‘Behold, the Lamb of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
39th teaching
6.3.2013
“God’s Love: the Five Loves”
Introductions.
Project
Scriptura:
Announce next week’s topic (God’s Agape Love),
challenge each person to find ONE Bible verse about this attribute of God to
share next week, you may use any resource as long as you find just one verse.
Review:
The last time we met as a group, what was our
topic of study? What new section of Theology Proper did we enter? What’s the
difference between moral and metaphysical attributes? Is Love a moral or
metaphysical attribute of God? In studying God’s Love, what were a few of the
characteristics of Divine Love we discovered? What is the best and ultimate
example of God’s Love?
End Review
To me, the subject of God’s Love seemed too big for just
one Monday night. So tonight, we’re continuing our study of Divine Love. Last time, we primarily investigated
characteristics of God’s own Love and saw how His Love was exhibited in various
places in Scripture. Tonight, I thought it might be interesting to look at it
from the opposite angle: last time, we looked at characteristics of God’s Love;
tonight, we shall look at characteristics of human love and see what we can
learn from that.
But lest we’re tempted right from the get go to begin with
the wrong thought in mind, we must again clarify what we mean. As I said last
time, the statement of Scripture: “God is Love” does not mean that God is the feeling we call love.
As we said when we studied Omnipresence, God is not an
impersonal force of energy. Neither is God an impersonal force of emotion which
we can identify as love. God is a Being and three Persons. He is not an
abstract concept, an ooey-gooey, warm-fuzzy feeling which we might call love.
So just what is love? Well it is essentially a God-word, a
God-term. Though sociologists have attempted to explain the nature of love, we
can look no further than the Scripture itself. What is the nature of love? What
is love?
Turn with me to a familiar passage, where we shall begin
our course of study: I Corinthians
13:1-13.
What is the nature of love? It’s right there. And it’s been
right there for thousands of years. So while defining just what love is has
baffled and eluded scientists and philosophers through the generations, the
ultimate answer is in God and His Word. God is Love. Love is an attribute of
His metaphysical make-up and a quality of His moral character. He carries all
the qualities of love as we just read. He is the source of Love as a Being of
Love. He is the Source.
Turn next to Genesis
1:26-27.
As I mentioned, tonight we shall examine the human concepts
and experience of love and see what we can learn then of God’s love. But before
we do that, we cannot miss this crucial step here in Genesis.
Three times in those two verses we read that humans were
made in God’s image. Once it even says that humans were made in God’s likeness.
Now there would be no point in studying human
characteristics and taking them as a shadow of a real substance, as arrows that
point to a greater reality, unless we were made in God’s image and likeness.
Some theologians and pastors take this phrase, “made in God’s image”, to mean
not only that our physical bodies reflect Divine truth (such as: we have ears,
God hears; we have a mouth; God speaks, we have arms and hands; God acts and
moves, etc.), but the phrase “made in God’s image” can also mean we are like
God in our abilities to think and reason, to experience emotions and morality.
I believe that’s true.
Therefore, if we are made in the image of God, the human
experience of loving can have some direct likeness to what God’s Love is like,
although obviously our likeness and image is fallen and corrupted by sin.
As C.S. Lewis writes in the introduction to his book, the Four Loves: “I thought I should be
able to say that human loves deserved to be called loves at all just in so far
as they resembled that Love which is God.”
So on this basis that our human loves resemble, indeed are
“made in the image of”, God’s own Love, here’s our plan for tonight. We’re
going to split our study into FIVE parts, each part will be concerned with an
ancient Greek word for love.
Why the Greek language? The Greek language is unique
because it is so specific. I’ve heard it said that Hebrew is a very pictorial
language, full of word-pictures. And English, you might say, is a language
characterized from having borrowed from so many other languages.
