John 13:34-35 (NRSVCE)
34 “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Our Lord Jesus Christ commanded or gave an authoritative order to His disciples to love, and specified that the kind of love they going to express is the same as His kind of love. And like a Commander in Chief, he will not let them identified to be in his circles of Generals if they failed to do his orders.
In this world, love is an expression that should be freely given and not something we should do as obedience to a command. But why Jesus Christ instructed that “you should love” (or “you must love” in other versions) as He had loved you. Why did He need to command us to love?
Command usually is being issued as an order, something that must be followed and give attention to. A command comes because it is very possible to do, although it is not expected to do it by someone willingly. That’s what it’s all about. Jesus kind of love is possible but not easy to do, for His kind of love is the highest kind, the selfless kind, and the writers called this Agape.
There are four levels of expressions of love; Agape, Philia, Storge, and Eros. The Agape, is the highest form of love, the love of God for man and the love of man back to God. Philia is the brotherly love, while Storge is for parents love to their children and vice versa, (and also covers love for your country). Eros is an intimate love and affection of one’s beauty (both physical and internal) for your spouse.
We can accord that all of us especially the mature, have expressed Philia, Storge, and Eros in our lives, in our hearts, all levels at the same time…and if not every time, for sure, most of the time. But the question is, when is the Agape, the “Selfless Love of Jesus”, the True Everlasting Love” develops in our hearts? When we love someone, because we are aware of the love of God for us, and that we want to love Him back through loving His creations that we can see, and we are doing it as an expression of our love for GOD that we cannot see, then that is when this Philia or Storge scaled up to Agape. 1 John 4:20-21 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” Jesus added in Matthew 25:40 which says, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
Eros, on the other hand, can be transformed to Agape, when the intimate love of husband and wife will be subjected to His law of Love covering the matrimony which requires submission and faithfulness. It requires submission of body and spirit and fidelity to your spouse. Ephesians 5:21-25 states; Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”
But whether it is Philia, Storge or even Eros, which means charity and care are done but for the love of our own selves, then Agape disappears in our hearts. For Agape is a selfless love. It is to love others even others will not love us back. Luke 6:32-34 speaks well of this; “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again.” It is a good and desirable and not wrong to let others love us back. What is wrong is our loving is for our own selves and not for GOD’s creations. GOD is not in us if we do not know and practice the ‘Selfless Love’, thus no one will be a partaker of His promise if we love and live alone s for our own selves, however our reward will be great, and we will be children of the Most High if we love everyone even our enemies (Luke 6:35).
This is what is written according to the Holy Scripture about the Selfless Love that is true and everlasting:
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 says, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13:10) May we all be identified as true Christians by expressing the kind of love of our Lord Jesus Christ! AMEN
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