TLP 131: The Three Family Loves, Part 4 | the love that feeds each other

Is there someone in your home who doesn't reciprocate your love? Does your child love you back because you love them? Well, today we're going to learn the joy of brotherly love and how to nurture it in our families.

Welcome to Truth.

Love.

Parents.

Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents. Here's your host, AM Brewster.

Today is our 131st episode, and can you believe this is the first time, the first time I have sat here in front of the microphone with a cup of hot chocolate? I mean, you'd think I would have gotten to that before now, but I haven't.

Here I am with my cup of hot chocolate. That means today, today is definitely going to be a good day. Well, last time we learned about the first of the three family loves. The time before that, we studied the unfortunate fake family love that Satan has convinced the world is the real and only love, and if you missed either of those episodes, please go back and listen to them before proceeding today.

If you and your family are back to continue learning about God's plan for love and how your family can grow closer together, then please stay with us. And if you haven't yet gathered your family and listened to this study, I want to encourage you to do so.

There is nothing better for family bonding than coming together to study God's Word. Even if everyone in your fam were diligent and sincere in their personal devotions, so much more could be accomplished by at least sharing together the lessons you've been learning.

So that's encouragement number one. Encouragement number two, will you please consider rating and reviewing Truth. Love. Parent on iTunes and Facebook. We've recently become iTunes number one podcast for Christian parents.

Your rating and review is beneficial not because more reviews have anything to do with our overall ranking, but because every time a new parent looks for help or encouragement, TLP will be one of the first podcasts they see.

And if they see how much God's Word has helped you and your families, perhaps they'll join us as we seek to strengthen families by helping all dads and moms become intentional premeditated parents. And I hope you'll do that.

And lastly, I'd like to thank all the patrons who've joined us this new year. Many thanks to Ray, Carolyn, Kara, Johanna, Matt, Sonia, Scott, and Mindy for committing to support TLP with their prayers, encouragement, and finances.

We love them and value their love for us. So with that, let's celebrate love by recapping our study so far and looking at our second family love. To date, we've discussed the fake love Eros that only takes out of selfish motivation.

Remember that Eros cannot truly give anything. It's never commanded or even implied in Scripture. It's an inappropriate lust. Then we learned about Storge. This is the natural affection with which we are all born, but which we can lose if we selfishly and erotically pursue our own pleasure.

This love can give, though it does so in an unconscious, instinctual kind of way. And both of these loves can be experienced by both believers and unbelievers. And now to further understand family love, we need to add the Greek word phileo.

There are a bunch of people from a little place called Philadelphia that know more about this word than perhaps they realize. The name Philadelphia means the city of brotherly love, and brotherly love is how most people understand phileo.

Although that definitely speaks to the familial nature of this love, it's not restricted to families and close friends like Storge often is. Anybody can have this love for anyone else, saved or unsaved, related or not.

So regardless of the people involved, phileo is a companionable love. It speaks of affection, fondness, or liking between two or more people. In fact, phileo requires at least two people because it's a love that feeds the love in others.

Phileo responds to kindness, appreciation, and love when it's offered by another. Let me put it this way. When I pour water from one cup into another, or hot chocolate from one mug into another, it naturally fills the other cup.

The water level rises in the second cup because the first cup took the time to pour into it, and then the second cup pours that water back into the first, and they keep feeding each other. Phileo works much the same way.

As love is poured from one person into another, the amount of love in the second person rises and pours back into the first. Of course, unlike cups, when we pour love into others, our own store of love should not be diminished, and it's not like I'm waiting for the other person to love me before I love them back.

And it's imperative that we don't misunderstand how this works. Humans are so instinctively filled with Eros that the concept of unselfish love for others with absolutely no ulterior motives is fanciful.

Yet, we should not Phileo others simply because of the quote-unquote future love we hope to get from them. If that's our goal, that's really just Eros. And we shouldn't Phileo others simply because they showed us love and we want more.