But one thing which characterizes and summarizes Greek is that
it is very, very specific. Here’s what I mean, by way of example:
If you asked me what my favorite food is, I would say “I
love sushi”. But if I go out to get sushi, I would take my wife, because I
would say “I love my wife”. And if it was my mother’s birthday, I would invite
her to come with us, because I would say “I love my mother”. And when we get
home, we can watch a movie, because I would say “I love watching movies”.
You see at once the problems with the English language. We
just have this one over-used and tired word “love”. But when I say “I love
sushi” and “I love my wife” and “I love my mom” and “I love watching movies”, I
can’t mean the same thing. I cannot mean that I love sushi in the same way that
I love my mom. And I certainly do not mean that I love my wife in the same
capacity that I love watching movies. I’d have a pretty pathetic marriage if I
did.
But while the English language just has the word love that
has to mean all these different kinds
of love, the Greek language has several words for love. Again, we’re going to
look at FIVE of them. So C.S. Lewis wrote a book called the Four Loves. Tonight, we can entitled our study: “the Five
Loves”. Heh.
1.
Xenia
2.
Storge
3.
Phileo
4.
Eros
5.
Agape
All except the first one you may be pretty familiar with.
Note that only the last two, Phileo
and Agape, actually appear in the
Greek vocabulary of the New Testament. The last, Agape-love, we shall cover
next week. That’s a great subject deserving of its own study.
1.
Xenia
What the heck is Xenia?
It’s not a word that regularly appears in Christian circles. It has its roots
in Greek culture.
Xenia is the
ancient Greek concept of hospitality, the kind of love that is generous and
courteous to xenos, or strangers. The
word Xenia is sometimes translated as
“guest-friendship”, a unique kind of love between the guest of a home and the
host of that home.
Xenia also
consisted of two basic rules guaranteeing mutual respect between guest and
host: the host must be politely hospitable and provide for the guest’s needs
without asking questions, and the guest must be courteous and not become a
burden.
In ancient Greece, there was a term in mythology known as
Theoxenia. It was a theme that recurred in Greek mythology in which humans
demonstrate their goodness by being hospitable to a stranger at their doorstep,
who then turns out to be a god or goddess in disguise. Usually, the story would
then show how the human who was hospitable was rewarded. Or, on the flip side,
if the mortal failed to be generous, then they were cursed or punished. Really,
Disney? Ripping off Greek mythology? Remember, that was the premise in Beauty and the Beast to explain how the
very inhospitable prince was turned into a monster.
But in the Greek mind, because of their religious
mythology, hospitality, xenia, was
considered to be very important. Even Zeus himself was sometimes referred to as
Zeus Xenios, because he was considered to be a protector of travelers and
strangers. Thus religiously, the Greeks had a duty and obligation to be
hospitable and to show xenia love.
Their mythology warned them to be hospitable.
Now it’s incredibly interesting to me to read Hebrews 13:2 in light of what we just
learned. It says “Do not forget to
entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels”.
What?! Well, Abraham entertained angels as guests once (see Genesis 18), long before the Greeks had
a word for it. So apparently, there
was a greater reality to the myths of ancient Greece. And while the word Xenia does not appear in this passage in
the Greek text, the concept of Xenia
is certainly there: hospitality.
*Now, do we see anything about God’s Love through our
experience of Xenia. Is God
hospitable?
There is a very real sense in which we inhabit a world that
belongs to God, He created it after all. We are, in this sense, nothing but
guests here and God provides for our needs. He causes the rain, the sunshine,
the harvest, the breath in our bodies each to sustain us.
But in a clearer sense, as a host entertaining guests,
check out Luke 14. Jesus is in a
situation here where He plays the guest and is dining at the house of a ruler
of the Pharisees, His host. As they talked, Christ begins with a parable. (READ
Luke 14:7-24).
The story Christ tells is obviously a description of the Xenia of the Lord, the hospitality He
extends to mankind to come into His kingdom and appear at His banquet, only
there are those who refuse. This story illustrates that God has Xenia love, stored up in the future
where as many as wish it may appear in heaven.
