Love

Love (Greek: άγάπη agape) is a primary characteristic of God's nature (1 John 4:8, 16) and the highest expression of Christian faith and action (1 Cor. 13:13; Gal. 5:14; Eph. 5:2; 1 John 4:7-21). In the New Testament, agape is charitable, selfless, altruistic, and unconditional.

Love-1 Corinthians 13:4-13

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

¹² For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

¹³ So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 John 4:16

¹⁶ We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

It is parental love seen as creating goodness in the world, it is the way God is seen to love humanity, and it is seen as the kind of love that Christians aspire to have for others. (Greek: Philia) - also used in the New Testament, Philia is a human response to something that is found to be delightful. Also known as "brotherly love".

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Love

Love (Greek: agape) is a primary characteristic of God's nature (1 John 4:8, 16) and the highest expression of Christian faith and action (1 Cor. 13:13; Gal. 5:14; Eph. 5:2; 1 John 4:7-21). In the New Testament, agape is charitable, selfless, altruistic, and unconditional.

And we have known and believed the Love that God hath to us. GOD IS LOVE; and he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16)

It is parental love seen as creating goodness in the world, it is the way God is seen to love humanity, and it is seen as the kind of love that Christians aspire to have for others. (Greek: Philia) - also used in the New Testament, Philia is a human response to something that is found to be delightful. Also known as "brotherly love".

Two other words for love in the Greek language -- (Greek: eros) (sexual love) and storge (needy child-to parent love) were never used in the New Testament.

Whether religious love can be expressed in similar terms to interpersonal love is a matter for philosophical debate. Religious 'love' might be considered a euphemistic term, more closely describing feelings of deference or acquiescence. Love can be expressed by prayer, service, good deeds, and personal sacrifice.

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The Four Loves

The Four Loves is a book by C. S. Lewis which explores the nature of love from a Christian perspective through thought-experiments and examples from literature. The content of the examination is prefaced by Lewis' admission that he initially mistook John the Apostle's words "God is Love" (1 John 4:7-9, 1 John 4:15-17) for a simple inroads to his topic. By distinguishing need-love (such as the love of a child for its mother) from gift-love (epitomized by God's love for humanity), Lewis happens upon the contemplative that the natures of even these basic categorizations of love are more complicated than they, at first, seem. As a result, he formulates the foundation of his topic ("the highest does not stand without the lowest") by exploring the nature of pleasure, and then divides love into four categories, based in part on the four Greek words for love: affection, friendship, eros, and charity. It must be noted, states Lewis, that just as Lucifer—a former archangel—perverted himself by pride and fell into depravity, so too can love— commonly held to be the arch-emotion—become corrupt by presuming itself to be what it is not ("love begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god").

Affection (Storgē," στοργη) is fondness through familiarity, especially between family members or people who have otherwise found themselves together by chance. It is described as the most natural, emotive, and widely diffused of loves: natural in that it is present without coercion; emotive because it is the result of fondness due to familiarity; and most widely diffused because it pays the least attention to those characteristics deemed "valuable" or worthy of love and, as a result, is able to transcend most discriminating factors. Ironically, its strength, however, is what makes it vulnerable. Affection has the appearance of being "built-in" or "ready made", says Lewis, and as a result people come to expect, even to demand, its presence—irrespective of their behavior and its natural consequences.

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