Agape

Today is the day. Red hearts, pink roses, balloons, cards candy, and animals that sing songs of love. Stores shelves are stocked with flowers, hearts, candy and more. They began the day after New Year's to get ready for Valentine’s Day. Do you know that more roses are sold on that day than any other day in the year? All over the world, it is the day that people show their love for someone special.

The basest, most common definition of love is the meeting of emotional and biological needs. We all long for words and acts of kindness, for reassurance, and for physical contact with other people. These expressions of affection are appropriate and productive, but there is a higher level of love worthy of attention: unconditional love.

In Greek it is called agape. It is giving someone not what he wants, but what he needs. It is loving the unlovable. It is loving someone who does not love us and will not return our expressions of love. Some of the most powerful statements in the Bible speak of love:

• For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
• But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
• Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. (John 15:13)

This agape love, then, comes from God. It is love in its purest sense. When we celebrate agape love, we honor the person to whom we express the love, and we honor God, who loves us even when we are absolutely unlovable.

When we reach out to our fellow human beings, especially those who need us most we are their Valentines, they are ours. “At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.’ ” (Mt. 9: 36-38).
You and I are the laborers in the Lover’s vineyard. Are we doing our task of love and compassion? Can we do more than what we are already doing? What do we want to really live and die for? Is our love for neighbor conditional or unconditional?

The powerful words of Jesus speak to the love standard Christians are expected to live by, not just on Valentine’s Day, but on every day of the year. There are two important focuses for our love.

There is one scripture reference that is the essence of the Christian faith. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
The people of the earth had gotten themselves into such a state of destruction and self-harm that God gave up trying to send his message through mere mortals. We were, and still are a stubborn and willful people. Instead, God, in his greatest show of love, sent his son, Jesus, to walk on this earth, to teach us, to show us how to live real lives, love-filled lives, and, eventually, to die for us. That is unconditional love, agape love.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Mark 12:30-31)
Human love often seems complicated and frustrating, so it is comforting to have its complexities reduced to these two manageable realities: love God; love each other not with worldly love but with the unconditional agape love of Christ.