HoHum:
Some time ago a new organization prepared a special presentation on love and marriage. The reporters talked to more than 100 people from various cultures that practice arranged marriage- Indians, Koreans, Pakistanis, Orthodox Greeks, and Orthodox Jews. Over and over again they heard the same thing: “You Americans fall in love and then marry. We marry and then fall in love.” Which way is best? Not many of us would want our parents to pick our spouse for us. But whether we fall in love before the wedding ceremony or after, the fact remains that love is a crucial ingredient of any marriage. Love alone, however, will not make a marriage last.
WBTU:
The marriage covenant is what sustains a marriage over the long run. Love is something that, because of covenant, we keep choosing to do, both when we feel like it and when we do not.
But what is love? The word love is used casually and flippantly in our modern culture. Limited by our language, we use the same word to describe our love for God as we do our love for our mate, our dog, sports, a car, or a cream filled donut. Hopefully these are different
Thankfully the Greek language helps us a lot here. The Greek language uses 4 words to describe different kinds of love. Each of these need to be present in marriage.
Thesis: Let’s look at these 4 words for love in the Greek
For instances:
Storge: I like you
One of the major reasons for the failures of marriages in our day is a flawed selection process. Simply put, people are making poor choices, and those choices are producing terrible consequences. Let me be painfully honest. Premarital sex blinds us to the flaws of a potential mate. Sex produces a bond that is not easily broken. These bonds are not healthy but harmful. Many people are marrying jerks that are not good for them. This person turns me on so I will marry them. Wrong!
One of the Greek words for “love” is storge, and it means “I like you.” Liking the person we marry is important if we want our marriage to last. A husband and wife should share similar interests and values. They should enjoy being around one another in good times and in bad times, in pressure times and in play times.
Now there are many issues we do not know until we get married and go through the years with that person, but before we enter into marriage we better have some ideas of the issues we will face. Need to see that person in their good moments and in their bad moments. Need to know at least some of the issues we will face. “We won’t face any issues because we love each other.” Get a grip on reality! Everyone has weaknesses, character flaws, temptations, and shortcomings.
Mark Lowry said, “"There are people I love that I don't like. I go through Thanksgiving and Christmas, too!" It would be terrible for one of those people to be my spouse, one that I love (because I have to) but I don’t like.
I know you have to love me but do you really like me? If answer is No then something needs to change or there will be trouble. When choosing mate, much easier to grow to love someone we like than to keep loving someone we don’t like.
“Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.” Romans 12:10. “Be devoted in brotherly love” uses a form of storge. Many times this is family love but goes deeper than this. A reference says that this is mutual love of parents and children and wives and husbands but also describes loving affection and prone to love.
Eros: I Want You
I often hear people say they want to get married because they are in love. The truth is, many are not so much “in love” as “in lust.” Marriage is not the cure for lust; self control is.
In our modern, sex crazed culture, we tend to have a “Love Boat” mentality that worships fun in the pursuit of a love that feels good. “If it feels good, do it.” The Greek word for this kind of love is eros, and it represents a selfish, sensual, and sexual love.
Not saying that we need to find someone who repulses us, someone who is ugly to marry. What I am saying is that eros love will not keep a couple together for life. Eros closes its eyes to faults, laughs off shortcomings, and rationalizes potential problems. As long as eros gets what it wants everything is fine. Passion and romance come and go quickly and easily; real covenant love, on the other hand, is hard work.
Eros is not the in NT. NT writers knew about it but never used it. Not the basis for a lasting relationship. Dr. Owen Morgan, director of the Center for Family Life Studies at Arizona State University, makes the point that “less than one tenth of one percent of the average couple’s time is spent in any kind of direct sex play.” Yes, everyone wants passion and romance in marriage, but these must not be the defining qualities of the relationship. We do not marry a cute face or an attractive body; we marry a complete and complex person, inside and out. Beauty fades and bodies sag. People who marry based solely on eros love are bound to be disappointed sooner or later.
Phileo: “You are my friend”
This terms denotes friendship. This term is close to storge, but we can be friends with people we are not related to by blood. This especially applies to marriage where we are a friend with someone who is not blood kin.
“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:15, NIV. Friend here is “phileo”. Friendship is a covenant term. Jesus calls us friends today because he is in covenant with us.
Interestingly, a national survey confirmed the bonding power of friendship between mates. Hundreds of couples who claimed to have successful and fulfilling marriages were asked to identify the factors that best explained their marriage success. Amazingly, the top 7 answers were the same for both husbands and wives; and of those, the top two answers were “My spouse is my best friend,” and “I like my spouse as a person.”
Agape: “I Love you Sacrificially”
This word is used in the NT to describe God’s love for us. This also describes the way God wants us to love one another. This love is unselfish in nature. Agape loves regardless of the other person’s behavior and without the expectation of something in return. However, we cannot love this way without first belonging to God. Agape is only available through God. “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” 1 John 4:7, NIV. Without the power of the HS, we are incapable of loving this way.
Agape love requires honesty, openness, and intimacy, and it operates on the basis of covenant. It is the kind of love that makes a lasting covenant relationship possible. Without a doubt , companionship (storge), romance (eros), and friendship (phileo) play important roles in a marriage relationship, but it is agape that provides a lasting foundation.
The secular world would have us believe that love is a feeling. As I’ve heard it described, love is “that feeling you feel when you feel like you have a feeling you never felt before.” According to the media spin, love is emotional and uncontrollable- something that happens to us. The term “falling in love” is used as if love is an accident, like tripping over a suitcase in the hallway. The problem with this is that if we accidentally fall in love, we can accidentally fall out of love too. We simply follow our feelings, and when the feelings are gone, love is gone. When it comes to love, we can follow the world or we can follow the Word. We can accept and apply the culture’s definition of love, or we can accept and apply Christ’s.
The Bible tells us 4 important things about love as defined by God:
1. Love is a matter of choice. The Bible says we “put on” love in the same way we put on our clothes. We don’t just fall into the closet and come out dressed. “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Colossians 3:14.
2. Love is a matter of conduct. Love is a verb; it requires action and hard work. “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” 1 John 3:18, NIV.
3. Love is a matter of commitment. We are going to love our beloved through thick and thin. Our commitment to love is a mirror of God’s commitment to love and care for us. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38, 39, NIV.
4. Love is a matter of covenant. When we make this kind of covenant, we are mirroring our covenant God who promises, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5, NIV. Jesus was forsaken on a cross so that we would never be forsaken (“Greater love [agape] has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13, NIV.)- and so that we, through his power, could have the ability to stick with those we love. Elizabeth Achtemeier wrote this: I will be with you, no matter what happens to us and between us. If you should become blind tomorrow, I will be there. If you achieve no success or status in our society, I will be there. When we argue and are angry, as will happen, I will work to bring us together. When we seem totally at odds and neither of us is having needs fulfilled, I will persist in trying to understand and in trying to restore our relationship. When our marriage seems utterly sterile and going nowhere at all, I will believe that it can work and I will do my part to make it work. And when all is wonderful and we are happy, I will rejoice over our life together, and continue to strive to keep our relationship growing and strong.
