On Love

Today dec’s youth pastor talked about John 21. He spent a lot of time talking about fishing and what it must have been like to be there...and near the end he touched on the final conversation between Peter and Jesus.

John 21:15-17 reads:

"When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son og John, do you truly love me more than these?"
"Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."
Again Jesus said, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me?"
He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Take care of my sheep."
The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my sheep...""

Now, one of the deals with that passage is that Peter had denied Jesus three times before the crucifixion, even after saying that he would die before he would say that.
What you typically hear about this passage is that it makes more sense in the Greek.

See, the first two times, Jesus is using a different word for "love" than Peter is.

Jesus’ "do you truly love me?" uses the word, "Agapao", which is taken to mean a complete, total, absolute love. Its noun form is the word used in 1 John 4:8, when John says that "God is love."

Now, the word that Peter uses for love, and the one that Jesus uses the third time, is the word "Philia". This is typically taken to be more of a "friendship" type of love.

The gist of it is, Jesus asked peter, "do you love me?" and Peter replied, "no; i really like you."

Anyone who goes to church more than twice a year will know that 1 Corinthians 13 is that part of the bible where Paul talks about love: (verse 4) "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It us not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs..."

Here’s something that i want to stress to you.
Paul, to the Corinthians, describes "love" as a noun.
In all those statements, Love is the subject, and it’s followed by a slew or predicate nominatives: "Love is..."

Sometimes, people describe love as an emotion.
I think that this is completely ridiculous.
Here are a few emotions: Anger, Fear, Sadness, Happiness, Disgust...

Emotions are something that you feel; they pertain to your mind’s chemical balance.
They are intangible; you can't hold happiness in your hand.
Outside of what we feel in our bodies, emotions are just abstract ideas that have a feminine gender in latin.

Love, on the other hand, isn’t anything like an emotion.
Paul describes it as a very real, concrete entity.
Remember, God IS Love. It is something that exists outside of the human condition.
It has substance, meaning, and lasts forever: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."[1 Corinthians 13:13, niv]

Here’s something else that i think about love:
I don't think we should use it as a verb.
Sure, we say, "I love this" and "I love that".
But i think in modern times, we’ve confused the verb form of "love" with the word Like.

Notice the greek word Agapao, the verb, and the noun, Agape.
They are very similar.
But a lot of times, we get verbs from nouns, nouns from verbs (gerunds), adjectives from verbs (participals)... its often hard to figure out which word came first.
But i think in this case, the noun has to be the root form.
Why?
Because of the nature of Love.
If love is a tangible, secure idea, that exists as an entity on its own, you can't acutally turn it into a verb.
It's about the same as the verb "google".
We say, "google it", and what it -actually- means is, "search for it on google".
The word has come to mean an action, much the same way "to hit" is a process of striking one object with another.

Do you see what i’m trying to say?

Love is an entity; the opposite of apathy.
One of the reasons we are so confused with "love this" and "love that" and so on is because of the way we use it as a verb. People say love and think of "like", because they have no idea what love actually is.
Love is the essence of need; it is completely consuming. Without love we have nothing.