TLP 473: True Family Love | Family Love, Part 5

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It's imperative for our families that we define words the way God does. The world can provide absolutely no cohesive, final, and authoritative definition for anything.

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Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids. Parenting is just one way

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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, AM Brewster, and this is Part 5 of our

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Family Love series. If you're just joining us, please check out episode 469 so that you can work through this series from the beginning.

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Now if you're back to hear Part 5, all about the family love God expects to find in our homes, I welcome you.

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And you know what? I'm proud of you. And quite often I take it for granted that God's people really desire to grow in their knowledge of Christ, to be challenged by His word, and to grow personally.

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But practical experience has shown me that most professing Christians aren't actually interested in growing in the ways that really matter.

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So I'm really glad you're here, and I'm glad that you're interested in hearing what God's word has to say about how you're supposed to love your kids and how they're supposed to love you and each other.

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But before we dive in, I'm really excited about the number of new likes and follows we have on social media as of late.

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Our Instagram page has grown a lot recently, and we're always adding new followers to Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

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We've even had a decent showing on our LinkedIn page. Regardless of which socials you frequent the most,

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I'd encourage you to like and follow comment and share truth -love parents content. Our social media goals are to promote biblical thinking when it comes to the family, keep you updated about the cultural events that affect parents, family, and children, connect you with timely information about TLP's giveaways and resources, and we even like to have a little bit of fun from time to time.

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So check us out and engage. You'll be glad you did. And speaking of resources and giveaways, I hope you and your family are taking advantage of our free episode notes, transcripts, and related resource for this series.

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I want this series to be a valuable part of your family's discussion concerning how we are and are not supposed to be loving each other.

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Now let's talk about real, true family love. So far we've learned that Eros may look like love, but it does nice things only to get something out of us.

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It's lust. It's selfish. It's idolatry. And unfortunately, it's the best the world can do without God.

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And believe it or not, I've actually read articles and talked with people who actually argue that Eros is exactly how love should be.

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Jessie Ware wrote a song called Selfish Love. In it, she proclaims, quote, baby, let's be honest about this.

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There's only room for one in your heart. So tell me, darling, why are we like this? I must admit that I kind of like it.

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Oh, you're acting sweet. I know what that means. All these games we play always end the same. And she continues, selfish love, why do

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I do these things? I break you down just to get my way. Selfish love, darling, you do it too. You tell me lies and I bend the truth.

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And I, I know that I can't get enough selfish love. And then she finishes with, baby, now it feels like we're dancing, dodging bullets.

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Now ain't that romantic? Take what I want, but you want me to take it. I only give love when

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I want to make it, end quote. In a similar fashion, Paul Hudson wrote an article entitled

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Why Falling in Love Should Be the Most Selfish Act of Your Life. Here are a few extended quotes.

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Quote, here's something that will surely upset some of you. Loving is not a completely selfless act. Romantic love, the way we know it, is an invention.

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It's an unrealistic creation depicting perfection. The problem is that we aren't perfect and neither is love.

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He also claims, the idea that to love means to be utterly selfless is a joke. Human beings are never completely selfless because it goes against our nature.

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We have evolved as animals to survive, which necessitates us looking out for ourselves first and foremost.

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How do you know you love someone? When you want him or her. And then he lists a bunch of reasons people quote unquote fall in love that basically deal with things we want out of the relationship.

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And then he says, quote, as you may have noticed, all that I've mentioned thus far revolves around you as the lover.

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The fact that you are all that really matters is in the equation. We fall in love with only the things that we fall in love with, the things that affect our senses.

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And he finishes with, we know that we love people for the way they look and act. Why is that not enough?

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What more do we want or expect that would make love any more beautiful than it already is? You love a person because the way that you interpret that person you find to be beautiful.

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You find him or her to be beautiful people. And because you are an egocentric being, you want that beauty for yourself.

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End quote. So listen, I'm not making this stuff up. When you deny God's purpose and plan for your life, then you have to make up your own way.

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And we all know when we treat people well, simply because we benefit from it. We've all done it. And if for some reason we're deluded enough to think that we really genuinely love the other person, then just look how you responded when the person you claim to love does something you don't like.

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All of a sudden, you act very unlovingly. That's because in that moment, your love was fake. It was Eros. On the other hand, storge is nice, right?

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It's the natural affection we inherently feel for people close to us. However, it is relatively superficial in that it's not rooted in anything conscious.

