Real Love

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13 ESV). There have been many stories of people with wealth who had great difficulty determining whether they were loved for their wealth or themselves. They all have a common story. One woman told a friend that she never knew when a man really loved her, because, after all, she was worth a billion dollars. She said, "I would go out with a man a couple of times, and the next thing I knew, he would be saying, 'I love you.' I could never really know if he really meant it. How could I be sure?" That is a good question. How can we be sure of real love? We use the word love so often that it has almost become a cliché. We have only one word for love in the English language. We use it in a variety of ways, ranging from "I love my job" to "I love my car" to "I love my dog" to "I love my wife." But what is love? One dictionary defines it as "a profoundly tender, passionate affection, a feeling of warm personal attachment, sexual desire or its gratification." In contrast to English, the Greek language uses many words for love. Some of them are used in the Bible, including the words erōs, phileō, storgē, and agapē. Erōs, from which we get our English word erotic, is primarily love on the physical level. Phileō, from which the name Philadelphia originates, means "brotherly love." It is the love that two friends have, a friendship love. Then there is storgē, which refers to family love, such as the love of a child for a parent or a parent for a child. Finally, there is a unique word for love that is used so often in the New Testament: agapē. When we read the word love in Scripture, it is usually agapē. This is God's love, a supernatural love that also can be known and practiced by us. Each of us was born with a hole in our heart that cannot be filled with anyone or anything. We can try to fill it with relationships. We can try to fill it with possessions or career or success or a myriad of other things. But nothing will fill that void because we were created to know God. Many of us confuse loneliness for God with something else, when, in reality, we are lonely to have a relationship with the God whom we are separated from. God will never use you. He will never take advantage of you. But what He will do is show you what real love is all about. He loves you with the best kind of love: agapē. He loved us so much that he lay down his life for us. He makes life possible for us. Now that is true love!