TLP 471: Natural Family Love | Family Love, Part 3

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Parents, you should have a natural affection for your children that you don't have for other kids. And children, you should have a natural affection for your parents and siblings that you don't have for others.

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If you don't, there's a problem. Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids.

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Parenting is just one way Christian dads and moms are to worship God. So welcome to the Truth Love Parent Podcast, where we train dads and moms to give

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God the preeminence in their parenting. I'm your host, A .M. Brewster, and welcome back to our study of family love.

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I'm a biblical family counselor, and I can say without any question in my mind that every single time there's a conflict, an issue, and breakdown between family members, there's always a love problem.

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Every single time that happens, fake love is present, and I want to help you and your family avoid those pitfalls by learning about what real love is and how it can strengthen and nourish and heal your family.

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So if this is the first time you're hearing about this series, please start at the beginning in episode 469.

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If you're returning, I hope you'll click on the link in the description to access today's episode notes, transcript, and related resources, and I also hope that you'll download the

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Wisdom app from the link in the description, follow me at A .M. Brewster, and join me every

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Wednesday at 11 a .m. Eastern Standard Time to take the topic from the most recent episode and discuss it in greater detail.

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I'll answer your questions, excitedly listen to your biblical additions to the conversation, and even engage in your debates.

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As always, these new shows post on Tuesday. That means I'll be taking to wisdom tomorrow to get even more practical with the natural love we're going to discuss today, and I hope you'll join me there.

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And I also hope the whole family has their notebooks and are ready to go for part three. Today we're going to be looking at another

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Greek word, but don't forget what I told you last time. Your ability to understand, interpret, and live life correctly is directly tied to having a biblically robust vocabulary.

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Therefore, it's very important for us to understand the Greek word, storge. Now, just to be fair, I told you last time that there were four main

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Greek words for love and that only one of them wasn't found in the Bible. Well, it's true that eros isn't in the

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Bible, but technically the word storge isn't there either. But there are two forms of the word storge that do show up in three different verses.

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So let's start by discussing the Greek understanding of storge and then look at the three passages where the Bible uses it.

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Are you ready? Here we go. Storge is interesting because this love has its basis in one's own nature.

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Unlike eros that has its basis in selfish desire, storge is a natural affection or natural obligation.

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I'll put it to you this way. Even infants who don't possess the ability to cognitively exercise their selfishness feel this storge affection.

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Storge is a natural movement of the soul for a husband, wife, child, friend, or even a pet or sometimes even just an object of material possession.

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Storge is a quiet, abiding feeling within a person that rests on something close to him about which he feels good.

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It's also interesting to note that like eros, anyone can feel storge, they can experience that. You don't have to be a

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Christian to feel this love for another person. Now, that doesn't mean that this love is not true love or that it's some sort of perversion like eros is.

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God created all humans with an instinctual affection for things around us. Young children feel it most strongly with their parents and siblings.

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And like I mentioned before, pets can also receive this love. Any of you who've ever lost a pet understands storge.

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Well, I guess you could say if you had eros for the pet, you may have been mad when it died because you no longer received any benefit from the pet.

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And there are definitely people out there who would like that. But I think most people who lose a pet or especially a loved one experience storge most profoundly.

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Now, here's the unique thing about storge. For the most part, storge is usually unconditional. For example, it doesn't matter if the baby's parents are good people or not.

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The baby storges them anyway because it's simply a natural response to those with whom we feel close.

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But we're going to see that storge, which is supposed to be a natural, unconditional affection, isn't always natural.

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And with that, let's jump into Romans chapter 1. I talk about Romans 1 a lot on this show, but today we're going to have to investigate a little bit deeper in a specific aspect.

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Here's a quick overview from verses 18 through 26. Basically, the passage tells us that there are people who know truth about God, but they reject that truth and follow their own hearts.

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They basically eros their way through life. And the consequence of their eros is that God allows their wickedness to destroy them.

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It's a scary passage because in verse 26, it says that God gives them up to dishonorable passions.

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He actually allows them to destroy themselves. And then we get to verse 28 where God gives them up even more.

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And it says, Haughty, boastful, inventors of evil.

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Now, actually, let me just go and stop right here for a moment. This is really important for all the children in the room to understand.

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Did you hear that awful list of terrible sins, evil, murder, deceit, haters of God? Well, guess what the next sin in the list is?

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God says that people who reject God's truth are also, quote, disobedient to parents.