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We feel a natural bent towards spending time with people, and it's never romantic in nature. And then there's phileo, which we looked at last time.

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This love is superior in that it's supposed to be conscious, right? Though it may not always be, of course. It's a companionable love that exists in relationship, but it's also a conditional love.

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If you stop receiving love from the companion, your phileo will potentially shrivel up. Not only that, but phileo has many inherent issues associated with it.

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You can think that you're in a phileo relationship only to find out that you're not, and you can phileo the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

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And in the end, none of these loves requires any type of spiritual life or maturity to experience them.

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That means that they can all be used as an act of self -worship. So right now, it may seem like our choices for true family love are selfish, superficial, or fraught with pitfalls.

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But that, my friends, cannot be further from the truth. There is a love that, when compared to the others, is like the sun to a candle.

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It's powerful, pure, unconditional, and glorious. It's the veritable love of God Himself in us.

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In the Bible, the Greek word used to communicate this love is agape. Now, I said before, eros doesn't show up anywhere in the

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Bible. Versions of the word storge show up three times. Even phileo is only used just over 20 times, but agape and its other forms are used over 300 times in the

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New Testament. Now, we can't possibly look at all of those today, so what we're going to do is survey them and draw a general truth that will help us understand why agape is so fundamentally different from the others.

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And the next time, we're going to zoom in and look at practical ways that we can grow in our true love in the family. So today,

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I'm going to go about things a little bit differently. Okay, so there are many different ways to define agape.

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Nearly everyone has their own understanding. Some of those definitions come from the way the Greek word was commonly used.

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Most of them tie in the biblical concepts as well. So we're going to start by looking at the basic definition of the

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Greek word, but we're going to find that this love doesn't sound too special when you only look at the basic definition of the

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Greek word. Remember, this word was commonly used by the entire Greek -speaking culture. It wasn't made up to communicate a uniquely spiritual reality, but at the same time,

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God did choose this word, but he also chose to explain how he wanted us to understand the word.

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So we'll look quickly at the basic technical definition, then we'll trace the origin of true love, we'll look at the recipients of true love, and then we'll check out the characteristics of true love so we can then discuss a biblical definition of true love.

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All right, let's start with the technical stuff. Here are five unique things about the Greek concept of agape. Number one, it's the noblest word for love in the

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Greek language. Number two, it's not kindled by the merit or worth of its object, which means that this is the first love that allows us to love unlovable people.

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Number three, it's a choice. It's not a natural instinct. It isn't inadvertently pulled out of us.

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It's a conscious decision. Four, this love keeps on loving even when the loved one is unresponsive, unkind, unlovable, and unworthy.

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It is truly considered an unconditional love. And five, however, it too may be used in a fleshly, selfish way.

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In John 3 .19, Jesus tells us that people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

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The word here for love is the verb form of agape, agapeo. In 2

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Timothy 4 .10, we're told that Demas agapeoed—that was a terrible derivation of that word—he agapeoed this present world, and he deserted

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Paul. 2 Peter 2 .15 tells us of Balaam, who agapeoed gain for wrongdoing.

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And 1 John 2 .15 warns us not to agapeo the world. And then we learn that not only can it be used in a selfish way, but even

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Christ honoring agape can actually fade away. In Matthew 24 .12, Jesus tells us that agape can grow cold.

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In Revelation 2 .4, we learn that the Ephesians abandoned their first agape. So we're seeing that in the

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Greek, the basic word love can still be pretty flexible, but these are only a small handful of the many times the word is used, and the picture

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God paints for us of the true love he wishes us to experience so dwarfs the observations that we just made that we just need to move on and revel in what true family love is supposed to be.

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So from now on, I'm going to try not to use the words agape or agapeo. I'm also going to try to avoid the word love by itself.

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From now on, when referring to this unique love, I'm simply going to call it true family love or just true love.

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Now I know even that phrase has been tainted. You know, when someone says true love, I can't help but picture that scene from the

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Prince's Bride where the priest utters, love, true love will follow you forever.

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But I think it's imperative for our families that we define words the way God does.

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The world has absolutely no cohesive, final, and authoritative definition for anything. Nowadays, words mean what people want them to mean, which means they mean nothing.

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But God's unchanging truth allows us to have a working and decisive definition of this ever important term.

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Okay, so now let's discuss the origin of true love. Now this point and the next are going to be a review from part one of this study.

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I think it's so important to revisit some of those points now that we have a better understanding of what love is. When we first talked about love, the word love was still undefined.

