What is love?

Lovely essay, Helen.

I agree with your definition, especially when you say, "To love someone, to commit to them, to care for them, is a choice you make." This is my definition of agape, as well.

C. S. Lewis, whether one agrees with him on some things or not, provokes one to thought. He wrote a fascinating little book, The Four Loves, in which he points out that the Greeks had four words for love. However, the definitions here are mine, not Lewis's.

1. Philos is the love of friendship. It occurs often in the NT. It is mutual; that is, your love for a friend depends on the friend's love for you. It is based on mutual interests and activity. Sometimes this word is even used of God's love for us.

2. Storge is natural love. It occurs only in compounds in the NT, such as in "without natural affection" (Rom. 1:31). This explains the cruel mother Helen mentioned above. "Brotherly love" in Rom. 12:10 is another mention of natural love.

3. Eros is the Greek word for romantic love or desire, but this word does not occur in the NT.

4. Agape is the word used for God's love in the Bible, and as Helen said it is a love of choice. God loved us in spite of our sin, because He chose to! Interestingly enough, this word originally meant something like "entertain" (not necessarily in a good way). My classical Greek dictionary (Liddel and Scott) gives this meaning for the verb form: "to welcome, entertain." But the NT writers redefined it to mean God's wonderful, unconditional love!

 

I believe that to say "love is a decision" is way to shallow. Isn't decisions an activity of the mind, and love is an activity of the heart?

 

Mind and heart are basically the same in the Bible . God set His love upon His own unconditionally .

 

I beleve love is an action not a fuzzy feeling.

The Bible says love your enemy and love your neighbor. I could never seem to generate those fuzzy feelings for people who hate me and people who I dont even know. I wondered what was wrong.

The problem love is an action not a feeling. Love your neighbor is stoping to help somebody change a tire on the side of the road or raking somebodys leafs. You can try to feel love for somebody but they are still stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire.

This also solves the problem of how does God hate sinners and love all the world. He hates sinners but he still sent His Son to die for us (an action).

Do something needed and nice for somebody you do not know, or somebody you do anonomosly (sp?) this week. LOVE your neighbor.

 

J.D., think about it. A genuine decision is not shallow at all. It can change your entire life, turn it upside down! How can that be shallow?

 

DeeJay, I agree that God's love is not a feeling. But you don't stop to help someone change a tire by the side of the road without having decided at some time in your life that if you ever get the chance you will do that. Decisions produce action. What you believe decides what you do, as the book of James clearly teaches.

 

Absolutly agree.

What I am getting at is that you do not have to feel emotion for the person. That was a hang up for me when I understood the word love as a feeling. You dont even have to like the person you are helping. You may dislike the person intensly but by changing the tire you are loving them.

You have to make the decision to help. But if you decide to help people change tires on the side of the road then pass them by it is not love. You have to make the decition to help then carry though on your decition and actually change a tire.

I have at times past decided I was going to do something then chickened out when the oppertunity presented itself. I decided to love somebody but dident when the time came.

 

Okay, I see where you are coming from.

 

Very good article Helen. I sure hope these kids learn from this leason and am glad someone like you is willing to teach it

 

I see someone already thought of this, great !

 

You would think that would make sense for your debate on free will. but you forget God's LOVE is greater than our love (he can't choose to love for he IS Love), and his WAYS are greater than our ways, and his THOUGHTS are greater than our thoughts.

He even loves the sinner Romans 5:8 "for while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" John 3:16 "for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son" etc., he didn't choose to love the sinner he did so because it was his NATURE it is WHO he is.

And just because he chose some to be saved and others not to be, doesn't mean he doesn't love them any less or us any more. Just means he is God and can do what he wants, for his ways are not our ways and his thoughts not our thoughts.

If God chose us before the foundations of the world for his purpose and good pleasure and not others, does that mean God is no longer LOVE or that he didn't love those going to Hell, by no means! why can't you just accept that this is a paridox a mystery. just like you cannot explain the trinity neither will you be able to explain God choosing who he wants for all eternity.

Why do christians insist on bringing God down to their level of thinking and not just accept what his word has to say. is this not what the heathen does

 

Now Helen let's look at mans side of it. Do not equate man's accepting the gift of salvation for his LOVE for God. Man's "love" for God comes after salvation when he realizes all that God has done for him. After he is regenerated.
God draws man to himself through the work of the Holy Spirit, it is man who accepts the offer of salvation because of the Holy Spirit, and it is the Holy Spirit that regenerates a new life. all is the work of God's love. now that man has received that love he is to now LOVE back. Jesus said "if you love me you will obey me."

Only a few passages talk about man's response of love toward God John 21:15-17, I Pet. 1:8, I John 5:2, I John 4:20-21. The references to man's love toward God are few possibly because it would seem normal for man to love God, who has done so much for him, and because man has experienced God's love. I am not sure where this verse is but didn't Jesus say that "he who is forgiven much loves much".

Like I mentioned before our freewill-choice is in play before and after salvation but the gift and the abilty to receive salvation all comes from God not our will.

 

French

I believe the love is an action (doing something) not a fuzzy feeling. How did God love those he did not choose to be saved. What action did he do for them.

Or is love a fuzzy feeling? Are you saying God had "love feelings" for those he did not choose and therfore sent hell with out chance for redemption.

When God says love your neighbor, is it good enough to just have feelings for them while doing nothing?

 

"God is love" means He does what is best for His creation, even if we don't like it, even if it causes Him "inconvenience"(like laying aside His own glory), even if we get mad at Him for it, and even if we are His enemy at the time.

 

Gods great act of love was to lay down His life to save us.

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
John 15:13

Now if french is right and God loves the
un-chosen, what was His act of love for them.

 

Love is never having to say you're sorry.

Okay, that's not only the most stupid definition I've ever seen, it has NEVER made any sense to me whatsoever.

 

It would certainly be better never to have been created than to have been created and not given the chance to be chosen. An eternity of damnation in hellfire is not as good as the absence of existence in the first place.

 

"A chance to be chosen"?

By the way, one problem with your reasoning is that it comes from the perspective of a saved person.