JOHN PEARRELL: Let’s talk about love

Eros is romantic love.

It is often what we think of when we use the word love. It is feelings. Eros is a weak love; feelings come and go. Eros is an egotistical love. It says in effect, “I see something in you that I like and I desire to possess it.” Eros is, in this sense a self-seeking love. It is the type of love that draws a couple together and it is legitimate, but again, it is weak. When the desire wears off, what we saw as the benefit that person could bring us fades, so does our feelings. When you hear someone say, “I don’t love you anymore,” chances are very high that the only love they had was erotic love.

The second word for love is phileo.

Phileo is brotherly love. If eros is egotistical, phileo is mutualistic. I see something in you I like, you see something in me you like, let’s get together on this. Phileo, like eros, is weak; when the mutual benefit wears off, often the relationship ends.

Many years ago, two young people were “madly in love.” There was nothing they declared that they wouldn’t do for each other. They seemed like the perfect couple. But then the young woman had a skiing accident and was paralyzed from the neck down. It took the young man a mere 24 hours to decide he didn’t really love her, so he left her. Why? Their love was phileo love, it was mutualistic love and when the young lady was now not able to give what her devoted fiancée wanted, the love left and so did he.

The third love was considered the weakest form of love in Greco-Roman culture, but was elevated to the highest form of love by the writers of the New Testament.

It is agape love.

If eros is egotistical and phileo mutualistic agape love is altruistic, that is, it loves regardless of the response it may get! It shows an unselfish concern for the welfare of others. The dictionary says, “relating to the behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to the animal itself, but benefits others of its species.”

One of the questions I asked in my premarital counseling was “Why do you think your marriage will last?” Inevitably the answer was, “Because we love each other.” I then followed up with, “What’s love?” I never, in 50 years of ministry got a clear answer to that question until one young lady said, “Love is the continuous pursuit of another person’s well being without consideration to your own.” That is agape love.

“For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16, NET). The word used for love here is “agape.” 

Space is quickly filling so I will elaborate on this verse next week. Unfortunately, there are those who misuse this verse to create the wrong view of God’s love. They claim that this verse teaches that we should never judge anyone for anything. They try to give the impression that if we loved like God, anything would go! That the concept of sin would be out the proverbial window that we would accept the whole world, every belief system, every moral system, every person without exclusion because that is what God does! Really? Is that what this verse teaches? We’ll look at it closer next week.