People throw across the word “love” in numerous contexts, yet we encounter confusion once we attempt to define exactly what love is. The Bible uses separate terms for the 4 sorts of love: agape, storge, eros, and phileo.
Words have meaning, and constructive conversation requires us to have the identical definitions for the words we use. What can we mean once we use a word like “love”? We apply the word to our spouse, a dog, or a hamburger. We inherently know these aren’t the identical type of love, they usually each have different levels of importance, but how should we make clear this stuff?
God isn’t a god of confusion, and thankfully, Scripture takes advantage of the Greek language and its 4 terms for love. These help us higher understand God’s message and the way we’re to relate to him and others.
What Are the Four Types of Love within the Bible?
We’ll begin with the very best and best form of affection in Scripture, agape. Paul felt he needed to differentiate God’s love from some other, and he defined agape love within the famous 1 Corinthians 13. Agape represents unconditional, selfless, and sacrificial love, which God demonstrates toward humanity. When we follow Christ, God calls us to emulate and express this love in our relationships with others. Agape seeks all people’s everlasting well-being and interests, even at great personal cost. When discussing the next three sorts of love, agape undergirds our ability to like in every way.
Phileo refers to friendship or brotherly love, characterised by mutual affection, trust, and camaraderie. This love exists between friends and companions sharing common interests, experiences, and values.
Greek uses storge love to explain natural affection and loyalty in family relationships when expressing love amongst close family. This love exists between parents and kids, siblings, and other members of the family, rooted in kinship bonds and shared experiences.
Finally, we’ve got eros, which refers to romantic or passionate love characterised by desire, attraction, and intimacy between partners. It encompasses romantic love’s physical, emotional, and spiritual elements, the love between husband and wife.
Although some could also be, these definitions don’t should be mutually exclusive. For instance, a healthy husband-and-wife relationship enjoys eros, storge, and phileo love while also symbolizing God’s agape. Other family and friendships can overlap, as well. However, boundaries exist. Friends or family shouldn’t cross into eros, specifically.
Because God is love, and all love comes from him, agape lifts every like to an everlasting one.
What Is Agape Love within the Bible?
The Bible ceaselessly emphasizes God’s agape love for humanity, portraying it as unmerited, steadfast, and enduring. John 3:16, perhaps essentially the most famous verse on love, says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shouldn’t perish but have everlasting life.” God revealed his abundant love for humanity through the gift of Jesus, his Son, to supply salvation and everlasting life.
In Romans 5:8, the apostle Paul writes, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We didn’t deserve this love, but he gave it willingly for us. The Prodigal Son parable illustrates this divine love and forgiveness through the daddy’s compassionate response to his wayward son. Despite the son’s riot and wealth squandering, the daddy welcomes him back with open arms, demonstrating God’s heart and desire for reconciliation.
Jesus’ followers walk in God’s love. Jesus instructs his disciples to relate to 1 one other through divine love: “A latest commandment I give to you, that you just love each other: just as I even have loved you, you furthermore mght are to like each other. By this all people will know that you just are my disciples, if you have got love for each other” (John 13:34-35). Agape love becomes his followers’ defining characteristic, demonstrating the transformative power of selfless love in constructing Christian community.
God calls us to like our neighbors, our community, with such divine, selfless love. The Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:25-37) exemplifies agape love through the actions of a Samaritan man showing compassion and take care of a wounded stranger despite their cultural and ethnic differences. The Samaritan goes out of his method to help the desperately injured man, providing for his needs and ensuring his health, showing love and mercy.
What Is Eros Love within the Bible?
God created sex and physical expressions of affection, and the Scripture includes God’s design for eros, complete with proper boundaries to enjoy it without self-destruction.
Genesis 2:24 lays the muse for marital intimacy and union between a husband and wife. It states, “Therefore a person shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, they usually shall develop into one flesh.” This verse expresses God’s heart for man and wife even before the Fall, emphasizing the deep unity and intimacy inside marriage, the right and joyful place to develop into “one flesh.”
