Why God

Love (Agape) in Christianity

Introduction

Agape (selfless, charitable) love in Christianity is hotly debated. There are some who believe that certain elements of Christianity overemphasize love. There are others who emphasize love, but who do so in such a way that they cheapen and distort agape love to a false sense of grace, removing certain divinely inspired truth & wisdom from love like some would prefer to remove elements of the Bible that they don’t like. They shift God into their own image of what they think He should be and do the same to agape love.

Divinely inspired agape love comes from the purest form of love in existence, found in God, expressed in the Bible, that sweetly brings life and human flourishing to a world in need if it is accepted. Agape love exists in forms apart from God, but its purest expressions come from a life abiding in the God who is love who enables people to agape love like they never could on their own (1 John 4:16).

Love of God & others for Christians is held biblically to be the highest virtue (Matthew 22:36-40; Galatians 5:14; 1 Corinthians 13), even explicitly above faith (1 Corinthians 13:13; Luke 10:25-37). Too many self-proclaimed “Christians” demonstrate regularly the facade of their conversion by the absence of love in their character. For true Christians, love is non-negotiable. The Bible states clearly that many will be surprised when on judgment day their facade is exposed (Matthew 7:12-23; 23:13-15 & 23-24; 25:31-46), that they never knew God to begin with (1 John 4:7-21). Too often, I fail to love as well. I pray that the Lord would clear my mind & clean my heart to help me live more in light of this truth.

Too often, my idea of love is made up of token efforts to satisfy a meager conscience, rather than the Love of Christ flowing through me, a conduit of His grace as I experience the beauty of abundant Life, found only in the Source of Life, joy, peace, freedom… Delusions of mine produce fear, pride, etc. which in turn yield a degree of satisfaction with that which is counterfeit by comparison to Life abiding in Christ.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

-Dalai Lama

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rich governments are not fighting some of the world’s most deadly diseases because rich countries don’t have them. The private sector is not developing vaccines and medicines for these diseases, because developing countries can’t buy them. And many developing countries are not doing nearly enough to improve the health of their own people. Let’s be frank about this. If these epidemics were raging in the developing world, people with resources would see the suffering and insist that we stop it. But sometimes it seems that the rich world can’t even see the developing world. We rarely make eye contact with the people who are suffering – so we act sometimes as if the people don’t exist and the suffering isn’t happening. …

In business, the market tells you when you’ve failed. In science, your instruments tell you when you’ve failed. In philanthropy, no one tells you. Everyone wants to be your friend.

– Bill Gates, The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men

There is not a single instance in history where hate has brought joy to human beings. It is a negative force that serves only to destroy those who hold it in their mind and body. – Unknown

“36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.””

The “Law & the Prophets” are all of Scripture at the time Jesus said that. In that context, prior to more modern further divisions (i.e. Wisdom literature, that this phrase would have encompassed) they make up all the Old Testament (not just the pentateuch & the books of the minor & major pophets).

Matthew Henry says of this passage, “Observe what the weight and greatness of these commandments is (Matt. 22:40); On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets; that is, This is the sum and substance of all those precepts relating to practical religion which were written in men’s hearts by nature, revived by Moses, and backed and enforced by the preaching and writing of the prophets. All hang upon the law of love; take away this, and all falls to the ground, and comes to nothing. Rituals and ceremonials must give way to these, as must all spiritual gifts, for love is the more excellent way. This is the spirit of the law, which animates it, the cement of the law, which joins it; it is the root and spring of all other duties, the compendium of the whole Bible, not only of the law and the prophets, but of the gospel too, only supposing this love to be the fruit of faith, and that we love God in Christ, and our neighbour for his sake. All hangs on these two commandments, as the effect doth both on its efficient and on its final cause; for the fulfilling of the law is love (Rom. 13:10) and the end of the law is love, 1 Tim. 1:5. The law of love is the nail, is the nail in the sure place, fastened by the masters of assemblies (Eccl. 12:11), on which is hung all the glory of the law and the prophets (Isa. 22:24), a nail that shall never be drawn; for on this nail all the glory of the new Jerusalem shall eternally hang. Love never faileth. Into these two great commandments therefore let our hearts be delivered as into a mould; in the defence and evidence of these let us spend our zeal, and not in notions, names, and strifes of words, as if those were the mighty things on which the law and the prophets hung, and to them the love of God and our neighbour must be sacrificed; but to the commanding power of these let every thing else be made to bow.”

1 John 4: 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love… – Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

Anyone that studies the life of Jesus would know that He was concerned about the poor, the oppressed, the homeless, the sick, and I feel that I must obey Christ in that area as well…Jesus said we’re to love our neighbors as ourselves. The gospel of Christ has no meaning unless it’s applied to our fellow man who hurts and who is in need. That’s our neighbor. – Billy Graham (From Billy Graham – An Extraordinary Journey @ 39:48 – while I don’t believe in absolute terms, i.e. someone who is incapable of moving but capable of cognition & sanctification/justification, I agree in general terms in >99% of cases)

“It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.” – Mother Teresa

A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers. – Ruth Bell Graham

Some people say that some Christians emphasize love “too much”. As long as one does not cast aside the biblical principles of truth (which is too often true of those accused of this “error”), that’s hard to do biblically.

