Welcome to February…the month of love! I’m not ashamed to admit that I am a HUGE fan of Journey, Foreigner, Toto, Chicago, REO Speedwagon, and to a much lesser extent Boston. These groups form a genre which is today called “yacht rock” and if you’ve never heard of these groups, do a quick Google search. You’ve most likely heard some of their greatest hits and just didn’t know the name of the group. They were all soft/pop rock groups in the 1970s and 1980s and wrote a lot of love themed hits. February is a great month to break out all those now oldies and listen to what the sounds of love were from days gone by.
But we don’t have to limit ourselves to merely the soft, poppy, and sentimental. We can also take a deep look at love as it appears in the Bible. Just as a caution: When you read your Bible in English, the word love is just that…love. It’s not always clear what the original word was in either Hebrew or Greek which can really change the meaning of a passage.
So, here’s a list of the Bible’s top words for love, starting with the Hebrew:
Hesed: Lovingkindness. No, that’s not a typo…that’s the way we render this term into English because it has no direct equivalent. It can carry meanings of mercy, grace, the character of God’s ove toward us, fulfillment of God’s promises etc.
Ahav: Love; generally seen as more than romantic or family love; it’s seen as something eternal and transformative.
Dod: Romantic, erotic love. This word gets used a TON in the Song of Songs.
Now onto the Greek:
Eros: Romantic, erotic love. Not a word that appears in the Greek Bible (New Testament) but was a well-known concept in the world of the Greek Bible
Phileo: Literally brotherly love, but can mean the close affection of friends. Used quite often in the Greek Bible.
Storgé: Literally the love of parents/grandparents for children; used broadly as the concept of love within a family system.
Agapé: This, like hesed above is rather challenging to translate to English. Some will render it as God’s love; others, eternal love; still others sacrificial, costly love. And frankly they’re all correct. The best use of this term for love is Paul’s famous I Corinthians 13 passage.
There are other words for love used in both the Hebrew and Greek Bibles. However, the ones I have listed here are the most commonly found within the pages of the text.
In fact, the English word “love” appears in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation of the Bible (this is the Bible we use on Sundays) 538 times. The New International Version (NIV) has 551 occurrences. Suffice it to say, love is a very popular word in the Bible!
Love is the central vocation of the life of faith. We are loved by God which should and does impel us to love others in the name of God. Love is costly in the biblical text; there’s no sense of just saying, “I love pizza,” or “I love rock music,” in the text. Love is a very serious word, no matter which version of it is used, because love is a serious matter.
Love requires a deep and abiding relationship. Love takes hold of us and transforms us. One of the more powerful verses that I have always truly loved is I John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us.” We are able to love…in the costly, sacrificial, and difficult ways of love…because God revealed in Jesus Christ first loved us. Another powerful verse we all know well is from another John: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone believes in him may not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God’s love we see here is costly, painful, and overly generous.
I obviously could go on and on, but you get the point.
So, here’s the question for you: How can you, during this month of love, shape your witness to be one of love? How can you make your love go beyond the soft and sentimental to the radical, powerful, costly, and sacrificial? In other words: How can you love like Jesus?
May you all have a powerfully transforming and deeply loving month!