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So now when we say that God himself is the origin of true love because God himself is true love, we can appreciate that so much more.

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God didn't say he was Eros or Storge or Phileo. He claimed that his very nature was true divine agape.

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Do you remember why it is God expects us to love? Well, number one, God can command us to love because of the nature of love.

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True love is volitional. It's not an emotion. It's not a feeling. It's not something into which we fall.

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The object of our love doesn't have to be lovable. Number two, God can command us to love because he is love.

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Now even though we haven't yet seen the extremely high biblical expectations for true love, I'm sure we can still appreciate the seeming

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Mount Everest of the true love God's commanding us to climb. And that's why it's a comfort to remember. Number three,

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God can command us to love because he's powerful. But we're also going to find out that not only is it a comfort that God will help us if we struggle having true love, we need him to have true love in the first place.

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We just absolutely cannot do it on our own. It's impossible for anyone in your family to truly love anyone else without God.

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Number four, God can command us to love because we're forgiven, or at least we should be. Now in regard to today's episode notes,

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I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. Instead, I encourage you to look back at the notes from part one. Remember those?

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They were some of the most robust and scripture -filled notes Truth Love Parent has ever provided. They will help you understand the necessary origin of true love.

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Now let's discuss the recipients of true love. This too will be a short review. Number one, we're commanded to love

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God. Do you remember the 12 proofs that we have truly loved God the way we should? That's a list we should post in our homes because we constantly need to be working on it.

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Number two, we're also commanded to love our neighbor. That includes the people sitting next to you right now. But instead of rereading the same verses we looked at last time,

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I want to check out some new ones. Ephesians 5, 25, 28, and 33, and Colossians 3, 19 command husbands in particular to love their wives.

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Now let's just stop there for a moment. The Bible doesn't specifically command women to agape their husbands. In Titus 2, 4,

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Titus is told to encourage older women to train the younger women to philandros their husbands and philotechnos their children.

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The Bible doesn't specifically command children to agape their parents or siblings either. But husbands get three commands in three verses and a fourth in another book.

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Why is that? Well, can we just be blunt? Men, can you handle it? I know we often act like babies when it comes to acknowledging our faults and our pride can get in the way too easily.

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But here's the thing. We are so often unloving. We're dictatorial, selfish, unkind, impatient, and ungentle.

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We actually have to be commanded by God to agape our wives, our helpers, our other halves.

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Young man listening to me right now, the same goes for you. Now let's be fair. The reason we're having this conversation in the first place is that we all need to understand love, men and women alike.

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We all are commanded to love everyone. And I've met many, many women who were terribly unloving.

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That's why all people everywhere are commanded to agape. We all need God to do it, and we all need to be growing in it.

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I just think it's important for the male's ego to be reminded that according to the Bible, we need a little bit more focused instruction in this area than most.

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Moving on, so the dads can stop sweating, 1 Peter 2 .17 tells us to love the brotherhood.

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2 John 1 .5 commands us to simply love one another. We can't escape the fact that having storge or phileo for the people in your family is simply not enough.

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We are commanded by God to have true agape love for everyone in our lives. And that includes number three, we're commanded to love our enemies.

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And we looked at a bunch of passages in part one that illustrated that, so we can move on here. So now

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I want to go on to the character of true love, and in so doing, come up with a solid definition of true love.

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So let's consider eight truths about true love. Number one, true love flows from, is empowered by, and must return to God.

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Romans 5 .5b, God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. It comes from Him.

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Second Corinthians 5 .14, for the love of Christ controls us. It only works when

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God's in charge of it. First Thessalonians 4 .9b, you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another.

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We couldn't have learned it any other way. Second Timothy 1 .7, for God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love.

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Again, it comes right from Him. First John 4 .19, we love because He first loved us. It would have been impossible to love

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God had He not loved us first. So we see that only God -worshippers can really exercise this highest form of love.

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Unlike Storgate and Phileo, true love is not accessible to unbelievers. That means if you're listening to the sound of my voice right now, if you do not first choose to submit to Christ and follow

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Him, you will never be able to truly love anyone. And I hope that's a significant reality for you.

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So if God is the source of true love, number two, true love is the proof of genuine faith in God. John 13 .35,

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by this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Galatians 5 .22,

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but the fruit of the Spirit is love. True love, agape. Now because true love comes from faith in God and the power of the

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Holy Spirit, and because it must permeate all we do, it needs to conform to God's will at all times. Therefore, number three, true love is evidenced by obedience.

