The Nature of Love

That all true Christian love is one and the same in its principle. It may be various in its forms and objects, and may be exercised either toward God or men, but it is the same principle in the heart that is the foundation of every exercise of a truly Christian love, whatever may be its object. It is not with the holy love in the heart of the Christian, as it is with the love of other men. 

Their love toward different objects, may be from different principles and motives, and with different views; but a truly Christian love is different from this. It is one as to its principle, whatever the object about which it is exercised; it is from the same spring or fountain in the heart, though it may flow out in different chan- nels and diverse directions, and therefore it is all fitly comprehended in the one name of charity, as in the text. That this Christian love is one, whatever the objects toward which it may flow forth, appears by the following things:

First, it is all from the same Spirit influencing the heart. It is from the breathing of the same Spirit that true Christian love arises, both toward God and man. The Spirit of God is a Spirit of love, and when the former enters the soul, love also enters with it. God is love, and he that has God dwelling in him by his Spirit, will have love dwelling in him also. The nature of the Holy Spirit is love; and it is by communicating himself, in his own nature, to the saints, that their hearts are filled with divine charity. Hence we find that the saints are partakers of the divine nature, and Christian love is called the “love of the Spirit” (Rom. 15:30), and “love in 
the Spirit,” (Col 1:8), and the very bowels of love and mercy seem to signify the same thing with the fellowship of the Spirit (Phil. 2:1). It is that Spirit, too, that infuses love to God (Rom. 5:5); and it is by the indwelling of that Spirit, that the soul abides in love to God and man (1 John 3:23, 24; and 4:12, 13). 

Second, Christian love, both to God and man, is wrought in the heart by the same work of the Spirit. There are not two works of the Spirit of God, one to infuse a spirit of love to God, and tile other to infuse a spirit of love to men; but in producing one, the Spirit produces the other also. In the work of conversion, the Holy Spirit renews the heart by giving it a divine temper (Eph. 4:23); and it is one and the same divine temper thus wrought in the heart, that flows out in love both to God and man.

Third, When God and man are loved with a truly Christian love, they are both loved from the same motives. When God is loved a right, he is loved for his excellency, and the beauty of his nature, especially the holiness of his nature; and it is from the same motive that the saints are 
loved—for holiness” sake. And all things that are loved with a truly holy love, are loved from the same respect to God. Love to God is the foundation of gracious love to men; and men are loved, either because they are in some respect like God, in the possession of his nature and spiritual image, or because of the relation they stand in to him as his children or creatures ­ as those who are blessed of him, or to whom his mercy is offered red, or in some other way from regard to him. Only remarking, that though Christian love be one in its principle, yet it is distinguished and variously denominated in two ways, with respect to its objects, and the kinds of its exercise; as, for example, its degrees, etc.

- Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits

What Does Agape Love Really Mean?

Maybe you’ve already heard that agape (ἀγάπη) is the standard word for love in the Greek New Testament, and maybe you’ve heard that it points to a specific kind of love: a selfless, giving, non-emotional love—as opposed to the friendship love of philia (φιλία).
 
What does agape love really mean?
 
And now to love, because John 21 provides a perfect example of what Dr. Decker is talking about. I actually remember the day as a college freshman when I was given the (supposed) secret Greek key to unlocking Jesus’ famous conversation with Peter in that passage. Jesus asks three times, “Do you love me?” Peter replies each time: “Yes, I love you.” I was told that, hidden underneath the surface of the weak, imprecise English word “love” were two different Greek words: agapao (ἀγαπάω) and phileo (φιλέω). I was further told that these two Greek words pointed to two vastly different kinds of love, the one selfless and non-emotional and the other merely emotional and friend-ish. Peter, so the interpretation goes, twice couldn’t bring himself to say he loved Jesus selflessly and unconditionally, so Jesus asked him, in effect, “Do you even love me like a friend?”
 
…The fact is that the Bible never says anywhere that real love, ideal love, is non-emotional. In Jesus’ conversation with Peter, he appears to be varying agapao and phileo for purposes of style, not meaning.
 
One of the problems with using Greek without knowing it well is that you tend to fail to apply your principles rigorously. Are all synonyms in John 21 used to point up their differences rather than their similarities?
 
As D. A. Carson points out… Jesus doesn’t just vary his words for love in his conversation with Peter, he varies his word choice for the noun “sheep”:
 
“Feed my lambs,” he says.
Then, “Shepherd my sheep.”
Then, “Feed my sheep.”
 
Is it lambs or sheep? If Jesus intends to highlight a significant difference, he does not choose to make that clear. There do not seem to be obvious differences among the three imperative verbs, either: “feed,” “shepherd,” “feed.” The verb “shepherd,” in fact, also means “feed” sometimes, especially in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament). 
 
And John 21 isn’t the only place where Jesus varies his use of agapao and phileo in the Gospel of John. In John 3:35, Jesus says, “The Father loves the son,” and in John 5:20 he says precisely the same thing—only in one verse he uses agapao and in the other phileo, with no discernible difference in meaning. Jesus isn’t invoking two radically different kinds of love in his conversation with Peter.
 
One of the most popular linguistic and exegetical fallacies in modern times is that the Greek word for love, agapao, carries in it the implication of a divine love that is unconditional and comes to us in spite of our sin.
 
