Last week I made the heretically orthodox claim that I John 4:7,8 was the key to understanding the whole New Testament. Before delving into a defense of my position, I’ll attempt to cut off a potential misunderstanding. Someone may think be tempted to think of this verse as meaningless, since everyone loves – even people who are often evil. So it is important to make some comments about the meaning of “love” itself. As one with a vague familiarity of Christianity might expect, John uses the Greek word “agape” in this passage. There are several common words that are used to grasp the meaning of agape-love, such as “unconditional” or “self-giving.” I don’t want to go so far as to say that these characterizations are misleading, but they are certainly not as helpful as they could be. What is more interesting is agape’s relationship to the other two main Greek words for love – “eros,” and “philia.”
Eros, of course, is where our word erotic comes from, which accurately indicates sexuality. Philia describes the kind of love in a friendship, or perhaps in some family relationships. These two loves are both based in desire. The lover desires the beloved in some way, because the lover lacks something that can be provided by the beloved. I get the feeling that we are expected to think of agape-love as essentially different from these first two forms of love, in that desire is not the central element in the agape-love relationship; the agape lover supposedly loves the beloved in a non-desiring way.
I don’t think that this is right. It seems to be that desire is the central feature in all kinds of love. The difference is merely in what is desired, and who benefits. The lover obviously benefits in some way in eros and philia love when the desire is fulfilled – be it sexually, or by acquiring a friend. And since the lover benefits (even if someone else does as well), these first two kinds of love are essentially selfish. Of course selfishness may be a bad thing, but it is certainly not bad all the time. We desire friends because we don’t want to be lonely, so in a sense we are using them for our own selfish purposes. We desire our mates erotically, as so we are using them to satisfy our selfish desires. But what’s wrong with that? Nothing at all!
But agape-love is rooted in a different sort of desiring. It is a desire, to be sure, but a desire to benefit someone else without concern about whether that kindness is ever reciprocated. This is quite different from friendship love. If I had a “friend” that never reciprocated my friendly actions, I would simply find a new friend.
John then is saying that “Everyone who agapes is born of God and knows God.” The truth is that eros-love and philia-love are natural, humanly ways to love. The presence of them in your life indicates nothing except perhaps that you are a normal, rational human being. But agape-love? That is divine, since it is unnatural.
And let’s not be confused – agape-love does exist, despite what the skeptics say. A skeptical argument runs like this: “But when you help someone, you feel better, and so you are benefited. Therefore even what the Christians call agape-love is selfish, in the end” (there actually was a pretty good Friends episode about this – Phoebe was unable to find any good works to do that did not make her feel good). To the skeptics, I point out that they are missing the point. What is interesting is not that someone feels good about being a Good Samaritan (for they do); what is interesting is that they desire to be a Good Samaritan in the first place! We are all satisfying our desires when we love. Its just that some have desires that are born of God. Those are the people that are born again.