So, God Himself exhibits xenia. He shows a hospitality-love, a love for guests. He takes
care of us as we live in this world and He invites all to join Him in glory in
the next. Hospitality finds its ultimate fulfillment, then, in God’s invitation
to heaven.
2.
Storge
Storge, we’ve been commonly told, is
the Greek word for familial love, that is, the love for one’s family. The
reason why you love your mum, dad, siblings and all is because of storge. It’s a very important love. Your
first interactive relationships in this world take place with your family
members.
Walt Disney said “A man should never neglect his family for
business”. A man who by all definitions was a successful businessman knew
himself that family was more important.
Now while it’s certainly true that storge embodies family-love, there is more to storge than just the love of one’s family. Storge can also include the kind of love between not only family
members, but friends, pets and owners, companions, colleagues and teammates.
C.S. Lewis’ book on the subject, the Four Loves, says this: “The Greeks called this love storge… I shall here call it simply
Affection. My Greek Lexicon defines
storge as ‘affection, especially of parents to offspring’; but also of
offspring to parents. And that, I have no doubt, is the original form of the thing
as well as the central meaning of the word. The image we must start with is
that of a mother nursing a baby…
“…But Affection has its own criteria. Its objects have to
be familiar. We can sometimes point to the very day and hour when we fell in
love or began a new friendship. I doubt if we ever catch Affection beginning.
To become aware of it is to become aware that it has already been going on for
some time. The use of “old”… as a term of Affection is significant. The dog
barks at strangers who have never done it any harm and wages its tail for old
acquaintances even if they never did it a good turn. The child will love a
crusty old gardener who has hardly ever taken any notice of it and shrink from
the visitor who is making every attempt to win its regard. But it must be an old gardener, one who has ‘always’ been
there—the short but seemingly immemorial ‘always of childhood’.”
So he explains that what ties together all these objects
being loved under the definition of storge,
or Affection, is the familiarity shared by the objects being loved. Natural
Affection, or storge, is shared by a
family because they are naturally familiar with each other. So too, pets and
owners, friends or teammates, each become familiar with each other and thus
this feeling of Affection grows.
When my brothers and I were younger, my littlest brother
used to enjoy running out of the house and waving at the garbage-man each time
he came to pick up the garbage. Every time he heard the garbage-truck pull up,
he’d drop what he was doing and run out to wave. I remember he even came back
in crying once because it was a new garbage-man
who didn’t wave. Why? Why cry? Because of storge.
It was the “good, old garbage-man” to my little brother.
And yet when Blythe was first introduced to my little
brother, he wouldn’t even look at her, but he hid behind me. Why? Because of storge. No familiarity, no natural
Affection had built up yet.
*So storge,
natural Affection, characterized primarily by familiar love between child and
offspring… is that a trait that can be found in God? Does the Lord have storge love?
Certainly! In fact, the language of a family appears
multiple times throughout Scripture to describe the spiritual relationship
Christians have with God and with each other. Note that God chose the strongest
terms and ties, the natural Affection among family members and friends, to
define the Christian experience.
I John 3:1, “Behold what manner of love the Father has
bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!”
I remember an
interesting discussion came up once in the youth group at church. All human
beings are creatures of God, but not everyone is a child of God. God is the
Creator of all humans, but He is not the Father of all humans. The biblical
language makes it clear that God is a Father now in a very different way from
just having created us after we have
been saved.
Faith in the crucified Lord has opened up this new
relationship. But though it is new, there is no more of a natural relationship.
God already made you, He knows you completely. Now He can call you child and you have access to Him as you
would your own father.
We could say more on the relationship of Father and child
in Christian terms, but we should move on. That’s storge, though, a natural Affection such as between parent and
child.
3.
