Agape

Today’s Valentines Day.  For some this is a wonderful day, for some it is a horrible day and for the rest it is just another day.  The word love, in English, is so limited because it can mean so many different things and can be so abused.  We often define love by the experience that we received from those who used that word.  Many people’s definition of love has been abuse, abandonment, and mistreatment.  

That is why it is so important that Christians understand love in its highest form, God’s love the agape, for themselves and for others.  Agape is not a human based or originated love it is God’s love and can ONLY be known by receiving it from Him. 

 

 

Ephesians 3:17-19 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

 

We are to be rooted in agape being that we get our nourishment and life from it as a plant does through what it is rooted in.  Our foundation, grounding, is to be in agape just as a building needs to have a sound foundation so do we in agape.

 

Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

 

Ephesians 2:4-5 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

 

God doesn’t just tell us He loves us but He demonstrates it.  God hates sin.  So why we were living our lives in what He hates and doing what He hates, what literally separates us from Him He showed us agape through Christ dying for us. We were dead in our sin but were given life, not when we were born but when we were born again in and through Christ. Agape is action and not just word. 

 

 

1 John 4:9-10 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

 

So many of us have only experienced transactional love and so that is how we treat love.  I love you if you love me or if you do something then I will love you or if I do something that you will love me.  THAT’S NOT AGAPE.  God’s agape was given to us before we had any concept of what love, let alone agape, even really was.  

 

1 John 3:1-2 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. 2 Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

 

Without Christ we are just God’s creation.  All humans are not children of God.  We become children of God when we get adopted into His family through Christ.  This happens because of His agape.  To be able to be adopted in and to be called God’s child is HUGE.  We could never, ever, do anything to earn this and yet that is what agape allows us to be called.  Not only does He call us children but His beloved.  Beloved is His pet name for us.

 

1 John 4:19 We love Him because He first loved us.

 

We can only express agape, the highest form and really only true love, because He first agaped us.  Everything else is just a cheap emotion.  Agape is beyond emotion; it is a choice and an action.  More than roses, candy and diamonds.  Its price is measured not with earthly currency but by the blood and life of Jesus. 

 

Romans 8:38-39 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Nothing, Nothing, NOTHING can separate the born-again believer from agape.  Doesn’t matter what you did before, your past doesn’t disqualify you.  What you have done since you have become a Christian doesn’t. What you may do today or tomorrow or for the rest of your life won’t separate you from agape.  Agape isn’t a license or an okay for sin.  If you think that because you have accepted His salvation and because He loves you so that sin no longer matters and so you can live anyway, act anyway and talk anyway you choose and it doesn’t matter because God loves you then you really don’t know or yet begin to understand what agape is all about.  Agape is poured into us to separate us from sin and its destruction.  Sin always earns the wages of death in our life regardless if we are in Christ or not.  That is why God desires for us to be free from it and live through agape.  

 

I close with this.  If God loved you so much, don’t you think that you should love yourself with that love?  If God loved you this much, don’t you think He loves everyone else the same and if so, doesn’t that make them worth loving with the love you have received and known through Him?