“We love because God first loved us.” God is the first lover, we are the first recipients. Love existed within God, and it flowed out from God into the world He created.
Thomas Oord and Michael Lodahl, in their book Relational Holiness*, proposed this definition of love: “To love is to act intentionally, in response to God and others, to promote well-being” (73). They restate it this way: “To love is to respond to the inspiration of others – especially God — and by that response effect genuine flourishing” (Ibid.).
A few pages later, they describe love further with the Greek words translated “love” in English: agape, eros, and philia. If love is a willful response (not merely emotional, although emotions do have a role) to the actions or words of others, then it’s important to get a handle on the possible actions and what love means.
What does love do in the face evil, when someone wrongs or hurts or abuses? Love responds intentionally to effect genuine flourishing — responds with goodness, justice, and peace. Returns good for evil. This is agape, and it’s the side of love that God is known for.
What does love do when confronted with beauty, kindness, wonder, joy, and goodness? Love responds intentionally, often in happiness, to celebrate these and nurture them. Love promotes well-being of all that is bright, beautiful and good in the world. This is eros, and it is perhaps the easier of side of love for us.
Lastly, love is relationship, just as God is Trinity which is an intimate bond of love. To effect genuine flourishing in others requires relationship, and deep and lasting flourishing can only be nurtured by deep relationships. Philia describes the side of love that builds deep bonds of loving community with others.
These sides of love are all a part of one entity, so there are times where they overlap and work in tandem.
It is significant to remember that as believers, our love for others is a response to the inspiration of God’s love for us and for others. We do respond to other people, but ultimately we are responding to God’s extravagant love toward us. It is through the immense warehouse of God’s love which we have access to through prayer and the Spirit that we can love agape-, eros-, and philia-style.
Love is still our choice. We can choice to respond out of the love of God in our lives. Of course, that choice is largely impacted by our own acceptance of God’s love. If we don’t know or embrace the love God has for us, His intentional action for our flourishing, then how can we love others? When our hearts are still dark and corrupted by sin, we interact with others based on our beliefs about what will bring about our well-being with no concern about others. It is that default response that we learn to override and retrain through the Spirit of love, power, and a sound mind.
So love involves our free will. Our love needs regular infusions with God’s love otherwise it withers and dies in the trials of life. God’s storehouse of love is immeasurable and always accessible. It outstrips, outpaces, outnumbers, outperforms all the evil and heartbreak in the world. We cannot exhaust it, for God has demonstrated it is inexhaustible by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Love includes emotion, but it is not limited to emotional reactions. Our emotions give direction on how to proceed, on what’s happening inside, on what sort of inspiration we are receiving. They are valuable in guiding our responses toward choices that effect flourishing, but in the end God calls us to make willful, not emotional, choices to love. And above all, we are to love Him more than anything or anyone else.
* Oord, Thomas Jay, and Michael E. Lodahl. “Adventures in Love.” Relational Holiness: Responding to the Call of Love, Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, 2005, pp. 69–87.
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