The entire Song of Solomon vividly portrays eros love between the bride and groom. In Song of Solomon 1:2, the bride longs for her beloved, saying, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is healthier than wine.” Throughout the book, the bride and groom exchange passionate declarations of affection, celebrating their physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy, waiting until the marriage to consummate.
The Scripture tells the married couple to search out this eros joy inside one another. “Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice within the wife of your youth, a beautiful deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you in any respect times with delight; be intoxicated all the time in her love.” (Proverbs 5:18-19) In the New Testament, Paul addresses the importance of continued physical intimacy between husband and wife as healthy and godly (1 Corinthians 7).
Agape finds its way into the wedding relationship. Although not explicitly mentioning eros love, Ephesians 5:25 instructs husbands to like their wives as Christ loved the church, sacrificially and selflessly. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
What Is Storge Love within the Bible?
God instituted the family to start with, as well, before the Fall, so the Bible highlights family relationships as examples of storge love.
Genesis 33:4 shows storge love between Jacob and his brother Esau. After years of estrangement and conflict, Jacob prepares to satisfy Esau, fearing for his safety but desiring reconciliation. When they finally meet, Esau runs to embrace Jacob, “and Esau ran to satisfy him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, they usually wept.” Despite past grievances, this emotional reunion illustrates the enduring bond of familial affection and forgiveness.
The book of Ruth provides a gorgeous example of storge love between Ruth, a Moabite woman, and her Israelite mother-in-law, Naomi. After their husbands die, Ruth chooses to stay with Naomi and accompany her to Bethlehem, declaring, “Where you go I’ll go, and where you lodge I’ll lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Ruth’s devotion to Naomi demonstrates a deep and abiding loyalty and affection, rooted of their familial relationship. God rewards Ruth’s character through Boaz’s redemption.
First Timothy 5:8 emphasizes providing for one’s family. “But if anyone doesn’t provide for his relatives, and particularly for members of his household, he has denied the religion and is worse than an unbeliever.” God calls believers to take care of and support their members of the family, reflecting the natural affection and concern that ought to characterize familial relationships.
Since God reveals himself as Father, the connection between parents and kids holds importance. Ephesians 6:1-3 addresses this: “Children, obey your parents within the Lord, for this is true. ‘Honor your father and mother’ (that is the primary commandment with a promise), ‘that it might go well with you and that you could live long within the land.’” By bringing in one among the Ten Commandments, this passage emphasizes the mutual respect and affection that ought to exist between parents and kids, reflecting the bonds of storge love inside the family unit.
Jesus modeled the love for fogeys and family, especially together with his mother. The Gospels depict moments of tender affection and concern between Jesus and Mary, resembling Jesus’ take care of His mother from the cross, when he entrusts her to a beloved disciple who will take care of her (John 19:26-27). This act demonstrates Jesus’ storge love, reflecting the family’s natural affection and bond.
What Is Phileo Love within the Bible?
Jesus’ relationship together with his disciples went beyond religious organization or student/teacher. He called them friends: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn’t know what his master is doing; but I even have called you friends, for all that I even have heard from my Father I even have made known to you” (John 15:15). An in depth bond of friendship and mutual trust existed between Jesus and his followers through shared experiences and intimate relationship.
People often cite the friendship between David and Jonathan as modeling phileo love. Despite different backgrounds and their relationship causing conflicts inside Jonathon’s family, David and Jonathan form a deep and enduring friendship characterised by mutual respect and loyalty. First Samuel 18:1 says, “As soon as he had finished talking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”
The Bible reveals Paul’s relationship together with his disciple Timothy as a deep and affectionate bond. In Philippians 2:20, Paul describes Timothy as genuinely caring for others: “. . . I don’t have any one like him, who will likely be genuinely concerned in your welfare.” Timothy’s sincere and selfless devotion to people reflected the essence of phileo love.
Throughout the New Testament, there are many references to the close-knit community of believers who shared a bond of phileo love. Acts 2:42-47 describes the early Christian church in Jerusalem: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” A way of unity, mutual support, and care infused the early Christian community, reflecting each phileo and storge love amongst believers.
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