Love, Love, Love

It is Valentines day and so I felt some inspiration to blog on love.  Seems like it is appropriate.  However, this probably isn't what you were thinking about today.

Matthews 5:43-46  
⁴³"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' ⁴⁴But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
 
Love = agapao - to love / from the word agape - love
Definition of agape
unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another: as (1) : the fatherly concern of God for humankind (2) : brotherly concern for others

 

Often times I am confused, or more likely forget how I should love my enemies. When this happens I come back to this verse and remember that Jesus used the word "agape" for love.  This helps me to put things into perspective.  This is the same love we see in 1 Corinthians 13 (often referred to as the love chapter).  While we might think of romantic love and weddings reading 1 Corinthians 13, we would do better to keep a different frame of mind.  I've suggested one below, but try your own.

 

*NOTE: This is not a new translation or an attempt to correct a translation.  Just my own way of reading a passage with a specific context for love in mind.  In this case it is he context of having the same love Jesus said we should give our enemies.  This passage can be also read in other contexts for agape love.  Examples: (for my neighbors), (for my children), (for my wife), (for the sick), (for the poor), (for the Jew), (for the Muslim), (for the arrogant), (for the ignorant), enter in whomever (group or singular person) you struggle to love. 

 

However, it is also important to know that "romantic love" is clearly NOT meant in 1 Corinthians 13! That does not preclude agape love as being a part of a well functioning marriage, but it does mean that we need to lose the mindset that 1 Corinthians 13 is speaking only to romantic couples.

1 Corinthians 13 - The Way of Love

 ¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love (for my enemies), I am nothing. ³ If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love (for my enemies), I gain nothing.
⁴ Love (for my enemies) is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love (for my enemies) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

 ⁸Love (for my enemies) never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹When 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. ¹²For 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.

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