Well, that's no better than Eros. So you may be wondering, is it possible to have sinful Phileo? The unfortunate answer is yes. Storge can't really be sinful. It's instinctual and natural. The sinful thing would be to not have Storge at all.

But with Phileo, it itself can be sinfully used. Jesus points this out in Matthew 6, 5. He was teaching about prayer and he said, When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love Phileo, to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.

Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. He shared a familiar sentiment in Matthew 23, 6. In that passage, he was condemning the same group of people by saying they Phileo the place of honor at feasts.

In Revelation 22, 15, and it takes it even further when it refers to people who Phileo and practice falsehood. And it's very interesting to note that in Matthew 26, 48, Judas said the guards would know who Jesus was because Judas would Phileo him.

Phileo can mean simply kiss, and I don't believe a kiss was ever used in a more diabolical way than it was the night Judas betrayed God. Like we noticed earlier, Phileo has a natural give and take about it.

Unlike Eros, Phileo is cyclical and that means it can be fed by any number of things. The Pharisees loved to pray in public because it was fed by the praise they received. They also liked the best seats at the feasts because of the popularity and honor and prestige that was poured into them.

There are many that love falsehood because of the perceived quote-unquote benefit that flowed into their lives when they lied. So what does all this mean? Well, like everything else in life, God's perfect creation has been twisted.

What was created to be holy and unselfish can be tainted. Phileo can start to look and act just like Eros in many ways. We're supposed to Phileo because that's how God created it. He wants to use that love to call Phileo out of those we love, and as the person who we love pours Phileo back into us, it strengthens the Phileo we have for them.

This is why it's brotherly love. It's companionable love. It works with the love in others to bond and intertwine. That's how it's meant to work in a perfect world, yet we live in anything but a perfect world and everyone in your family is imperfect.

So we're going to look at six warnings and then discuss how we can live out this love at home. Now, warning number one has already been discussed. We must not show others love simply so we can benefit from it.

That's fake love. That's Eros. Our second warning is this. Phileo grows when another invests in us. That means that Phileo can grow even if Storge or Eros is being poured into us. Storge is pure and beautiful and it could call Phileo from us, and then that should call Phileo from the other person.

But Phileo that grows from Eros alone, that's tricky. Eros may do and say all the same things that Phileo may do and say, but we'd be none the wiser because we can't see another's motivation unless they expose it.

So the Phileo in our hearts may grow toward another even if they were pouring Eros into.

Us.

Now, that may not sound too bad, but there are two unfortunate consequences that may arise if we're not careful. The first of those is that we may believe we're truly in a brotherly, sisterly, or companionable relationship when in actuality, we're not.

It's just all one-sided. This can even happen with Storge. Storge is wonderful and beautiful, but it's not a conscious or deliberate love. Therefore, it's not as strong and dynamic as Phileo, and such relationships tend to be mostly one-sided.

So the warning is this, be careful that you keep high biblical expectations in your life and in others' lives so that you won't be tempted to Eros and so that you can help others be honest about their love.

You don't want to unwisely expect a Phileo response when the other person has no interest or is too immature. This happens in romantic relationships and between parents and children all the time. In romantic relationships, a young lady may be pouring true Phileo into a boy who she believes is pouring Phileo into her, but then once married, she finds that his love was only ever Eros.

But this also happens between parents and children. We foolishly expect our immature children to reciprocate our mature love, and when they don't invest Phileo in equal proportion to our own, we're surprised and sometimes heartbroken.

And in a worst-case scenario, we're in danger of our third warning, number three, just because you love someone doesn't mean they'll Phileo you back. This has a significant implication. Don't be so certain that your love will right all wrongs.

People are still free moral agents to do as they please. First Corinthians 16 .22 says, if anyone has no Phileo for the Lord, let him be accursed. The obvious understanding is that God has so abundantly poured love into us, anyone who would not reciprocate that love is clearly not a child of his and will be accursed.

