Living the Love God desires

God's will is for us to reflect the character of Christ - and the essence of His character is love. "God is Love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him". (1 John 4:16) Also in (John 13:34-35), Jesus said, "A new command I give you; Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

What is love? The reason perhaps I believe we wonder about this is in our English language, we have one word for love. In Greek, they have four different words for love.

The first is eros, which refers to the physical or sexual attraction (our word "erotic" comes from it).

The second type of love is storge, which refers to family affection, such as love between parents, children, and other family members.

The third type is phileo, which describes our friendship and brotherly love. Philadelphia, we know this city as "brotherly love", gets its name from this.

The final word, agape, has a much broader and deeper meaning as we would know it it about love. This is the most common word for love in the New Testament. Agape love is selfless love - love that extends even to those who are not lovable or even worthy of love. The bible says this is the kind of love God has for us and is the kind of love we should have for others. This love is so deep, this is the kind of love God has for us - love so deep that it caused Christ to leave heaven's glory and die on the cross for us. However, the opposite of this kind of love is selfishness. But when Christ's love fills our hearts, it replaces the once selfishness in our heart.

I will end with these two verses (Galatians 5:22) "The fruit of the Spirit is love." and (1 Timothy 1:5) "The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith."