John Indermark - The Greatest of These: Biblical Moorings of Love

The time in the worship service comes for the pastor's "children's sermon." During this time, the pastor often asks a question. I have noticed that children most frequently offer two answers, whether or not they directly relate to the pastor's question: "Jesus" or "love." These answers may partly stem from a tendency of children's sermons to boil down to one of those two themes. The answers also emerge from those two themes, which provide the core identity and vocation for Christian community. You cannot have Christian community without taking Jesus into account. And you cannot have Christian community without taking love into account.

The Greatest of These: Biblical Moorings of Love explores the meaning and practice of love in Christian faith. As children's sermons reveal, the theme of love serves as a catch-all of Christian faith. Love offers a watchword and a byword among usbut what do we mean by love? What exactly is it we are suggesting when we invoke cherished affirmations like "God is love" or "love one another"? This book will invite readers and study groups to delve deeply and intentionally into what the biblical witness has to say about loveand what that implies for how we practice love.

Notice I said "biblical witness" and not simply "New Testament." Sometimes the church proceeds as if "love" shows up only when Jesus comes along. That outlook is perilous in both its one-sided depiction of Judaism and its negligence of how Christian teaching on love grows out of our Jewish roots. Each chapter in this book will explore a particular theme of love through six biblical passages: one each from Torah, Prophets, and Writings (Old Testament); and one each from Gospels, Pauline Epistles, and General Epistles (New Testament).

The languages of the Bible, Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek, provide intriguing insights into what is and is not meant by love in the biblical works.

Four Greek words in use during New Testament times for various kinds of love are: eros, philos, storge, and agape. Eros, like its English derivative erotic, has chiefly to do with intense desire. While it can refer to the desire for that which is true and good, it has been associated most frequently with sensuality and sexuality. Eros does not appear in any New Testament text. Philos is love primarily associated with friendship. It occurs a number of times in the New Testament, primarily in contexts where the love spoken of is between individuals or in community. Storge refers to familial love and occurs in combination with philos in Romans 12:10. In Romans 12, Paul uses variations of agape, philos, and storge in the instructions for relating to one another as members of the body of Christ. Agape, as used by Christians, refers to the self-giving love that is given by God. In the New Testament, variations of this word are used in reference to God's love for humankind, individually or collectively. Agape suggests the unconditional love that finds illustration in Jesus' command to his disciples: "Love one another... as I have loved you" (John 13:34, italics added). For the community of Jesus Christ, agape comes to us not by our earning or demanding it, but by the sheer grace of God's selfgiving love. Jesus calls his followers to this same, self-giving love offered to us by God.

Ahav, racham, and hesed are Hebrew word roots translated as various kinds of love in the Old Testament. Ahav carries a variety of meanings, including "to breathe after," or long for, something, "to love," and "to delight in."