Phileo
We can thank the Greeks for the word Phileo since it gave us the name of the lovely American city:
Philadelphia, city of brotherly love. However, we often mistake Phileo to mean the same as Philadelphia. It does not. Philadelphia adds the word for brother to the word Phileo to mean brotherly love. Phileo
on its own is simply another word for love, albeit with a unique definition.
Phileo means a
kind of love that is virtuous and good. Patriotism may very well be a good way
to summarize phileo. We have
patriotic thoughts because we understand that it is good and wholesome to love
one’s own country, especially if it is one worth loving. Phileo has less to do with passion and more to do with concepts
like equality and loyality and duty. It is less concerned with romantic
thoughts and more concerned with practical relationships, such as mutual
friendships that benefit each other.
As you can see storge
and phileo are closely related.
They both have friendships in common as their definition. However, phileo seems more to be concerned with
the good of others rather than just loving others because they are familiar.
Phileo, according
to Aristotle, wants “for someone what one thinks good, for his sake and not for
one’s own, and being inclined, so far as one can, to do such things for him”.
For this reason, phileo
is also known as “love of the mind”. It is all about desiring the best for
someone else. Phileo describes a
group of people working together for the good of each other and their
community, which I think does come back around to Philadelphia and brotherly
love.
Phileo is a love
that supports. It is a love between members of a community, between a group of
people, indeed between brothers. Certainly this is one of the loves which
should inspire members of the Church. We should love each other in such a way
that supports, encourages and edifies one another.
I Peter 1:22, “Since you have purified your souls in
obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one
another fervently with a pure heart…”
*Phileo, unlike storge and xenia, does in fact appear in the Greek New Testament, some 21
times. So what does phileo tell us
about God’s own Love?
Hebrews 2:11, “For both He who sanctifies and those who are
being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call
them brethren.”
But since phileo
is a love-term which desires the good of the loved, and which supports the
other, what does this tell us about our relationship with God?
I Corinthians 3:5-15.
We are each engaged in a project, working together with
each other and with God in the construction of the church and the reaping of
the harvest, that is winning unsaved souls. We are all working together toward
a goal, just as phileo suggests that
a true community should.
And certainly, even above that, God Himself shows
supportive love toward us. Is there anyone more spiritually, emotionally and
physically supportive than God?
We’re reminded by a familiar verse: “And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory
by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).
And touching the friendship aspect of phileo, John 15:15, “No longer do I call you servants, for a
servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends,
for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.”
Friendship, like family, is an intensely important and
powerful kind of relationship.
Again, C.S. Lewis, the man of many quotes, said “Friendship
is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it
is one of those things that gives value to survival.”
Incredible that God adopts for family-terms as well as
friendship-terms to define the kind of relationship He has with a believer.
What a
friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear,
What a privilege to carry, everything to God in prayer
What a privilege to carry, everything to God in prayer
4.
Eros
Ah, Eros. The
love of Romeo and Juliet. Eros is
known as sensual love or intimate love. It is the love of lovers. Eros has been called “the love of the
body”, as opposed to Phileo “the love of the mind” and Agape “the love of the
soul”. The English word Romance probably best summarizes the word Eros, though of course Eros is responsible for the English word
Erotic.
Eros is a Greek
word which was actually a name: for the fat little trouble-maker known to the
Romans as Cupid. His name means Desire. The Greeks called him Eros, the
personified figure of passionate love. Eros, or Cupid, we know is often
pictured with arrows. In Greek mythology, the arrows would pierce the lover’s
eyes and wound his or her heart, infecting them with ‘love-sickness’, or as the
Greeks considered it theia mania
(literally ‘madness from the gods’}. Coincidentally, this is also how we got
the phrase love at first sight, as the arrows pierced the eyes just before
wounding the heart.
Now, Eros, or
passionate-love, I think often gets a bad rap. Note at once that Eros is not the equivalent of lust. The
Greeks had a different word for lust: epithumia.
Eros, while passionate is not simply
lust or merely sexual desire.
