Agape Love

1 John chapter 4, verse 7 through 21 talks about love.

1 John 4:7–21

This is uh where another part of the Bible where the writer, which is attribute typically attributed to the apostle John, the same guy that wrote the gospel of John, first, second, third, John, and the book of Revelation, the same guy.

He also called himself the beloved one.

So this is the one who he would say Jesus loved the most.

Some would say he's also the youngest apostle.

So it's a little bit of background, a lot more than you ask.

And so what he's doing in this, he talks about the love of God.

In the Greek literature, there's at least four different words for love: Eros, Storhe, Phylos, Agape.

Storhe, typically described as a platonic love between them of a familiar love, like a parent to a child.

Then you got the Eros love, the erotic love.

We may call it lust, right?

Uh Phylos, uh, shout out to Coach Phil, the city of brotherly love or brotherly affectionate type of love.

Then you get to this one, agape.

Agape is what's classified as a love of the gods.

Uh, even in the Greek literature, it talks about this is a class of love that is exceedingly abundantly above all we can exercise.

And this particular love is not human in nature, it's human in effect, but not human in nature.

So it's interesting because this is the type of love that the Bible says is poured out shed and bride in all of our hearts.

So you have this agathe love, which is classified as love that can only be attributed to the gods, or in our case, from God, right?

And it's from God to other people, and it's interesting because it's not initiated by man, it's once again from God expressed to mankind.

So this is what we're talking about when we say love.

And so uh it's a very interesting passage, and so when I uh started thinking about it, I'm like, okay, why are there not, why does it not seem to be as many RB songs that came out in the 80s and 90s, as many explicitly love drenched depictions in our media.

And it's interesting because as I was uh doing a really quick search, simply it doesn't sell as much.

It's still out there.

You know, people talk about love, but the type of love that really moves the needle, that really sells, honestly, can be known as the eros, the erotic type of love.

Or the passionate, right?

And most of the time it's on the negative side.

So I started thinking, like, okay, we in we are given a lot of times through our different media depictions interesting, definitely interesting ways to look at love.

Typically, it's not agape love, because agape love could be viewed as for some people too simple, too easy, out of touch with reality.

Particularly if you classify agape or 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 4 through 7.

1 Corinthians 13:4–7

So now we have this thing.

We're talking about the creator, those that are intake and media, and we're praying for them.

It's like, what are we praying about?

That they will no longer create love, create songs, poems, um, different media depiction of love without a relationship with the creator.

Once again, this type of love is defined love from God.

So he loves us, so we love him, first of all.

And because of our revelation of his love for us, we can love them.

Far too many times, what happens is we try to love them and separate it from the way that he loves us or the way we want him to love us.

So it's interesting a lot of times when you see in the biblical text, if you read the Bible for what it actually says, how conditional it is, in the sense of, hey, if you want me to do this for you, give to other people.

If you want me to forgive you, forgive other people.

If you want me to be patient with you, be patient with other people.

When be kind with you, be kind to other people.

And it's like, uh uh, okay, all right, uh, okay, uh really, God?

You want to hear us like that?

Yes, I do.

This is the Agape love.

As I am towards you, you be toward them, because they need to see me through you.

That's one way God chooses to work through his people.

So we see this thing, and there's a few different points for those that can't.

So love is conditional.

No, but love has conditions.

Love is unconditional.

God loves you, meaning your past, present, and future stuff in the eyesight of God is forgiven.

There is nothing you can do that will stop God from loving you, even rejecting God, which is blasphemy.

That honestly, the only thing that sends you to hell because you're rejecting his grace, rejecting his mercy.

So what happens is God loves us.

Past, present, and future sense is already taken care of, is already forgiven, right?

But what happens is the ah, okay, it's not so much it's conditional, it has condition in the sense of the God is big on, don't say you love me.

This is actually in this particular chapter.

How can we say we love God but hate our fellow brother?

Right?

So we have that.

So what happens is this how God works, the extent to which you can experience all he has to offer toward us is predicated upon how you treat other people.

Because God is so much love that what happens is this, he will not allow us as his representative on the earth to misrepresent his love for the earth and treat people less than how he wants them to be treated.

So you got a lot of people like, hey, God forgive me.

But if somebody's asking forgiveness, nah, I ain't gonna forgive you.

God is like, hold on, time.

You have the revelation of my love for you.

It can be small, it can be large.

You have revelation of my love for you.

How can you take what I've freely given to you and not give it to the other person?

Especially with his greatest example of love, is his son.

Love is a verb, love does.

For God so loved the earth, the world he gave, he gave his son.

And so we see this example of love as giving.

And so the question is what based on his your revelation of love are you willing to give to other people?

And if you find yourself struggling with certain areas, as a believer, one part we will say the Bible says actually, but you also read this first John 4, 7 through 21.

Go back to that text, read through it, meditate on it.

We need to rewind and think about it over and over again.

Put yourself in living it out, right?

So, as you do that, then what happens is the greater your revelation of God's love for us becomes how we can show other people.

Or if you find yourself struggling in some areas, chapter, understand how much he loves you and what his love means more.

I'm a high school counselor, you all know that.

Excuse me.

We all start off high school, the first year of high school, with a 0.0 or no GPA, right?

Depending on your performance throughout the four years, you can do more things with a higher GPA than you can with a lower GPA.

Now, it's not that you can't do anything with a lower GPA, but the opportunities readily available to you are different depending upon your GPA at the high school.

How do we know?

Talk about people that got scholarships versus those that do not.

What happened?

The GPA, your test scores.

That's what matters in that particular game.

And so the higher the GPA, the easier things, the more things are available to you directly at the high school.

The lower the GPA, you gotta take different routes to get there.

Not to say you can never make it, but you gotta take a different path to get there.

The greater your revelation of the love of God, and the greater you give that to other people, the more it is readily available to you because as you give, he's giving more to you.

But if we withhold that, or if we say, Hey God, I want you to do this for me, but I'm not willing to do it for them, that's a hypocritical and that's fake.

And God will not bless that.

That's mess.

God don't bless that.

We can show you throughout the text how God does certain things.

So what happens is as God is toward us, how we are toward others.

Others what you want from God, give toward us, so toward other people.

I didn't make the rules, he did.

It's even worse in marriage, Ephesians chapter 5.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

So that your prayers would not be hindered.

What how you treat your significant other?

God is looking at that.

Are you reflecting me in your affairs on this earth?

Because honestly, uh the way we treat others dictates whether God's name is made holy or if his name is profane and used in vain.

Different conversation.

May your name be made holy.

The way we live, the way we love.

Because if we want to say in the name of Jesus, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, does it truly reflect him?

Or is it reflecting?

And if you want God to forgive you, are you willing to forgive other people?

If you want God to be patient with you, are you patient with other people?

If you want God to give it shall be given unto you, give, give, give, give, give.

And most importantly, God say, I will reward you.

Too many times we look for rewards to come from people.

Now, the reward may come through people, but more times than not, God is, hey, my character, my credit, my name, trust me to make all that right.

Will we allow him to do this?

I'm past my time, I'll pause right there.