Agape Love – The Significance of It
Agape Love – The Significance of It.
“Agape love does no wrong to others, therefore agape love fulfills all that God demands.” (Romans 13:10).
In other words: It is impossible for agape love to do wrong to others, so then agape love fulfills all of God’s commands; You can’t go wrong when you agape-love others, so when you add together all of God’s law, you find that the sum total is agape love; Since agape love does no wrong to other people, then all of God’s commands are summed up in agape love; Demonstrating agape love to others fulfills all the teachings of God in Scripture; Agape love does no harm to others, so when you show agape love you have completely obeyed all of God’s commandments; Agape love does no wrong to others, so when you show agape love, you are actually fulfilling the whole point of God’s law. All of God’s instructions in the Scripture are summed up in agape love.
Agape Love – Agape love is the supreme of all the loves, and desires the highest good of someone else. Agape is “the highest level of love known to humanity,” (C. S. Lewis), and thus can only come from above with God as its source. Agape love is the ultimate expression of God’s nature, the essence of His character (see Exodus 34). Agape love is not Eros, which is romantic love. It is not Phileo, which is brotherly love. It is not Storge, which is family love. Agape love is the divine love that can only come to us from the heart of God. Agape love is the love shared between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God is truly the source of all these other loves, but it is only agape love that is poured into our hearts from the Holy Spirit, to those who believe in Christ. Agape love is an eternal virtue outlasting all the other virtues (1 Corinthians 13:8). Agape love is the primary fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) Agape love, the sacred love of God, is universal, it is a gift, it is highly active, it is sacrificial, and it is unconditional.
UNIVERSAL: “For God so agape-loved the world that He gave His only and unique Son, so that everyone who faithfully trusts into Him may have eternal life instead of being utterly destroyed.” (John 3:16). This seems too good to be true. But actually, because of God’s love, it is so good it has to be true. Creator God has an eternal love for all people. He didn’t send his Son for the sake of the privileged or elite. He doesn’t love just those who are religious or pious. God truly loves everyone in His creation, past, present and future; the righteous and the unrighteous; the worthy and the unworthy; the broken and the whole; those who have a lot to offer and those who don’t. He sent His Son for those who would love Him, and those who would hate Him; those who might accept Christ and those who might reject Him; those who would worship Jesus and those who would shout “Crucify Him!” Not one person in the history of the world has had to qualify for God’s love, to somehow earn God’s love, to be considered worthy of His love. “For God so loved the world…” God took the initiative, God started the whole process of agape love. That kind of universal love is agape love, and is intended to spill out into the world through believers in Him.
A GIFT: “For we know how dearly God agape-loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with agape love; God has poured out His agape love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He has given us; We can now experience the endless agape love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us!” (Romans 5:5) The most virtuous person on the planet cannot manufacture agape love as if it’s merely a highly esteemed trait. We don’t have it in us. We aren’t born with the ability to show agape love. It is impossible for us to demonstrate agape love on our own, because it can only derive from God, and not from human nature. Agape love is an undeserved gift. Faith in God comes first, even a microscopic faith. And then agape is poured into our hearts as believers, and it then spreads to the world. This divine love being poured into our hearts is meant to be demonstrated to others through acts of mercy, kindness and compassion. This love, this affectionate yearning that others are blessed, spills over from our hearts only after being poured into our hearts through a faithful submission to the Lord. Through the Holy Spirit, agape love can realistically become second nature to us and in us, displacing the old lesser loves in a Christian’s life. Agape love is the means by which God’s divine love may reach the world. Agape love is an eternal virtue, and it lasts forever (1 Cor. 13:8). Agape love is the primary fruit of the Spirit, the divine love offered to us to spread God’s love to others. Love poured into us, love splashed out to others… God’s gift to us that we would offer that gift to others.
UNCONDITIONAL: God’s agape has always been offered to the world unconditionally, so that same divine love is offered to others in the same way. Our love for others is fleshed out by desiring the highest good for someone else. Our love doesn’t expect anything in return, it is a love that gives but doesn’t take. Our love does not seek out those who would somehow be worthy of love, or could earn God’s love. Agape love is that love which is offered to hateful enemies (Matthew 5:43-46), to those who love nothing better than to hurt you and disrespect you. Agape love even desires what’s best for those who hate God. Agape is offered freely, no strings attached, to all made in the image of God. When we love an image-bearer, we are honoring our Creator. Agape love tends to involve, sooner or later, forgiveness.
