This week, Michael writes that “Jesus was remarkable”. He was extraordinary, uncommon, and unique. Jesus Christ is God’s remarkable love made manifest to a fallen world. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. There are several different kinds of love in the Greek language. The first type of love is “Eros”. This is romantic love characterized by the height of emotional response. Erotic love. Christianity.com states that Eros is the word often used to express sexual love or the feelings of arousal that are shared between people who are physically attracted to one another. Eros is used in the Old Testament to express the physical and sensual intimacy between a husband and a wife. Because God deliberately uses the relationship of marriage as an illustration of the relationship He has with His people, the Bible illustrates this love with its varying intensity and the beauty of the relationship that exists between God and those who believe in Him. Pastor and writer Max Lucado once said, “If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning… Face it, friend. He is crazy about you!”
The second type of love is the Greek word “storge.” This is familial love. This is the love that ties and binds immediate and extended families together. Blood is thicker than water because of storge love. Family values are common to a tight knit community. But, as civilizations disintegrate by sin laden vices, popular secular opinion, moral compasses are dismantled, godless intolerance invades, and materialistic egocentric intentions prevail, the bonds of familial love dissolve and the family atomizes and flies apart. Families have been undermined and traditional family values are ridiculed and are considered unfashionable by today’s popular secular culture.
Phileo is the Greek word for brotherly love. This type of love is characterized by friendship and properly denotes a love founded in admiration, veneration, and esteem. Yet today however, most men and women today can’t think of six good friends. There
is a sin-nature manufactured critical spirit that will kill these 3 three types of human love. Those who fall out of love become defensive and break off communication. They stonewall and refuse to talk to each other. According to 2 Timothy 3, in the last days, men will become lovers of pleasure instead of lovers of God. These last days are characterized by irreconcilable differences between competing factions and between God and men.
The highest form of love is the Greek word “agape.” This is the remarkable love of God. Jesus said, “a new commandment I give you, that you love one another even also as I have loved you.” Agape is the totally unselfish spiritual love of God. Agape has the capacity to keep on giving without expecting anything in return. Every other type of love is reciprocal and require love in return. However, agape is the supernatural unconditional love of God. Agape love persists in the face of rejection and continues regardless of the response of the other party. Agape cannot be deflected by unlovable behavior. God’s love never lets how others treat you determine how you treat them.
John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”
Agape is rooted in the eternal life that God gave us through his son when we were born again of his Holy Spirit. The love of God is the divine solution for strife and contention. It is the solution for marriages populated by imperfect human beings.
Let's continue Michael's message of God's remarkable love in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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