Tuesday 16 July 2013

Love

The Bible was originally written in Greek. Where as we have only one word for love with only one definition the Greeks have five separate words for love with five separate meanings.
The first is Eros. Eros according to Dictionary.com means a physical love or a sexual desire. This type of love would be used in the context of boyfriend/girlfriend, marriage context.
Next is Philia. Philia is the kind of love associated with friendships and the relationships we have with our friends. This type of love would be used in the context of friendships and people who are in our day-to-day lives and even people we pass on the street.
The next word is Agape. Agape is used in Greek as an official 'I love you' statement instead of the physical love that we see in Eros.
The last word for love that I am going to use is Storage. Storage love would be used in the context of affection between say, a mother and son. This word is almost exclusively used as a descriptor of relationships between family.
Now, compared to that us English speakers only have one word for love.
Love. According to Dictionary.com Love is 'A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
So it's important that in the Bible when the word love is used to think about the context of the word and what type of Greek 'love' it might be referring to.

With this in mind when we read verses in our Bibles like Romans 13:8 where it says 'Whoever loves others has fulfilled the law' God doesn't mean to physically love everyone but to care for people regardless of who they are. 

Probably the most well known verse in the bible is found in John 3:16 and it says 'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal live.' I don't read Greek so I don't know what type of love was used in this verse, but it could have been either Philla, Agape or Storage love.
This verse is used lots all around the world. But what does it mean? Well it's pretty simple. God sent Jesus to live on Earth and when Jesus was on the Earth he died on the cross. Something I think you all know very well. The reason Jesus died was so that all of our sins and all the things we do wrong can be forgotten about in the eyes of God. Also the cross acts as a 'bridge' to heaven as the verse says 'whoever believes in him will have eternal live'. This means that as long as we believe in God, become a Christian and read our Bibles we will not perish, but have eternal life in Heaven.
This verse doesn't just apply to the 'good' people either. In fact the verse even starts off with 'Whoever'. meaning anybody can have an eternal life in Heaven with God.

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:)





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