SACRIFICIAL: Agape love is the ultimate demonstration of unselfishness, of self-denial for the benefit of others. Agape develops the habit of forgetting yourself on purpose. It is the willingness to remain a daily martyr of goodwill, picking up one’s cross so others are blessed. Agape love sometimes is demonstrated at great personal cost. It could even mean giving up something that is rightfully ours so that someone else can receive something he probably hasn’t earned. The clearest and most profound example of sacrificial agape love was the death of the Innocent One, Jesus Christ, on the Cross. He gave up His life for those who didn’t deserve it, which includes all of humanity. “No one has greater agape love than a person who is willing to lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13).
ACTIVE: Agape love is not theoretical, it is not abstract. It is not just a great idea ripe for discussion. Agape love actually does things, it acts out and demonstrates love. Agape doesn’t merely think about loving others with God’s love, agape fleshes out the love and makes it visible. Agape is filled with genuine empathy and not mere sentimentality. Feelings and emotions have nothing to do with agape love. Agape is an act of the will, a deliberate decision to demonstrate God’s love to others whether they deserve it or not, whether we “feel like it” or not. Agape loves what is best for someone else, which could mean accountability and a proper justice. It could mean mercy, too. That’s why agape love depends on the wisdom of God to discern what is best for someone else. Sometimes agape love is inactive, in the sense of not intervening, and stepping back if it is appropriate. Agape love is literally practical that way, and wants to put into play an imitation of Jesus as He knew when and what to say, what to do. Sometimes agape love appears to be rather inconsistent. We know that the Son of God was completely filled with agape love, and that He went around doing good, touching the untouchable, loving the unlovable, embracing the unclean, accepting those who were rejected, serving those who were unlovely and broken. If one wonders what agape love looks like in action, read the gospels and imitate Jesus. When we need to be reminded of what marks the life a true believer, we fix our eyes on Jesus and witness agape love in the flesh.
“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Agape-Love each other. Just as I have agape-loved you, you should agape-love each other.” (John 13:34-35).
It has been made abundantly clear in Scripture that agape love is indispensable to the Christian life, that demonstrating God’s divine love is not merely important, it is essential. What does life look like when agape love is not demonstrated, not absorbed in the heart, not the premier motivation for us as we live with other people? Can we even have any kind of meaningful life without agape love? It appears from Scripture that we won’t even begin to flourish, to flesh out the purposes of our creation, if we don’t first receive agape love from the Spirit and then share that divine love with others. According to 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, a life without agape love is empty even when it looks full, it is pointless even if we are successful. When we read this, the greatest love chapter in the Bible, every time we read “love,” the actual wording in the original language is “agape love.” A paraphrasing of those verses could look like this:
… Even if I could speak every language, including the language of the heavenly angels, and was a golden-tongued orator able to sway a huge crowd, the truth is that if I didn’t speak those words with agape love in my heart, my words would ring hollow to God’s ears, and would be reduced to the insignificance of irritating background noise, noisy prattling, or meaningless echoes.
… Even if I was known as a spiritual giant, a Biblical scholar, with a profound understanding of God’s hidden secrets, or if I possessed vast supernatural knowledge, or was a world-famous faith healer or miracle worker, were I unable to love from a heart full of agape love, I would be a waste of talent, my gifts would be pointless in God’s eyes, and I would be a spiritual failure.
… Even if I gave all my possessions to the poor, spent all my time feeding the hungry, and even sacrificed my life to serve the needy, if I wasn’t motivated by God’s agape love, my good deeds would be empty of godly purpose, without pure Christian conviction, and it would all be considered by God to be limited in its eternal value and merely earthly social work.
… Even if I was considered an expert in self-care, or authored a best-selling Christian book, or ambitiously raced to the top of my profession, was admired by the world, and I was the owner of all the creaturely comforts, full of power, wealth and influence, were I not full of agape love, I would still be living an empty and deeply unsatisfying life, recognized by God as an unfulfilled low achiever, and ultimately considered to be an unsuccessful person.
It’s obvious… we cannot afford to overlook agape love in our lives. The only way to make God visible in this life is to receive and live in His agape love. Agape is what God is made of, it is the true substance of God Himself. Remember now, John didn’t say “Love is God,” as if any old kind of love is acceptable, that they are all equal; as if one’s ability to show human love is somehow the same as and equal to the divine presence of God; as if expressing any kind of love is sufficient to replace a belief in God. Loving your spouse, loving your best friend, loving your family, they are all blessed by God and have God as their source. But they are like navigable streams coming from a huge, thriving river. The River is Agape Love, and that River’s waterfall of divine love comes to us from heaven and ready to splash into our hearts.