The Strongest Emotion Love
(7-25-04)
John 21:15-17
In
the reading text today we find an interesting comparison between love and love. In the english we see nothing of the comparison
between the two forms of love being displayed by each. Jesus asks Peter if he agape’s
him and Peter replies, you know I phileo you. Both words are translated into english
as love.
There
does seem to be a difference in the words flavor. Generally the agape love is presented as the godly form of love and thus
the higher form. In this sense it is less of an emotion and more of a choice for someone else’s better or greater good.
It is this love of God that compelled Him to send His Son to die. (Jn.3:16)
Phileo
on the other hand is a strong emotion of attachment that, like agape, will tend to drive our choices. I would like to show
in this lesson that this is also godly. (Math.10:37ff) Jesus tells us that we must phileo Him more than we do our own father
or mother or sons and daughters. Jesus does not just want us to just make governed choices concerning Him, He wants us to
be emotionally attached to Him.
Notice the usage of this word in this next text - John 16:27 "For the Father Himself affectionately loves you*, because you* have affectionately loved
Me, and you* have believed [or, have accepted as true] that _I_ came forth from God. ..”
Here Jesus is saying that His Father, the Lord, has strong emotional attachments towards the disciples. Why? Because they
have loved Jesus and believed Him. Our hearts need to be emotionally attached.
When Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him I think Peter was right to respond concerning His hearts attachment. I for one am glad that Peter was so affectionately attached
to Jesus. It is truly a strong glue that binds and knits two souls like nothing else can.
We too must love (phileo) the Lord Jesus. (ALT)
If anyone does not affectionately love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed
[Gr., anathema]! The Lord has come [or, O Lord come - Gr., maranatha]!
(1Cor.16:22)
In John 5:19-21 Jesus speaks of how the Father (His heavenly Father) loves the Son and shows Him all that he does.
This strong emotional attachment is powerful in moving both God and man in their actions. But we need to be aware that like
most things, there can be attachments of this kind but to the wrong things. The heart can love the attention of honor and
prestige. (Mat.23:6)(Mat.6:5 – the hypocrite in prayer) Or as the scribes who loved being greeted in the market place.
(Lk.20:46) Then there are -“those who love and practice a lie.” (Rev.22:15) By this we can see that we must monitor
and govern what we let our hearts become attached to.
Prov.29:3 tells us that loving wisdom makes a father proud. This is good. Jesus uses this form of the word for love,
translated friend, to drive home his point about committed, emotional, attachments in His discourse on prayer. (Luke 11:1ff,
especially verses 5-8)
We have
been told much and often that we should love our enemies and this is true, we must also allow our hearts to become attached
to each other in devoted affection. There are church bodies all over the world who are divided by their affections one for
another. They may be agape – ing one another but they just don’t like each other much. They need to become emotionally
attached to each other. They need to phileo one another too. They especially need to phileo the Lord Jesus.
How do we build emotional attachments? How do
we build friendships with one another? I think it starts by letting people in.
Letting others into your life and opening up to each other. We each must become likable and that by letting down the walls
we have built around our selves. We do this by removing airs or attitudes that foster separation and contempt. Friendships is willing to look past character flaws
(Luke
7:38) Here we see an outpouring of phileo.