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If you don't obey your parents, you have the same thing in common with murderers and haters of God. You are rejecting

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God's truth just like they are. Let that sink in for a second, and then we'll continue with our list.

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So, Paul continues with his depressing list in this way. Inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

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Though they know God's righteousness, decree that those who practice such things deserve to die. They not only do them, but give approval to those things who practice them.

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Now, did you hear our word storge? Obviously, I didn't say the word storge, but did you catch which of those words had storge as its base?

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The word to which I'm referring is heartless, and in the Greek, it would sound like this, astorge.

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When you put the letter A in front of a word, generally speaking, you negate the root word. For example, asocial means not social, amoral means not moral, atypical means not typical.

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The A is called an alpha privative, and it's used in Greek and English. So, here in Romans 1, the word astorge means without natural affection.

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In fact, that's exactly how it's translated in the King James Version, and the New American Standard translates it simply as unloving.

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Now, at the beginning of the episode, I mentioned that storge isn't found in the Bible, but two forms of it were found in three different verses.

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So, before we discuss the implications of astorge, let's look at the one other verse where astorge is found. For that, we turn to 2

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Timothy 3. In this passage, Paul is explaining to Timothy what the world will be like in the last days.

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Let's start with verse 1. But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty, for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self -control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power.

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That passage should sound an awful lot like Romans 1. As time goes on, more and more people will reject God. We saw the same thing in the days of Noah, and we see it today.

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Broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there be that find it. Well, as people reject the truth of God, they will exercise more and more of their depravity.

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So much could be said about each of the sins that we just read. In fact, the word love showed up so many times, but hopefully this time the word heartless stuck out to you again.

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That's our word, astorge. So what does it mean that people can be without natural affection?

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How does a person lose something that should come naturally to them? Well, since these are the only two times in the whole

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Bible where this particular word is used, much of what we can learn will come from these two passages. So, since astorge is supposed to be a natural, instinctual love, it's an extension of God's common grace to us.

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But it appears that repeatedly rejecting the truth of God removes a person from accessing this grace.

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Ephesians 4, 17 through 19 sheds some more light on this. Now this I say in testifying the

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Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They're darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.

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They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

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But that is not the way you learn Christ. Do you see how having a hard heart caused their minds to be dark and futile and they became alienated from God?

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And because there are hard hearts, they eventually became callous. A callous is a tough layer of skin that's built up because of repeated friction.

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I have calluses from playing the guitar, the martial arts, working in the garden and cooking in the kitchen. But God is saying that because of the repeated friction of coming in contact with God's truth and rejecting it, a person can become callous in their spirits.

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This causes them to give into sensuality and greed and impure lifestyles. So it's clear that we lose our natural affection, our storge, by repeatedly refusing to submit to God.

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So what about you? Parents, you should have a natural affection for your children that you don't have for other kids.

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Children, you should have a natural affection for your parents and siblings that you don't have for other people. Now, if you don't have that natural affection, there is a problem.

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And that problem is not necessarily with those people. The problem is definitely with you. Now, I'm not saying they haven't sinned against you.

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I'm not saying that they don't have to change. But I am saying that when you lose your natural affection for people, that's your fault, not theirs.

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Now, I have more to say about this when it comes time to apply this to our families, but I want to look at the one other verse that uses a different version of storge.

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For that, we're going back to Romans, but this time we'll be in chapter 12. Starting in verse nine, Paul says,

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Now, the word love was used a number of times in that passage, but only one of those loves is the word for which we're looking.

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We'll talk about the other ones in a later episode. The word for which we're looking is translated love at the beginning of the verse 10, love one another with brotherly affection.

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What's interesting about this word is that it's a mix of two of the family loves we'll be discussing in this series.

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The Greek word in question is philostorgos. It's a combination of storge and philos, and philos means beloved, dear, and friendly.

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The love word we're going to study next time is phileo, which clearly has the same prefix. Now, what's interesting is that God is commanding us to have this love hybrid for each other.

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He's commanding it. Now remember, storge is nowhere commanded of us because it's considered a natural affinity, and the biblical author chose not to use the word phileo.

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He chose philostorgos for a reason. So what's being commanded of us here, and what's the implication?

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Well, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle Paul is commanding us to exercise an affection that should be natural among believers.

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In fact, the New American Standard Bible translates philostorgos as devoted. All of this to say, whether we're born again or not, we should all exhibit the natural affection for family that God created us to have, but once you're born again into a new spiritual family,

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God expects that there will be a new kind of natural affection for our fellow believers. In fact, it has to be there.