You'd think that if God himself though is pouring Phileo into someone's life, they would have to reciprocate, but it's still a choice. It's that way with God in us, and it's that way with us and our kids and other people in our families.

Number four, if our love is merely Phileo and nothing else, it can gradually become strained and weakened when the other person stops pouring love into us or doesn't reciprocate. Again, in a worst case scenario, it can collapse in crisis completely.

How might this happen? Well, immature Phileo that is newly sown because another's love has recently called it out may not be strong enough to stand on its own when the other stops loving, or if the other stops loving, and then it quickly reverts to Eros or selfish Phileo.

In the parent-child example I gave before, a parent may have maturely poured Phileo into his child, but when the child immaturely responds with Eros, the parent may foolishly counter-respond selfishly themselves because their expectation was wrong.

Instead of having a high biblical expectation that holds people to God's standard and yet compassionately forbears and upholds them when they sin, the parent may be more of a dictator in that they expect holy responses without proportional biblical mercy.

Judges might do the same thing. In those situations, the parents love and become Eros, which can't pull anything out of anyone, or a fleshly Phileo that dries up because it's no longer being fed. Basically, when one cup stops pouring into the other, the second cup frequently stops pouring into the first.

Well, that sounds conditional, you say, and you'd be right. It's the cyclical nature of Phileo. If it doesn't involve a second individual, it's something else entirely. And the fifth warning is based off what we learned last time.

In Romans 12, we were commanded to have philostorgos, and this is a hybrid love that should exist naturally in all believers, but that is not merely an instinct. It's designed to accomplish a purpose.

It's designed to deepen and broaden love in others. But if we don't choose this love, we're not only sinning against God, we're sinning against all those people He wanted us to encourage in their love.

Of course, we'll never derail God's sovereign plan, but that doesn't remove the consequences we earn for sinning against others. Number six, don't think that the love that Phileo pours into others is only ever hearts and rainbows and flowers.

In Revelation 3 .19, Jesus says,. We see two important truths here. One is that Phileo is prepared to do the uncomfortable thing. It's willing to reprove and discipline. And two, when the love of Jesus is being poured into us, that should draw out of us a Phileo response, specifically in this verse, zeal for right and repentance for wrong.

All right, so those are the warnings. Now let's talk about how we can increase the Phileo in your family. First, let me remind everyone that Eros is not love. Storge is instinctual love, and Phileo is a conditional love.

Each of these can be experienced by an unsaved person as well as a believer. Why do I keep pointing this out? Well, next time we're going to discuss the love that overshadows all loves, the love that must absolutely positively be in your family.

We're going to talk about a love that unbelievers cannot truly experience the way God commands.

It.

We're going to talk about the love of God in us. Now, that doesn't make Storge or Phileo inherently sinful, but it does mean that they're not quite everything that we need to be. There's another love, a deeper love, a grander love than Storge or Phileo can ever hope to.

Be.

So with that said, I want to share with you how Phileo can be cultivated in your family just like Storge can, but I just want us to be clear that there is still one more love to discuss, and that love takes the cake.

All right, here are five practical ways to increase Phileo in your home. Number one, make sure you Phileo God first. Earlier we looked at 1 Corinthians 16 .22, if anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.

That's very straightforward, and I don't think any of you will be tempted to misunderstand it, but consider Matthew 10 .37, whoever loves father or mother, whoever Phileo's father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever Phileo's son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

The 1 Corinthians passage told us that we need to Phileo God, but the Matthew passage tells us that we need to Phileo God more than anyone else. If the individual members of your family aren't Phileo-ing God more than anyone else, there will be problems, so make the love of God your first priority.

Number two, don't Phileo what doesn't matter. John 12 .25, whoever Phileo's his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Revelation 22 .15b talks about everyone who Phileo's and practices falsehood.

If we shouldn't be loving our family more than we love God, then there's no place in our lives for loving things that God hates. If you want to cultivate Phileo in your family, be sure to stop loving unkindness, disrespect, laziness, impatience, and lust.