Galatians 5:14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Matthew 7:12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Romans 13:8-10 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Matthew 25:40 Whatever you did for one of the least of these… you did for Me.  (Jesus) 

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

1 John 4:9-10
This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. / And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Romans 5:8
But God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Ephesians 2:4-5
But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, / made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!

There is no pit so deep that the love of God is not deeper still. -Corrie ten Boom – holocaust concentration camp survivor

1 Corinthians 13 (ESV) 1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. (MSG) 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t Love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without Love. Love never gives up. 

Love cares more for others than for self. 

Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. 

Love doesn’t strut, 

Doesn’t have a swelled head, 

Doesn’t force itself on others, 

Isn’t always “me first,” 

Doesn’t fly off the handle, 

Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, 

Doesn’t revel when others grovel, 

Takes pleasure in the flowering of Truth, 

Puts up with anything, 

Trusts God always, 

Always looks for the best, 

Never looks back, 

But keeps going to the end.

8 Love never dies…

(NIV) 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Matthew 23:14-15, 23, 25, 27 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you will receive greater condemnation. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are… Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices–mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law–justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former… Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence… You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. – Jesus –  (Addressed to well respected religious leaders of the people of God of the day who would obey the minutia of the law in some regards for a pretense while living in hypocrisy apart from love) 

Isaiah 1

2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;
    for the Lord has spoken:
“Children[a] have I reared and brought up,
    but they have rebelled against me.
3 The ox knows its owner,
    and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know,
    my people do not understand.”

4 Ah, sinful nation,
    a people laden with iniquity,
offspring of evildoers,
    children who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the Lord,
    they have despised the Holy One of Israel,
    they are utterly estranged.

…

11 “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
    says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
    and the fat of well-fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
    or of lambs, or of goats.

12 “When you come to appear before me,
    who has required of you
    this trampling of my courts?
13 Bring no more vain offerings;
    incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations—
    I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.
14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts
    my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.
15 When you spread out your hands,
    I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
    I will not listen;
    your hands are full of blood.
16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
    remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
17     learn to do good;
seek justice,
    correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
    plead the widow’s cause.

18 “Come now, let us reason[c] together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
    they shall become like wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient,
    you shall eat the good of the land;
20 but if you refuse and rebel,
    you shall be eaten by the sword;
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

21 How the faithful city
    has become a whore,[d]
    she who was full of justice!
Righteousness lodged in her,
    but now murderers.
22 Your silver has become dross,
    your best wine mixed with water.
23 Your princes are rebels
    and companions of thieves.
Everyone loves a bribe
    and runs after gifts.
They do not bring justice to the fatherless,
    and the widow’s cause does not come to them.

See also Isaiah 58:6-11 under “The Benefits of Love” section.

I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it’s not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time.

Gandhi (disputed)

One does not gain entry into the Kingdom in this life or the next exclusively via love, but love is one of the primary means of evidence of the legitimacy of faith in Christ, who saves by grace, not by works.

1 John 4:8 “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

John 13:35 “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

1 John 3

10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

16 This is how we know what Love (agape) is: Jesus Christ laid down His Life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the Love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in Truth.

Matthew 25:

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,[f] you did it to me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

“…the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ” – Acts 20:35

Isaiah 58:6-11

“Is this not the fast which I choose…to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke? 

Is it not to divide your bread for the hungry (NASB) And bring the homeless poor into your house (ESV); When you see the naked, to cover him…

Then your light will break out like the dawn,And your recovery will speedily spring forth;And your righteousness will go before you;The glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. 

Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;You will cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you remove the yoke from your midst,The pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, 10 And if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the soul of the afflicted,Then your light will rise in darkness And your gloom will become like midday.11 “And the Lord will continually guide you,And satisfy your soul in scorched places,And give strength to your bones;And you will be like a watered garden,And like a spring of water whose waters do not deceive.”

See also Isaiah 1 under “Importance of Works That Demonstrate Love & Justice Above Other Works (Old Testament)” section as well as the full chapter.

See also John 15:1-17, which goes over how as we abide in God, & God in us, as we abide in the Word of God & act accordingly, notably by love, we will experience joy. 

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.” —William Wilberforce

“100 million faces, staring at the sky,

Wondering if this HIV will ever pass us by.

The devil stole the rain and hope trickles down the plug,

But still my Chinese take away could pay for someone’s drugs.” –Delirious’ song “Our God Reigns” 

As I shared in the introduction, some people distort agape love into their own desired image, casting aside those moral principles that God gives out of love to people in the Bible. Faith is critical as well for those matter that we can’t understand. Without relationship with God that is brought on in part by faith, we will never be able to love like we could if we truly abide in the God who is love (1 John 4:16) according to the Bible (John 15:1-17).

 

Hebrews 11:6 (ESV – w/ him in context being God)

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.