“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
If any emotion can be considered the cornerstone of the Christian faith, it would be love. Love is why God created us. A lack of love is why humankind fell into sin and separated ourselves from God. Love is why God had a plan to redeem and reconcile us back into a relationship with Him. Love is why we will be able to spend eternity with God forever. As we near the end of this Advent season and approach Christmas Day, love should be on our hearts and minds.
This time of year, we often think of the people we love, our family and our friends. We buy them gifts to show our love for them, and we make plans to celebrate with them. Perhaps we have loved ones that we only get to see at Christmastime. Or perhaps this year, we won’t be seeing as many friends and family as we usually would due to the ongoing Covid situation. Either way, love is a key concept this time of year.
While we do love our friends and family, the two Scripture verses I quoted above show us the truest and purest form of love: the sacrificial love that God has for us, His children.
In the Greek language, there are multiple words for love; up to 6 of them, depending on who you ask. The only two of these words for love used in the New Testament are philia and agape. Philia is the type of love between friends, but it’s more like that of a deep friendship, not just the “Facebook friends” kind of love. Agape is a love so deep it compels a person to sacrifice themselves for those whom they love.
Interestingly, schoalrs believe that before the New Testament was written, agape love was no different than philia love, or even eros (physical attraction) love. The deep meaning of this word agape doesn’t come from the Greek language itself but from the understanding of God’s love that we get from the Bible. This love always starts with God, not with us; God is love and He is the source of all love (1 John 4:7-10). God loves us, and because of that love, He sent Jesus into this world to save us, when we truly didn’t deserve it. This love is shown to us in the love between God the Father and Jesus the Son, and in the love that God shows to us.
Because of God’s great love for us, our response is to love God and love others. In John 13:34, Jesus commands His disciples and us: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” 1 John 4:11 says, “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” When we realize how fully and unconditionally God has loved us, our natural response is to return that love to God and to show that same love to one another, especially those who also love God. But we are also called to show this love to those we consider our enemies. In Matthew 5:44, Jesus tells us, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
All of these references to love are the agape kind of love. This active love is defined by who God is and how much He loves us, and it should be reflected in our love for God and our fellow people.
When Jesus was born as a baby in Bethlehem as we celebrate at Christmas, love came to earth in human form. If there is ever someone who personified love, that is definitely Jesus. His whole life was lived out of love for all of humankind. The fact that He even needed to come to earth was because humanity messed up and separated ourselves from God, and Jesus needed to come to earth to live out love so that we may experience God’s eternal and perfect love with Him forever when we reach eternal life.
What are you doing as Christmas rapidly approaches to show this agape love to one another? What are you doing to not only show this love to those people you like and are close to you but also to those people you may not know, or that you may not even like at all? Jesus didn’t pick and choose; He came to earth to live a life of love for all of humankind.
In order to live out this love, I encourage you to review the other aspects of Advent that we have already discussed: hope, peace, and joy. The basis for all of these is love. We have a certain hope because of the love that God has for us. We will have eternal peace in Christ because of the love that He has for us. We can have joy because of the love that God shows us. God is love, and everything He does is all about love. Imitate God in making your life about truly loving others well this Christmas season. Merry Christmas!
For more on what the Bible says about love, check out this post.
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