Words · Greek Words · Lesson 1, word 2 of 5
ἀγάπηagape
Love: the bond of God and his people, in Christ.
Why this word is here. The New Testament's characteristic word for love (1 Corinthians 13, 1 John 4), and the subject of the most repeated word-study claim in popular preaching, which needs correcting.
What it means
Abbott-Smith: love, goodwill, esteem. The noun is rare outside biblical and church Greek; in the Septuagint it renders Hebrew ahavah, love. In the New Testament it names men's love for one another and for God, God's love for people and for Christ, Christ's love for people, and in the plural, the church's love feasts (Jude 12).
Abbott-Smith sets it alongside its neighbours: distinct from philia, friendship; storge, natural family affection (in the New Testament only in compounds); and eros, sexual love, which is not used in the New Testament at all.
Where you meet it
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
1 Corinthians 13:4 (BSB)
Anchor verse 'Love (agape) is patient, love is kind.' Paul's description is of conduct: every clause is something love does or refuses to do.
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13 (BSB)
'And now these three remain: faith, hope and love (agape). But the greatest of these is love.'
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
1 John 2:15 (BSB)
'Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love (agape) of the Father is not in him.' The same noun, used for a love aimed at the wrong object, a fact the over-claim cannot explain.
neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:39 (BSB)
Nothing in creation 'will be able to separate us from the love (agape) of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'
Why it matters
Agape is the New Testament's word for the love that defines God himself ('God is love', 1 John 4:8) and the love that is to mark the church so visibly that outsiders can identify Jesus' disciples by it (John 13:35). Its centre is not a feeling but God's own character expressed in self-giving action, supremely at the cross.
Watch out
Now the famous claim: 'agape means unconditional, self-sacrificial love, completely different from phileo, brotherly love.' As stated, it overreaches. The words overlap: the Father 'loves (philei) the Son' (John 5:20), agape is used of misplaced loves (1 John 2:15; Demas 'loved (agapesas) this present world', 2 Timothy 4:10), and in John 21 Jesus and Peter trade the two verbs in one conversation. Agape is the New Testament's characteristic and richest love-word, but its meaning in a verse comes from the sentence, not from a slogan. That is the semantic-overdifferentiation fallacy: squeezing two words apart harder than the texts allow.
In this lesson
- logos (λόγος): A word, saying, message, and the Word made flesh.
- pistis (πίστις): Faith: trust, belief, and faithfulness in one word.
- metanoia (μετάνοια): Repentance: a change of mind that turns the life.
- ekklesia (ἐκκλησία): An assembly, the gathered people of God, the church.
Sources
- Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon (1889)
- STEP Bible lexicon data (Abbott-Smith)
- SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
Review status: in-theological-review. Every Contend page passes a human theological review against the Statement of Faith before it is published as approved teaching. This section is in that queue.