4 Loves
Transcript of 4 Loves
The 4 Loves
3 Questions
• How are we ‘doing’ in these loves?
• What do these loves tell us about God’s love for us?
• How can our loving draw from His love?
Affection / Storge
Affection / Storge
• Source of love / relationship– Natural built-in affection of care-giver– The 120% dependence of the ‘weaker’ party
• Obligation (1 Way)– Puppy / Child: none (no ‘payback’ required)– Master / Parent : provision, shelter, security.
• Risk & Challenges– Perseverance– “Letting go”
“O Jerusalem!...how often I have longed to gather your children
together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings!”
(Luke 13:34)
"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on
the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”
(Isaiah 49:15)
Friendship / Phileo
Friendship / Phileo
• Source of love / relationship– A common interest
• Obligation (2 Way)– Serve, Protect and Share (John 15:15)– Potentially the greatest love of all (John
15:13)
• Risk & Challenges– Exploitation
I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my
Father I have made known to you.
(John 15:15)
“Greater love has none than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.”
(John 15:13)
Romance / Eros
Romance / Eros
• Source of love / relationship– Each Other
• Obligation (2 Way + 1)– Husband: love wife as his own body– Wife: submit to husband– Both under covenant to God
• Risk & Challenge– Betrayal– Fear of vulnerability– Together “for better or for worse”
Ephesians 5:22-28
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of
the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the
Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to
their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself
up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself
as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy
and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as
their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
“Having sex is like playing badminton.”
Who is the Bride of Christ?
Agape
Charity (Universal & Unconditional Love) / Agape
• Source of love / relationship– God and the Cross
• Obligation (it’s complicated)– “For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16)– “We love because He first loved us” (1John 4:19)– The Church is ‘obliged’ to love the world as God has
loved the church (John 13:34)
• Risk & Challenge– Indifference / Judgment– Ridicule and persecution
A new command I give you: Love one another.
As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
(John 13:34)