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So what's the application of all of this for our families? Well, number one, God created all of you to love each other with a natural affection.

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Do you experience that natural affection that enjoys being around your family? When something negative happens to your family, do you respond with a desire to protect them?

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For example, growing up, my sister and I were best friends, but when I got into ninth grade later on, I started rejecting

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God's truth in my life, and one of the consequences was that I stopped loving my sister the way

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God commanded. Yet one day, my dad and my sister decided to play a practical joke on me and my mom.

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My mom and I were waiting in the car for my dad and sister to pick up a few things in the grocery store while my dad came out and pretended that he didn't know where my sister was.

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I remember being very angry with my dad and immediately jumped out of the car to find her and probably kill anyone who may have threatened her safety.

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You see, even though I wasn't exercising true biblical love for my sister, I still had a natural storge for my sister.

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By God's grace, as I started to submit back to God's truth, I started loving my sister more the way I should, we went back to being best friends, and praise

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God, I never became so calloused that I completely lost my natural affection for her. But what about you?

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Does the thought of losing any of your family members make you sad? If not, your callousness may be growing, and that makes our second point very important.

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Number two, this natural affection can only be lost as we repeatedly choose to disobey God's truth.

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Do you love your pet more than you love your parents? Does the idea of spending an evening home playing games with your family make you cringe?

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Mom, if I told you that you would have to homeschool your children for the rest of the year, how would that make you feel?

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If you were given a choice to go on a vacation with your friends or your family, which would you choose? As I mentioned earlier, when our natural affection starts to callous over, we cannot blame the other person.

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It's super easy for parents who are terrorized by their child to blame the kid for the aversion they now feel.

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It's second nature for children to blame their parents when the child starts to move away from them. But the reality is that if your natural affections are slipping, it's your fault.

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And the reason should be very distressing to you because losing your natural affection for your family means that somewhere in your life, you're repeatedly choosing to disobey

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God's commands. And the really scary thing about this is that your sinful choices may not have anything to do with the family member you're struggling to store gay.

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Bad choices at work can cause a man to drift away from his wife. Inappropriate responses to trials in the extended family can affect the relationship between a child and her parent.

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Even repeatedly responding sinfully to tensions at church or school can cause our natural affections at home to break down.

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The point is, if we feel that natural affection slipping away, the answer is personal and the answer is sin.

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Number three, if you and your family members are born again, God actually commands you to exhibit Philistorgos for your born again family.

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You see, this is a much bigger deal than regular old store gay. Regular old store gay comes naturally and can't be commanded, but the natural affection amongst the family of God can be commanded.

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So let me ask you, how do you feel toward your saved children, your born again parents, and your

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Christian siblings? Do you enjoy spending time with your born again family members, whether they be your immediate or extended family?

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What about your church family? Is going to church and fellowshipping with God's people something to which you look forward? What about family devotions?

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What about the time you're spending studying God's word right now together? If you don't enjoy those things, if you're not actually drawn to spending time with your saved family members and your

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God, then again, there's a problem. And number four, this natural affection for other believers can also be lost only when we choose to disobey

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God's truth. Like I observed before, if your parents are saved and you really don't like hanging out with them, the issue is yours.

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I'm not saying your parents don't do annoying things. I'm not saying they're always likable and lovable. I'm not saying they don't sin.

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I'm simply saying that there should be a deep and abiding affection for your family, regardless of how they treat you. And if you don't have that deep and abiding affection, that's on you.

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Only consistent sin steals that storge from us. So how's your family doing?

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This is the first of the real family loves, and it's actually the easiest. You were born with the ability to experience this love, and it should stick with you the rest of your life, assuming you're not living in sin.

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However, the other loves about which we're going to talk tend to be more challenging because they require more from us. But before we finish up today, hopefully some of you are asking, wait, wait, wait, wait, what do

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I do if my storge is gone? Is there any way I can get it back? Well, that is a fantastic question, and I definitely want to answer it before we finish.

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But before I answer it, I want to observe that some of you should be asking that question, but you're not. Maybe you're not asking that question because you don't care to rectify the problem.

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I encourage you to listen to this answer anyway. And if you're in the case where everyone in your family is doing a great job with their natural love,

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I want to encourage you to continue listening as well. Families who don't currently have a storge issue can glean helpful ways to strengthen and maintain their storge.

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On the other hand, families who realize they need to regain this love will have things that they can work on, and even if the culprit has no desire to glorify

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God by loving his or her family, you moms and dads can benefit by knowing how to create an environment that may one day help them submit to God and regrow that natural affection.

