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What is Love? Baby don't hurt me...

The Revolting Man

The Revolting Man

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Alright, so love is the linchpin and answer to everything. Fair enough. But what is it? How do we do it? How do discern if we're operating in love or not?

Remember that the heart of the best of us is deceitful and desperately wicked. So what does God say is loving?
 
If marriage between husband and wife is to be an image of our relationship with YHWH, then how do we love YHWH? From my perspective, I show that I love YHWH by obeying Him, and by having a relationship with Him. Same thing I do with Samuel. The bible doesn't command me to love Samuel, but it does command me to obey him, and that to me is showing love.
 
Wow, I knew looking into this would challenge me but I'm just scratching the surface and having assumptions blown up.

Slumberfreeze, you definitely may want to to look into this. Ephesians 5:25 does not tell husbands to agape their wives, but to agapate them. That's interesting because I've already found two instances where sinners were agapate-ing their sinful desires.

So obviously we need to demystify love.

Now I suspect that most people will be tempted to ignore this thread. I think that would be a mistake. If we are concerned with biblical families and those begin with Godly husbands then this is the most important topic we can talk about.

On top of that, so many people here make love the cornerstone of their theology that it becomes vital to know what that means.

For this thread though let's focus on what it means, based on scripture, to love your wife as Christ loved the church.
 
Love is an action. Sometimes an inaction if we're talking about not doing something, but mostly it's something that you have to do.
John 14:5 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments."
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Not, "If you love me, you will feel love and everything will be alright."
Too many people base a marriage off of feelings.
Lets think about the 5 love languages for a minute, just as an example (lets not get distracted by the concept or the book, that can be discussed elsewhere, this is only an example). For every one, the way to show love is an action. Saying "I love you" or "you are wonderful", is an action. Doing an act of service is an action. Physical touch is most definitely an action. And I could go on but you get the point.
The main reason I hear for monogamous couples breaking up is this:

We just fell out of love.

Well if love is just a feeling then I understand how that could happen. Love comes and goes. Sometimes Samuel really pisses me off and I feel like I don't love him those days. I'm sure he feels the same way.
But if true love is an action then what happened? Did you stop doing those things? Well start doing them again! Even on those days when we're at each other's throats I still touch him, I still make him cups of tea, I still take care of his children, I still obey him.
When you stop doing these things is where it falls apart.

YHWH never asks us to just feel fluffy feelings for Him. He asks us to obey His commandments. He asks us to focus on Him above all others (I know this doesn't work with PM from a guy's perspective, but you get the idea).
 
That is all great practical application. And I mean that.

But I would really like to hear some good old BF hairsplitting over what scripture says about the love that is commanded of husbands in Ephesians 5:25.

I know you referenced scripture. Your post was excellent. But I want to define terms and really establish God's standard for my behavior as a husband.
 
I'm results oriented. Y'all can argue process all day; I want to know what works.

Most of y'all have heard my rose bush analogy. If you're a good gardener, you have the experience and wisdom to do whatever it takes to get your roses to flourish. This will vary from bed to bed and sometimes from plant to plant in the same bed. There is not a list of "this will always work and this will never work", or "this is the correct way to do it in every instance". There is only "these are some things that have worked in the past in some circumstances, keep trying until your roses are beautiful".

If the woman is the glory of the man, maybe we should start by looking at "what sorts of wives are we trying to cultivate?". Then we'll have an idea what sorts of methods might be helpful.
 
As pointed out already... Contrary to popular belief expressed in countless pop songs, love is not a feeling. Feelings come and go. We may associate certain feelings as being related to love, but if love were merely a feeling the human race would be in a pretty sad state of affairs. Not that modern society with its' screwed up concepts of interpersonal relationships and "I'm just not in love with [him/her/you/etc.] anymore" attitude isn't bad as it is.
I'd liken the stereotypical concept of love to churchianity's concept of faith. It's this thing that's like an emotional, intellectual belief, ya know, it just can't be explained, but you know it when you feel it. Pure crap is what it is.
But someone may say, “You have faith, and I have actions.” Show me your faith without any actions, and I will show you my faith by my actions - James 2:18
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Love is a verb, action. Of course there's the 1 Cor 13 definition which if you think about reflects actions. It's a state of being which considers another's needs and desires as one's own and it shows through actions.
It's not always glamorous and not all roses, butterflies, and rainbows.
 
ZecAustin said:
Ephesians 5:25 does not tell husbands to agape their wives, but to agapate them. That's interesting because I've already found two instances where sinners were agapate-ing their sinful desires.
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I can't find a single instance of the root word "agape" appearing in scripture anywhere (correct me if I'm wrong), it always appears as a variant such as agapate. Englishman's concordance here gives 15 instances of agapate. As far as I can see, this is simply a particular tense of agape, it is used wherever it is referencing someone loving something in particular. Agapate is used for "love your enemies", "love the chief seats", "love one another", "love Me", "love your wives" etc. Other versions of agape are simply used in different tenses, for instance agapa is the next most common version (12 times) and means the present-tense "loves" - "the Father loves the Son", "if anyone loves God" etc. My point is that there is a difference here - but it doesn't seem to mean anything substantial, it's just a difference in tense, and Greek has far more tenses than English so all words have more variants, simply to express differences in tense using different endings to a word, slight differences that in English we would express by adding additional words into the context instead. Agapate simply means to love, in the same way that we are to love Christ. We can agapate something we should agapate (e.g. Christ), or agapate something we shouldn't (e.g. the chief seats in the synagogues).
 