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In John 14 .15, Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. John 14 .21, the

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Messiah says, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. In John 14 .23

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.24, the Son of God commands, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.

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In John 15 .10, the Incarnate Christ tells us, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my

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Father's commandments and abide in his love. Romans 13 .8 says, owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

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Romans 13 .10 proclaims, love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. In 1

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John 2 .5, the disciple who Jesus loved tells us that whoever keeps God's word in him, truly the love of God is perfected.

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Later in 1 John 3 .18, we learn little children let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth.

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And in 2 John 1 .6, we're told very clearly, and this is love, that we walk according to his commandments.

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Friends, we can't escape it. If we're sinning, we're not loving. If we're disobeying, it's impossible to love.

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We do not love when we do not obey. And since the opposite of love is hate, then we must conclude, no matter how uncomfortable it may be, we hate the person we disobey.

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That includes human authorities and God. But true love will strive to obey in all things, and that's because, number four, true love must permeate all we do.

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1 Corinthians 16 .14, let all that you do be done in love. That was pretty straightforward.

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So if we're loving and obeying in all we do, number five, true love does the right thing even when it's hard.

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Hebrews 12 .6, for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. Like we saw last time, if we truly want to be loved, we need to accept the correction of God.

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And if we truly want to love, we should be willing to be used by God to correct the people in our lives. But if that weren't challenging enough, in addition to having to correct the ones we love, there is something even harder that true love constrains us to do.

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Number six, the greatest proof of true love is that a person would sacrifice his or her life for his or her friends.

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John 15 .13, greater love has no one than this, than someone laid down his life for his friends. Romans 5 .8,

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but God shows his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Now, we're going to talk about this point in much more detail later, so I'm just going to slide up to the next point, even though there's still so much more that we could discuss here.

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But one observation we can make is that number seven, true love has the best interest of others as its highest priority.

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Romans 12 .10 doesn't use the word agape, but the principle is clear in the second part of the verse. Love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor.

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Romans 14 .15 illustrates this for us more specifically when it says, For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love.

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This is just one simple example, but it gives us a clear picture of the extremes to which we should be willing to go to prefer others above ourselves and outdo each other in honor.

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And because this is the true love of God, and because we are all sinners, 8.

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True love never stops growing. Philippians 1 .9, And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more.

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So with all of that, let's end off with a simple yet solidly biblical definition of true love.

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True love flows from a relationship with Christ whereby it is empowered to want and work toward God's greatest good for the one loved, regardless of how it's treated.

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Alright, let's break this down quickly. 1. True love is impossible outside of a relationship with God.

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2. True love wants and works toward nothing more than God's best interest to be fulfilled in our love's life.

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And 3. I added regardless of how it's treated to sum up that there are no ulterior motives.

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There is no selfish posturing. It's purely and simply motivated by God, through God, and to God.

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True love is an all -consuming passion for the well -being of others. It seeks nothing else but God's best for the one loved.

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My friends, this episode is glorious, but hard. It's exciting, but convicting. It should fill us with hope, but also fills us with a gigantic weight of responsibility.

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To that end, we have our episode notes and transcript at truthloveparent .com, and we have a whole other episode next time that will detail the finer points of true love for our homes.

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Obviously, since true love desires God's greatest good, then we need to understand what God's greatest good is. If we don't know

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God's plan, then we can't know what's in the best interest of the ones we love. But let me give you one practical way to show your love today.

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You can share this episode with your family and friends. I'm serious. People need to hear about the amazing, liberating, and dynamic true family love.

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All it takes is a click to expose your friends and family to these truths. And I encourage you to tell your parent friends about truthloveparent.

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No one can parent the way we should if we don't know God's will. Truthloveparent strives to take God's word and apply it to our parenting in clear, practical ways.

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Listen, we all need God's truth. In fact, based off what we learned today, anyone who parents while ignorant of God's will is being unloving in their parenting.

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It's in every child's best interest to be brought up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. That is loving parenting.

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So please share this episode with everyone you know. And if you believe that you or members of your family need serious biblical help in learning to love the way

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God commands, please contact us at counselor at truthloveparent .com or call 828 -423 -0894.

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And I hope you'll join us next time as we once again open God's word to discover how to thrive in life and godliness.

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To that end, we'll be discussing how to grow true family love. Truthloveparent is part of the

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Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship God through your parenting. So join us next time as we study

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God's word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness. And remember that TLP is a listener -supported ministry.