Agape

Every New Year for the last four years I've tried to choose a single word to focus on as a theme to help pinpoint my goals. One year it was "grace". Then "enough". Last year, of course, was "raphah" (let go). And this year? This year I chose agape-love, the Greek word for love used in the New Testament to describe the kind of love God has for us, and wants us to have for others.
As last year came to an end, I felt God calling me to grow both in my understanding of love, as well as how I express love to others. This was another word that frankly scared me and overwhelmed me because agape love is not the kind of love we may be used to. It isn't easy to do; it doesn't always feel good; it is an active choice, a resolve to do what is best for another person regardless of the cost to yourself. To be honest, I really don't fully understand the total meaning of this kind of love. All I know is that it is something I feel God wants me to learn more about and wants to see lived out in my life this year. I'm sure that by the time the end of 2019 comes, I will understand this kind of love in a much richer, deeper way, but for now, here are things I am hoping to focus on, motivated by this focus of agape love and what I understand it to be as of now.

Agape Love is Sacrificial

"Agape love centers on the needs and welfare of the one loved and will pay whatever personal price is necessary to meet those needs and foster that welfare." (MacArthur, J: Romans 1-8. Chicago: Moody Press; MacArthur, J: Romans 9-16. Chicago: Moody Press)

"Agape is the love that gives. There’s no taking involved. It is completely unselfish. It seeks the highest good for another no matter what the cost, demonstrated supremely by Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf." (MacArthur, J. Saved Without A Doubt. Wheaton, Ill.: May, 2006. Victor Books)

To truly love others means we sacrifice for them. We think first and foremost of their needs, wants, and desires and seek to do what we can to meet them, even if that requires us to give up what we want. That means I stay home with my sick daughter and miss out on my weekly break time with friends, even if I have a babysitter willing to stay, because I know that my daughter really wants her mommy. It means I don't demand my husband spend his free time with me when I know what he would really enjoy is time to play a video game with his buddies. It means I don't get bitter when a family member cancels plans with me because another person needed that time instead. There are dozens of opportunities every day for us to express sacrificial love in big and small ways to others. This can be a big struggle for me, because like most people, my automatic reactions to things are selfish. I have to fight my inner desire to get what I want, to not be offended when my needs aren't met, and to not worry about if I will ever have what I need if I don't "look out for myself". There is a balance here, of course, and I am still trying to find it. Of course there are times when we need to be "filled up" in order to pour out again, and we need wisdom to know when it is healthy to seek what we need/want and when we should instead give that up for someone else. I think the overarching goal here, though, is to have an attitude of service, to desire to bless and help others more than we seek to just do what we want, and to trust that God will lead us in the right ways and times to do that. When we love in this way, we reflect the sacrificial love God has for us and help to point others to Him.

F B Meyer said this very well: "Wherever there is true love, there must be giving, and giving to the point of sacrifice. Love is not satisfied with giving trinkets; it must give at the cost of sacrifice: it must give blood, life, all. And it was so with the love of God. "He so loved the world, that He gave his only-begotten Son." [John 3:16] "Christ also loved and gave Himself up, an offering and a sacrifice to God." (Ep 5:2-note) "..every time we thus sacrifice ourselves to another for the sake of the love of God, we enter into some of the meaning of the sacrifice of Calvary, and there is wafted up to God the odour of a sweet smell."

Agape Love is a Based on a Choice of the Will, Not Emotion

"Barclay has labeled agape as unconquerable benevolence for nothing the other person can do will make us seek anything but their highest good and to never feel bitterness or desire for revenge. Though the one loved even injure us and insult us, agape will never feel anything but kindness towards him. Agape gives & gives & gives. Agape takes slaps in the face and still gives even as Jesus did saying Father forgive them. Agape is not withheld. That clearly means that this Christian love is not an emotional or sentimental thing. It is the ability to retain unconquerable goodwill to the unlovely and the unlovable, towards those who do not love us, and even towards those whom we do not like. Agape is the badge of discipleship and the landmark of heaven for "By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love (agape) one for another." (Jn 13:35)." ~Precept Austin Website

“Love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another that does not require reciprocation or that the person being loved is deserving.” ~Paul Tripp