Key instances of agapate to consider when deciding what love is. All these use agapate specifically (although as stated above I think other tenses of agape may be equally valid, I'm sticking purely with agapate for now to be completely solid in this, since you've made the distinction Zec):
Matthew 5:44-45 said:
But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you, that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.
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John 13:34-35 said:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
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John 14:15 said:
If you love me, keep my commandments.
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In all three cases love is an action. Love your enemies is expanded as "bless", "do good" and "pray for" them and people like them, because the Father also does actual practical things (giving sun and rain). We are to love each other in a way that others can actually see and know that we love each other - so it must involve something practical and visible. And we love Yeshua by keeping his commandments, again a very practical instruction, not just a fluffy feeling (or a recited prayer).
Ephesians 5:25-27 said:
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the assembly, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the assembly to himself gloriously, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without defect.
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Christ loved us through a very practical act, dying for us, to cleanse and sanctify us. So we too must love our wives in similarly practical ways, particularly doing anything needed to draw them to follow Christ and receive His salvation.
 
Teom touched on this already, and I think he's right on target, (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a) Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails ...

FollowingHim, I could be looking at things wrong, but Strong's Concordance for the NASB shows "love" in this passage to be ἀγάπη, which I think is agapē.
 
We've had and are having the discussion in the other thread on submission, which has been an interesting thread to say the least, but I think love has the potential to be even more interesting.

Ephesians 5:25 says husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. The church is wholly undeserving of love: rebellious, disrespectful, selfish, greedy, impatient, demanding, vengeful, decietful, unworthy, flirts with another master, offers her children up as sacrifices to other gods - generally wicked in most every way, and yet He still loved us enough to die for us. If a wife were the type of wife the church is for Christ, do you suppose most husbands would be very loving? I doubt it. This is a pretty tall order. Even so, the example we are given is to love our wives as Christ loved the church. If our wives are being unlovable, we are called to love them with a true love as described in 1 Corinthians 13 and following Christ as our example.

I'm certainly not trying to give the impression that I have this mastered - not anywhere close. It is the kind of thing I am striving for though.
 
Hey FollowingHim, I think I see agapate getting used 143 times and agape being used 116 times but I'm not completely confident I know how to use a lexicon correctly.

Did anyone see 2 Peter 2:15, 1 John 2:15 and Luke 11:43? These are instances the word is used to describe a sinner's love for something carnal. The Luke passage is the Pharisees being condemned for loving the chief seats.

My point being that maybe we over spiritualize love sometimes. I believe with my whole being that God is a Lawgiver and a just judge . He would not give a nebulous command that we have to guess at. If He told us to love our wives then we can know what that looks like and obey it.

I am excited about this word agapate. It gives me something to focus on and aim to. Could it realm be so simple as husbands being commanded to apply Corinthians 13 extra especially with their wives? Ephesians 5 leads me to believe there is more to it than that bit that would be a starting place at least.
 
Aineo nails it I think. We have a flat out description of love, spelled out right there in the word. I think that to understand "love" from a Biblical standpoint, including what it means to love our wives, we cannot limit it to a discussion based solely on scriptures directly relating to wives. It's just like how the modern vernacular thinks of "church" meaning a building, but we, who study the meaning of things, know that ecclesia has a much broader meaning that that, one which has much bearing on the topic of poly that someone focusing on a "building" or on the "one world church" would miss.

I agree that love is an action and a choice, definitely. However I don't believe that it has to exist in the absence of feeling and emotion. The tone of posts to me has sounded like people are scoffing at the very idea of any sort of feeling attached to the word "love", but while a relationship cannot be sustained in a healthy way based solely on feelings I don't think it's biblical to think that it should exist or would be healthy to never have positive emotion either.

Let's look at a few examples.

David loved God with all his heart, it motivated him to dance with such passion his clothes came off.

Or Song of Songs? "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth for your love is more delightful than wine."

Or in Ecclesiastes 9: "Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which He has given to you under the sun ; for this is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun."

No these aren't all the root word agape but that doesn't mean they don't apply to marriage, "ahab" for instance from the Song of Songs example. That word refers to the husband/wife relationship quite often, such as in Genesis 22: "Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her; thus Isaac was comforted after his mother's death."

Yes, obedience, toil, perseverance; things like that are all *aspects* of the love between husband and wife, but so are passion, delight, and joy.
 
Aineo, you're right, agape does appear, I was looking at too limited a set of references.
So Zec, yes words with the root of agape appear 116 times, and words with the same root as agapate appear 143 times. But agapate itself appears only 15 times. Agape itself appears 64 times. (Am I splitting hairs enough for you yet? :-) )

Aineo, Strongs only lists the root words. It's a good place to start when digging into something. I use www.blueletterbible.org for this, it's a great resource. That website displays both the Strongs references and the actual Greek text - and often you'll notice that the actual Greek word is slightly different to the root word referenced by Strongs in that passage.
To look at the actual incidence of the many variants on these root words, Englishman's concordance is more comprehensive. Biblehub.com has this online, see entries for agapate and agape for instance.
 
From my brief search, references I see are specifying agapao as the word used in Eph 5. It's all greek to me, but it appears that agape is the noun form and agapao and agapate are different verb tenses? It seems there would be more of a distinction between agape and phileo.
 
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