David wrote, “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you” (Psalm 63:3). But both the Greek word ( agape) and the Old Testament Hebrew word ( chesed) define a tangible type “love.” And as the quote above states, it’s more of a decision or choice than warm fuzzy. Security, acceptance, provision, and desire. Agape is used in all of the “hard” love verses in the New Testament: Got įor me, the word “love” evokes a warm feeling in my heart. It is the choice to be kind, to sacrifice, to consider another’s needs greater than one’s own ( Philippians 2:3). The love which the Holy Spirit manifests in believers is agape. This love is not a feeling, but a choice. The English word love has very broad meaning, but the Greek language was very precise. His nourishing Holy Spirit feeds and waters us, and the Spirit produces the fruit of untainted love. Just like an apple tree doesn’t produce bananas, so we can’t produce good fruit love without the source of LOVE Himself. To love with agape love, we must have help. And through those lens we perceive other’s actions and emotions toward us. How do we do that? The love we emit on our own looks like our worldly definition of love. T he love we are supposed to be demonstrating must be a godly love, which comes from God, the being who personifies this attribute. It is translated from the Greek word agape, used here to express the highest form of love that comes through the Holy Spirit.
The love that is listed as the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22 is much different. But that opened my eyes to the distortion of “love” in my perspective.Įddie Foster continues to explain in his article, It’s something I’m still working through. I always thought loving people was a strength of mine until one day Holy Spirit revealed to me that fear of people and the desire to please ruled my actions more than love. When mixed with the world’s definition, love gets misconstrued, distorted, foggy or fuzzy. It’s been seen as an uncontrollable emotion that leads to destructive behavior, or as empty words thrown back and forth with no substance. It’s been given as an excuse for passively enabling terrible sins to continue in the lives of loved ones.
It has wrongly been used to describe selfish sexual lust. “Love” has been horribly abused in today’s world. I think our grandparents or great-grandparents would define it differently than we.Īccording to an article on the site Life, Hope, and Truth, by Eddie Foster,
It’s a word that stirs up different images and feelings for each of us.
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