That is not true. Context must decide if agapao refers to our proud, cliquish love for our cronies (as in Matthew 5:46) or if it refers to God’s merciful and sacrificial love for sinners (as in John 3:16), or if it refers to our love for leaders, not unconditionally but precisely because of their labor (1 Thessalonians 5:13)
 
To be clear, the New Testament does speak of a special kind of love, but we don’t know that by looking up Greek words in the dictionary. We know it by reading the New Testament. People who can read the Bible only in English can still know what love is.
 
Debunking beloved interpretations of Scripture is a favored pastime of young seminarians. But constructive help, not destructive criticism, is my goal here. It is my impression that the church in general—and perhaps the most studious of us in particular—put too much weight on looking up Bible words and not enough weight on reading Bible sentences in their contexts. There is nothing necessarily wrong with looking up words, and Logos can do it so incredibly well! I do it all the time—and if you’re curious as to what I think “love” really means, I actually believe the standard Greek dictionary defines it pretty well if you put senses one and two together: “to have a warm regard for and interest in another; to have high esteem for or satisfaction with something, cherish, have affection for, love, take pleasure in.”
 
But you’ll learn far more about “love” by reading the resurrection accounts in the Gospels, or by reading the story of the Good Samaritan—Scripture passages which don’t even use the word—than you will by looking up agape in a dictionary. By all means do both, but know in advance which one weighs more than the other.
 

Excerpt from: https://blog.logos.com/what-does-agape-love-mean/

Is Love Mere Chemistry?

 Indeed one of the central characteristics of human nature is the capacity for relationships of love and self-giving. Young children deprived of love do not thrive. Yet reductionists tell us that feelings of “love” are merely the effects of chemical reactions in the brain—or, as cognitive science puts it, an illusion caused by patterns of neural activity.

Evolutionary psychologists tell us that altruistic behavior is merely a calculated strategy of helping others so they will help us in return. Tit for tat. It is a strategy of “reciprocal altruism,” programmed into our genes by natural selection so that we will get along and survive better. It would be more candid, however, to call this “pseudo-altruism” (as Daniel Dennett does) because the assumption is that individuals practice cooperation and self-control only when it secures their larger interests. Every good deed is ultimately selfish.

The only worldview that supports the highest aspirations of the human heart is Christianity. It gives a basis for believing that love is real and genuine because we were created by a God whose very character is love. The Bible teaches that there has been love and communication between the members of the Trinity from all eternity. Love is not an illusion created by the genes to promote our evolutionary survival, but an aspect of human nature that reflects the fundamental fabric of ultimate reality. Moreover, by submitting to God’s plan of salvation and becoming His children, we have the astonishing possibility of participating in that eternal love.

- Nancy R. Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, 2004.

How to be Wise

If we are to become wise, our information diet must begin with the Bible. It must be our solid foundation, as well as the grid through which all other sources are tested. In a world of information overload, the Bible is graciously concise and yet comprehensive.
 
The Bible is our most important source of wisdom because it is literally the eternal God—the standard and source of all truth—revealing himself. What a miraculous thing!
 
When God speaks, we are obligated to obey. His speech, and only his, is supremely authoritative. And Scripture is his speech… But we humans hate authority. We don’t like subjecting ourselves to anyone other than ourselves. Adam’s original sin was a proud intellectual self-sufficiency, what J. I. Packer describes as the “ability to solve all life’s problems without reference to the word of God.” True faith, argues Packer, means giving up the notion of intellectual autonomy and recognizing that “true wisdom begins with a willingness to treat God’s Word as possessing final authority.” Man is not the measure of all things. God is.
 

- Brett McCracken, The Wisdom Pyramid:

Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World, 2021

What Wisdom Is and Isn’t

Wisdom is not knowledge. Nor is it information.
 
Wisdom is not a matter of mere data processing; there’s no algorithm for it. Wisdom is also not necessarily the end result of education (though it certainly can be). Wisdom is knowing what to do with knowledge gained through various means of education: how to apply knowledge and information in everyday life; how to discern if something is true or not; how to live well in light of truth gained.
 
Wisdom is not merely knowing the right answers. It’s about living rightly. It’s about determining which right answer is best. It’s a moral orientation: a developed sense and intuition for discerning right and wrong, real and fake, truth and falsehood; the ability to weigh greater and lesser goods and make complex decisions involving multiple, sometimes competing truths. Wisdom is not something you can Google or download in one fell swoop. It is accumulated over time and through experience.
 
Wisdom and knowledge do have a symbiotic relationship. We can become more or less wise depending on the good or bad knowledge we take in. But the more wisdom we have, the better we become at filtering out bad knowledge and turning good knowledge into spiritual nutrition. Wisdom is sort of like a healthy kidney: it retains what is nutritious as it filters out the waste
 
As James puts it in the Bible, true wisdom is “from above,” not below (James 3:17). It is the God-created (Prov. 8:22–32), God-given (Prov. 2:6), God-fearing (Prov. 1:7), God-oriented (Prov. 3:5–8) ability to synthesize, filter, evaluate, and apply information in ways that lead to right judgments and overall flourishing. We cannot be wise apart from God. God is the standard, the definition, the source, and the keeper of wisdom. But he’s not greedy with it. He’s happy to give it to us if only we ask (James 1:5).
 
This, however, is the struggle. Asking requires humility, and we want to believe we can be wise without God. To bypass God in pursuit of wisdom, however, is a fast track to folly. Just ask Adam and Eve. Only when we acknowledge God and submit to his sovereign rule can we begin to be wise.
 

- Brett McCracken, The Wisdom Pyramid:

Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World, 2021