Crazy Little Thing Called Love Series

a. Agape love is the sacrificial, unconditional love of God.

b. In the New Testament, agape is the highest form of love.

2. Interestingly enough, outside of the New Testament, the word was rarely even used.

a. Prior to New Testament times, agape did not carry any special significance as a higher kind of love.

b. Therefore, it’s the New Testament understanding of the unique nature of God’s love—not the word’s usage in the Greek-speaking world of the first century—that gives the word agape its special meaning.

3. Agape is the word that describes God’s love in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world…”

a. Agape is the kind of love that God expects that we will practice - we are commanded to love God (Matt. 22:37) and love one another (John 13:34) with agape love.

b. Agape is the word for love used in 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul says that love is patient and kind, and all those other things he lists.

c. Husbands are commanded to agape their wives as Christ did the church (Eph. 5:25).

d. And it is with agape love that we are commanded to love our enemies (Mt. 5:43-48).

4. This kind of divine love that God has and that we are called upon to practice is not a feeling, but is a commitment to sacrificial action.

a. I like Chip Ingram’s definition of this kind of love: “Love is giving to someone what they need most, when they deserve it least, at great personal cost to yourself.”

b. If God was commanding us to feel a certain way rather than act a certain way, He would be putting on us a burden that we could not bear.

c. God would be asking us to do the impossible, for there is no way we can have a nice, warm, comfortable feelings about an enemy.

5. True agape love is an action, not a feeling – it is choosing to act in the best interest of another person, at the expense of your own interests and regardless of your own feelings.

a. Marriage is able to survive its ups and downs when both spouses determine to love each other regardless of feelings, or personal cost.

b. Church families are able to thrive when agape love reigns.

c. This kind of love wins and conquers – it conquers you first, then it captures the hearts of others.

L. Now, to say that agape love is the highest form of love is not to say other kinds of love are insignificant or trivial.

1. As we have already discussed, God created romantic, sexual love (eros) to be expressed in marriage between husbands and wives.

a. God has created us to live in families and natural or familial affection (storge) is needed.

b. God also created us to be connected to friends (philia)—to live in community.

c. I am not trivializing these other kinds of love by saying agape is the highest form of love.

d. These other forms of love are significant and meaningful.

2. All the loves bleed into each other and overlap in some ways.

a. Some kinds of love can be present simultaneously in certain relationships.

b. I believe that agape love is needed in some measure in every kind of love – eros, storge, and philia.

c. If we remove agape love, then the remaining types of love are too unstable to sustain a relationship.