Love Is...

  It has been said that “Love is that thing which, if a church has it, it doesn’t really need much else, and if it doesn’t have it, whatever else it has doesn’t really matter very much.”  

  We have seen that love is at the center of everything in scripture.  John said it well in his epistle when he said, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.”  The Bible teaches us that God's essence is love. This means that love defines who God is, and God defines what Love looks like. 

  The Greeks understood that love has different meanings in different contexts. They even used different words to capture some of those meanings. They used the word “philos” to speak about friendship and mutual affection. They used the word “eros” to describe romantic love with all of its passion and desire. And they had another word for love which they hardly used– the word “agape.” It was the word Agape that Paul defined when he outlined the qualities of love in I Cor 13; in this lesson, we will break down how love expresses itself in the life of a Christian.