Augustine, not exactly the first guy to pop into your mind
on this subject, wrote on the difference between love and lust. He considered
lust to be overindulgence whereas to love and be loved is what he sought for
his entire life, a description of relationship. Listen to his words in a book
he wrote called Confessions. This is
a part of Augustine’s testimony: (Confessions,
page 47, Book III, Chapter I).
Yet after his experience with immorality, Augustine finds
the fulfillment of his desires, not in another human being, but in One who
loved him truly and fully: God Himself. According to Augustine, to love God is
“to attain the peace which is yours”.
So there is a definite difference between lust and this
love-term Eros. Augustine chased
after lust but found nothing until he experienced the love of God.
So Eros is not
lust. I think when people confuse the term, Eros
is kind of frowned upon, though Eros
should have special place in the sanctity of marriage. Eros includes the sensual but it is more than just that.
For example, the Greek philosopher Plato considered Eros to be a kind of love that does not
even have to apply to the physically beautiful. Plato did not consider physical
attraction to be a necessary part of Eros.
Rather, he held to an idealistic version of Eros
which he identified as love of beauty. This is sometimes referred to as
“Platonic love”: an appreciation of inner beauty, which he considered to be
beauty in its pure form.
*Now, does God show an Eros,
a passionate type of love? Thank goodness we made it clear that Eros is not purely sexual, otherwise
this would be really, really, really weird in relating it to God. But we’ve
seen that the Greek definition of Eros
lends toward an intimate and romantic kind of love.
Consider for a moment that the romantic relationships with
which we’ve been made by culture familiar with, which occur in real friendships
as well as in novels, movies, television and countless songs are all just a
pattern, a simple shape that points to the true reality. One thing which so
many people are obsessed with in America today is relationships. The unmarried
are constantly looking to get in and the married are constantly looking to get
out.
But though we obsess over relationships, the great truth of
all history is the development of THE greatest relationship, between the God of
Love and humanity. In a sense, all of the romances we know from our human
society each take their cues from the great love story of God and man.
Listen to the words of Hosea
2:14-16, “Therefore, behold, I will
allure her (speaking of Israel), will
bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her. I will give her her
vineyards from there, and the Valley of Achor as a door of hope; she shall sing
there, as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the
land of Egypt. And it shall be, in that day,’ says the LORD, ‘that you will
call Me ‘My Husband’, and no longer call Me ‘My Master’.”
That’s some romantic sounding stuff though its describing
the historical details of the Jewish people and their God.
I mean it is all here. The Bible is the greatest Romance.
It is the archetype around which all other romances have built themselves. Love
at first sight in the Garden of Eden when God made the first man and woman and
loved them. Love to will the good of others there when God chose Abraham and
blessed him. Love through the hard times when God loved Israel despite their
cheating on Him with foreign gods. Love in calling back the lover there in
Hosea when God called Israel back to him after they left Him. Love in
sacrificing for the sake of the lover, there at the cross where Jesus paid it
all.
The Bible even ends with a happily-ever-after! And so they
lived in a great heavenly city in a new heaven and new earth, happily ever
after. All of our human experience of what romance is may in fact be there for
the main purpose of our being able to recognize God’s loving advances upon us
in loving our souls. We desire relationships and then we are afterwards
unsatisfied by them, because we were designed to experience a Divine relationship
and a Divine Affection as the ultimate reason for our existence.
The English Methodist, Charles Wesley, wrote a variety of
hymns. Listen to these words:
Jesus, lover of my soul, let me
to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high.
Hide me, O my Savior, hide, till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide; O receive my soul at last.
While the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high.
Hide me, O my Savior, hide, till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide; O receive my soul at last.
*So, we have seen that the Lord loves in the purest and
ultimate form. In each way that a human loves, He loves all the greater. He
loves as a hospitable Host. He loves as a Father. He loves as a Brother. He
loves as a Lover.
Next week we examine the greatest of the loves: Agape.
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