 13 says that although we should pursue spiritual gifts, we should pursue agape most of all. In fact, Jesus calls us to agape: when asked about which commandment is greatest, He says to agape God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength and to agape your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:28-31). We are called to more than just attraction or friendships or nice feelings; we’re called to love the same way that God loves us.
I don’t know about you, but that’s scary. I look at that list in 1 Corinthians and think, “I can’t do that.” I do some of those things well, but other areas I’m severely lacking. And even the ones I do pretty well, I don’t do all the time. I can’t love on my own – and you may be thinking the same thing.
Thanks be to God that He did not leave us to figure it out on our own. When Jesus is King of our lives, His Holy Spirit lives within us, and grows spiritual fruit within us – the first of them being love. (Galatians 5:22) He helps us to love Him and others more – because on our own, we can’t do it.
Whether it’s your spouse, your neighbor, your co-worker, or God Himself, ask Him to produce agape, that perfect love, in your life and to help you show agape to those around you. It’s critical for the world to see perfect love on display – “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you agape one another” (John 13:35).