4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it his not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;2 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
So at this point you may be wondering where I got my blog title. After all, it doesn't say anything about love being selfish, just the opposite. Well, to understand where I am going, we have to understand a little Koine (or Biblical) Greek. Stay with me here. In Greek, there are several words we would translate "love" and the one in 1 Corinthians is common in the Bible, it's the word Agape. Agape could be translated "unconditional love" or "Holy love" because it's a love that is unconditional and unending. This is in contrast to the greek word, let's look at a few. First, there is Storgy which we could call family love, parent love or motherly love. Pretty self-explanatory. Phileo, the base of Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love, it means just that, the love of close friends. We could also call this Platonic love. In our current society, when we say love we are often talking about Eros, where is where the word erotic comes from. This is romantic, sexual love.
There are other words that are similar or synonym that mean things like attachment and lust, but we are going to stick with these four. Now what is interesting is the word that we use the most in our day and age isn't found in the New Testament (the Old Testament wasn't written in Greek, it was written in Hebrew). The word we would most often use for love if we spoke koine is not used in the most popular Bible passage about love, yet we often think about romantic or sexual love and use this passage.
I'm going out on a limb here and saying most people who get married do so because they feel eros for their partner. There is passion and attraction and desire. The problem, of course, is the title of my blog. To be specific, Eros is selfish. Eros is emotional love, it's feelings and those feelings are awesome. We get the euphoria, we get the excitement and we love it. We love to feel love. In contrast, Agape isn't much of a feeling. Even Storgy is less of a feeling and more of a commitment. Unconditional love does not have any conditions, which is why we call in unconditional. The love God has for us is never ending. When we are His in Christ, we are covered in unconditional, uncompromising and unbreakable love. Just like verse 7 says above, it bears and believes and hope and endures all things.
So, do your relationships sound like that? I hope so, but most of them don't. What if the person you say you love (romantic or friendship or brother or otherwise) betrays you? What if they turn their back on you, break a promise? What if they don't live up to your expectations? What if they hurt you? This is real stuff folks because you get hurt when people you love or say love you hurt you. If you lash out, get angry, break promises and get revenge, it wasn't love. In my life, I have been hurt and I got angry and I wanted to get even and it's because I didn't love. When I had was something else.
What we have too often is a feeling, and that feeling is selfish. Even if we want the other person to be happy, is that happiness so they will, in turn, make us happy? Relationships, and I mean all of them, need a dose of Agape. They need some unconditional love, I don't care if it's your spouse, your kids, your friends and family, your neighbor, your boss, and coworkers or the guy you bump into on the street. We need to begin to apply 1 Corinthians love, which means we will be patient and kind and seek the good. That means regardless of how they act or how they treat us.
Think this is hard? It's incredibly hard, because deep down in our flesh, we are all selfish and we want to be loved and happy and fulfilled. To love someone even when they hurt is is so hard. We desire to hurt them to soothe our pride. Remember, love is not prideful and it does not boast. I invite you to read 1 Corinthians with fresh eyes, let's change our love to include more Agape.
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