Number three, don't accept the Phileo of the world. John 15 .19 says, if you were of the world, the world would Phileo you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Listen, if the world loves you, there's a problem. If we Phileo God, then we have the promise that the world will hate us, and if the world loves us, then the world views us as being one of them, and that should never be if we're followers of Christ.

So if you want your family to grow in the bonds of love, be sure not to reciprocate the Phileo the world uses to tie you to themselves. Now, this is not to say that we don't love the world, that we don't love unbelievers.

That's not true at all. But we definitely must be careful that we're pouring the right love into them, and we'll talk about that more next time. Number four, accept every aspect of the Phileo of God. Revelation 3 .19, Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.

Sometimes the love God will pour into us will be delightful and comfortable. It'll consist of joy and fulfilled promises and blessings. But sometimes that Phileo will be uncomfortable. Don't reject it.

God's using that correction to make us who we need to be. I listened to a true story recently about a group of men who in the 1800s sailed over 800 miles in a lifeboat. To make matters worse, they were nearly starved to death as it was, and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds only about four times on their journey.

But the navigator was so good that they made it right where they were going. My point is, he had to make many corrections. If he were off by one degree, he would have missed his mark by hundreds or thousands of miles and there's no way on earth in a choppy sea over many, many weeks that he was able to sail a perfectly straight line.

So he had to course correct left and then right repeatedly over the weeks they sailed. Just watch two people who've never canoed before. They will zigzag all across the lake as they try to get from one bank to another.

And that's not bad. It's actually good. If they didn't do that, they would never reach their destination. In the same way, correction in our homes is a good thing. When my life gets off track and someone lovingly steps in and corrects me with God's Word, I should be overjoyed.

But we're so often not overjoyed for a couple reasons. First, we often don't want to go the direction God wants us to go. So a correction that gets us back on God's track takes us away from our own. Sometimes, we don't like correction just because we're prideful and don't like to be told that we're wrong, even when we know we're wrong.

And this can happen even when we're happy to be on the right track. Of course, we can be prideful when we don't want to be on the right track too, and there can be mixes of both. That's why we get angry when we're corrected.

And since neither of those reasons are any good, we should take this admonishment and realize that correction from God and from our authorities is a sign of love.

It's good.

It should make us happy that we get to get back to following Christ after drifting towards sin and destruction. And lastly, number five, don't settle for filet-o. That's right. Don't settle for filet-o.

John 21 15, when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I filet-o you. Like I already pointed out, storge is an unconscious affection.

Filet-o is called out of us by the love of others and feeds that love in return. But there is a love that far outshines filet-o. The passage I just read was part of a longer conversation Jesus had with Peter after his resurrection.

Jesus asked Peter two times if he loved his Lord, but Peter did not use the same word.

Jesus did.

Jesus was calling Peter to a deeper, unconditional love, but Peter knew he wasn't ready for that. And he wasn't. Presumably, it was at this point or a little later that Peter truly submitted his life to Christ and became a true follower, which made it possible for him in that moment to actually love the way Jesus had called him.

My point is filet-o is a good start, and it's a wonderful blessing when used the right way, but it can't compare to the love we're commanded to have over 300 times in the New Testament. The love we're going to discuss next time.

I'm very excited about sharing that episode with you, and I hope you're excited about sharing this episode on social media with your friends. And don't forget to check out today's episode notes as you and your family strive to understand God's expectations for your family love.

And as I already mentioned, next time we'll discuss the love of God that He allows us to share with others. And now it's my pleasure to officially thank Scott and Mindy for becoming Truth Love Parent Patrons through Patreon .com.

They've committed to support TLP on a monthly basis, and their generous support coupled with the sacrificial support of our other patrons allows us to continue ministering to you and your family. Truth Love Parent and Team TLP believe with all of our hearts that your family can truly learn to love and grow in that love.

And we believe that because God commands it. You pour your love into your family and call that same love out of them this week. Have a great day.

Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent. Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.