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All right. So in closing, here are some practical ways you can learn to love your family again or help your unwilling family maybe learn to love you again.

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Number one, repent of your sin. Of course, you can't do this for your unwilling kids, but you can teach them about confession, seeking forgiveness and repentance.

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When you rightly see God and when you rightly see yourself in light of God's word, and if you truly believe what God has to say about family love, you will want to repent, you will want to change.

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This is the most important part of rebuilding storge in your life. Natural affection dies in an atmosphere of habitual sin.

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It's like throwing salt in a garden. So if you want something to grow in the garden, you need to start by refusing to throw any more salt in the garden, and then you need to start cultivating the ground.

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And one way you can do that is number two, schedule deliberate time to spend time with your family, specifically the family with whom you're at odds.

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Now this can be tricky. This takes a significant amount of prayer and a deliberate desire to glorify God. Generally speaking, if you're becoming calloused in your natural affections, then things are pretty rocky as it is.

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Much of the time you spend together is probably dripping with relational carnage. So you need to start slow and keep the word recreate in your mind.

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The word recreate literally means to recreate, to create again. I have an episode on the

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Celebration of God podcast called Celebrating God with Recreation. You should check it out. Either way, look at it as an opportunity to create a new relationship with that family member through recreation.

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If you're already a strong family in this area, you still need to take deliberate time for recreation. Many times our relationships get strained because we push them and push them and we go through difficult family times and we just assume the good relationships will hang in there under the strain.

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By God's grace, they can, but a wise family will regularly schedule times for the family to enjoy each other. And if your family struggles with valuable family time, you need to work hard on learning what it means to have fun together to the glory of God.

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Now moving on, number three, be people who are fun to be around. This is a big one.

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No one wants to recreate a relationship with someone who's a jerk. Parents, there's no excuse for not being any fun.

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There's no excuse for not pretending with your kids. There's no excuse for not having a tea party or playing Uno or running around outside or going on a bike ride or throwing a football.

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Storge thrives when we have fun together, but it's really helpful to be fun people in the first place. I used to work in a place with guys who often had little to no natural affection and who were not always fun to be around.

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And sometimes it was nothing more than the work of the spirit in me to have fun with those guys. That is the response of a mature believer and most of our kids aren't there.

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So let's make it easy on them. But kids, this also goes for you too. Fun doesn't have to be about you.

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In fact, if your family time is consistently about you, then you are well on your way to callusing your heart and losing your natural affection.

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You're all wrapped up with your own idolatrous fake love, and it's already destroying you. So to recap, all of us need to repent of our sin and submit to God.

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Second, we need to intentionally and premeditatedly plan for family time. And third, we need to have and be fun.

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I highly recommend you listen to one of our earliest episodes on this point, episode number eight. It's called One Step to Making Family Time Work.

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It offers one important thing to remember, especially for parents of younger children or children who have interests that differ from yours.

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And lastly, number four, we need to be productive in our relationships. I mentioned earlier that infants have natural affection for their parents, even if the parents aren't the greatest people, but that doesn't always last.

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As the child becomes more attentive, the parents' shortcomings will be larger and larger strain in the relationship. But it's also pretty easy for an infant to give their natural affection to someone who's not their parent.

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A parent who abandons their child sacrifices that store gay, and it will likely be given to the next person who cares for and provides for the child.

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Now it's great to have fun, but I firmly believe that store gay thrives in relationships where people are beneficially caring for one another to the glory of God.

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That means that we should strive to be a blessing to the people in our lives that will make it even easier for store gay to thrive.

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So my friends that is store gay, that's the love that should be natural. And I hope it's flourishing in your family, but if it's not,

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I pray your family will repent, submit to God and start cultivating relationships where store gay can regrow and thrive.

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You can start right after this episode is over by talking about the store gay in your home. It would be a good idea to confess, seek forgiveness and start repenting now if you have to.

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But here's the thing, this natural love as wonderful as it is, is the simplest of the real family loves.

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Next time we'll talk about a more powerful family love that grows as we invest, but is also more complicated and requires more from us.

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Of course, love doesn't have to be complicated and God actually wired us to love. And even when we've worked hard to desensitize ourselves,

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God calls us to repent and provides the strength to change. So I hope you'll join us next time as we once again, open

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God's word, discover how to thrive in life and godliness. And to that end, we'll be discussing the reciprocal family love.

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Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship God through your parenting.

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So join us next time as we study God's word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness. And remember that TLP is a listener supported ministry.