The biggest difference between agape love and the other forms of love is that agape love is a choice, a resolute determination to seek the best for the other person regardless of how we may feel about them in the moment. Agape love calls us to love not only family, friends, and those we enjoy; it tells us to love those who irritate us, misuse us, are unkind to us...hate us. Of course love looks different in each of those situations; I don't think loving an enemy means we pursue relationship with them, or put a lot of thought and effort into somehow winning them over. I think it does mean we wish for the best for them, pray for them, and treat them with kindness and grace regardless of how they treat us. This also means that we continue to love others even if they won't reciprocate our love, or never even recognize it in any way. This is the kind of love God shows all of us every day. There are millions of people that will never return the love God has poured out on them, and don't even have eyes to see the love He shares with them. Does that mean God stops loving them? Nope. He continues to show them love, pursue them, and want the best for them all the way to their dying day. There are ultimate consequences, of course, for rejecting His love. However, God never, ever stops loving, and He calls us to that love, too.

"[Agape Love is] unconquerable benevolence, invincible goodwill...If we regard a person with agape, it means that no matter what that person does to us, no matter how he treats us, no matter if he insults us or injures us or grieves us, we will never allow any bitterness against him to invade our hearts, but will regard him with that unconquerable benevolence and goodwill which will seek nothing but his highest good."...In the case of our nearest and our dearest we cannot help loving them; we speak of falling in love; it is something which comes to us quite unsought; it is something which is born of the emotions of the heart. But in the case of our enemies, (agape) love is not only something of the heart; it is also something of the will. It is not something which we cannot help; it is something which we have to will ourselves into doing. It is in fact a victory over that which comes instinctively to the natural man. Agape does not mean a feeling of the heart, which we cannot help, and which comes unbidden and unsought; it means a determination of the mind, whereby we achieve this unconquerable goodwill even to those who hurt and injure us. Agape, someone has said, is the power to love those whom we do not like and who may not like us. In point of fact we can only have agape when Jesus Christ enables us to conquer our natural tendency to anger and to bitterness, and to achieve this invincible goodwill to all men." ~William Barclay

Agape Love Is Impossible...For Us

So does all this sound tough? Yeah...try impossible. This kind of love isn't something we can will ourselves to do, practice until we get better at it, or accomplish at all in our own power. Agape love can only be manifested by God's Spirit dwelling within us. We need Him to empower us to do these things, because our sinful nature completely balks at it. This is the kind of love that Paul speaks of in Galatians when he mentions the Fruit of the Spirit: "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." (Galatians 5:22-23) The only way we can carry out this kind of love is to pray for the Holy Spirit to fill us up and produce the fruit of love in our lives. 

Pastor John MacArthur states, "We can only have such love when Christ is free to work His own love through us. We cannot fulfill any of Christ’s commands without Christ Himself, least of all His command to love. We can only love as Christ loves when He has free reign in our hearts...When the Spirit empowers our lives and Christ is obeyed as the Lord of our hearts, our sins and weaknesses are dealt with and we find ourselves wanting to serve others, wanting to sacrifice for them and serve them—because Christ’s loving nature has truly become our own. Loving is the supernatural attitude of the Christian, because love is the nature of Christ."

The website Precept Austin has an entire word study on agape love that is full of amazing (though slightly overwhelming!) information on what it is and how we carry it out. One section that explains this point well is the following...

"(It) is impossible for unconverted to manifest this divine love & in fact it is impossible even for a believer to demonstrate it in his own strength. It can only be exhibited by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. A believer has this love (divine nature) within (Col 1:27) and it is progressively manifest more and more as fruit by the Holy Spirit (Ga 5:22) as we obey God's truth. Agape love willingly engages in self-sacrificing action to procure the loved one's highest good."

To be honest, I have wanted to give up on this whole agape-love mission a hundred times since I first felt God calling me to it...and it's only been two months. This kind of love is completely foreign to my sinful nature. It scares me, it confuses me, and I really have no idea how to carry it out; but God has reminded me over and over again through His Word, wise friends, and worship songs, that this mission isn't really about me at all. It's really a continuation of what I learned last year: letting go of control-- knowing "the plan", being able to do things "right", and having success--and just resting in God, allowing His Spirit to fill me up and take over. That is absolutely the only way to do this, is for God Himself to love through me. And when I remember that, it takes a lot of pressure off and enables me to just be still and wait to see what God does. So, I'm giving this a go: praying for God to fill me with His Spirit and seeking to love Him and all the people He brings into my life well. I can't wait to see how He loves through me.