The Greek word behind love in the New Testament, what it did and did not mean, and a famous sermon that is not quite true
Agape: The Love That Chose You First
You may have heard that Greek has four words for love and that agape is the divine one, chosen by the apostles because the others were soiled. Some of that is true. The word is the New Testament’s word for the love of God and of neighbor, and it does mean something the others do not. But it was not invented for the purpose, and the tidy four-word scheme is a preacher’s, not a lexicographer’s.
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Lesson 8 of 12 · Greek
Agape is love as a decision and an act toward another: the will to seek someone’s good, whether or not they are lovable and whether or not it is returned. The Greek Old Testament used it for the Hebrew word for love in all its range, including the love of Jonathan for David and of a man for a woman, so it is not a word that means only God’s love. What the New Testament did was fill it: the love that gave the Son, that is patient and kind, that loves an enemy, that is God’s own nature. English love has to carry all of that beside falling in love and loving a meal, which is why the word needs a lesson.
The love that gave
The most quoted sentence in the New Testament defines the word by an act.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only born Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. — John 3:16 · WEB
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God so loved the world that he gave. The love is stated and the giving follows as its content; there is no description of a feeling between them. That is the word’s grammar throughout the New Testament: agape is known by what it does, and what it does is give.
ἀγάπη agápē G26
from ἀγαπάω; love, i.e. affection or benevolence; specially (plural) a love-feast:--(feast of) charity(-ably), dear, love.
Rare in ordinary Greek before the Bible, and not specially exalted where it does occur; the verb agapao meant to be content with, to prefer, to treat with regard. The translators of the Greek Old Testament seized on it for the Hebrew ahav, love of every kind — God’s for Israel, a husband’s for a wife, Amnon’s for Tamar — and by the New Testament it had become the word for love that seeks another’s good. It stands beside philia, friendship and family affection, and eros, desire, which the New Testament does not use at all.
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What it does
Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians 13 is a list of verbs, and every one is something done or refrained from.
Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. — 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 · WEB
Read the comment on Love Is Patient and Is Kind
Patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not rude, not self-seeking, not resentful, bearing, believing, hoping, enduring. Read the passage again and notice that it never says love feels anything. It is a portrait of conduct, written to a church whose gifts were making it proud, and it says that without this conduct the gifts are noise.
“But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you,” Matthew 5:44 · WEB
Love your enemies: a command, and a command is given to the will, not to the feelings.
“He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love.” 1 John 4:8 · WEB
God is love: not that God loves, but that this word names what he is.
“But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8 · WEB
God commends his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us: love as an act done before it could be returned.
“You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” Deuteronomy 6:5 · WEB
You shall love Yahweh your God: the Hebrew ahav, which the Greek Old Testament rendered with this word, and Jesus quoted as the first commandment.
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The four loves, and where the scheme overreaches
Here a correction that a reader will need, because the scheme is everywhere. It is often taught that Greek has four words for love — eros, storge, philia, agape — kept neatly apart, and that agape is the highest and God’s own. The four words exist, and the New Testament’s preference for agape is real and worth noticing. But the words were not kept apart by the people who spoke them. The Greek Old Testament uses agape for lust; John’s Gospel uses agape and philia of the same love in the same chapter; the Father is said to phileo the Son. The most famous case is the shore of Galilee, where Jesus asks Peter three times whether he loves him.
He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you have affection for me?” Peter was grieved because he asked him the third time, “Do you have affection for me?” He said to him, “Lord, you know everything. You know that I have affection for you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. — John 21:17 · WEB
Read the comment on Do You Love Me?
Jesus uses agapao twice and phileo the third time; Peter answers phileo all three times. Generations of sermons have found the whole drama of the passage in that switch, and it is a fair reading of a subtle writer. It is also contested, and honestly so: John varies his vocabulary throughout — two words for know, two for send, two for sheep, in this very passage — and many readers hold that the alternation here is style, not theology, and that Peter’s grief comes from the third asking, not the third word. This lesson does not decide. It says that a doctrine should not rest on a synonym.
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What the word asks
It asks for the will. Every use of the word in the New Testament that is a command is a command to do something for someone — feed, forgive, give, bear with, pray for — and the someone is often an enemy. The love the word names is not what you feel toward the people you already like. It is what you decide to do for the ones you do not.
Read 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and replace "love" with your own name. Mark the clauses that are true today, and the one you will act on this week.
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