Here at State Road we talk a lot about becoming a people who love God, love others and love in action, but those statements rest on an implied assumption that we know what love is.  In our culture, love is a notoriously difficult word to define. This is owing, at least in part, to the limitations of the English language. For example in Greek there are perhaps as many as 7 different words for love, four of which we find in our Bibles, but in English all those different shades of meaning are gathered into just one word. Consequently our English word, “love,” is kind of a blunt linguistic tool compared to the scalpel-like precision of the original Greek. We say flippant things like “I love bagels,” and we also say serious things like when we tell our significant other that we love them, or when we talk about our love for God. However, it’s worth noting that, without exception, the Greek word that John uses when he talks of love in 1 John is “agape.” There is a unique shade of meaning attached to the Greek word, agape (pronounced (ah-gah-pay”). It is descriptive of a sacrificial, divine love that found its highest expression on the cross. All of our efforts to love others is the rippling echo of that’ ultimate demonstration of agape love. In 1 John 3:16 we read, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” 

Last message we took in the view of 1 John from 30,000 feet, as it were, but now we’ll land the plane and take a more close up look at what John means when he calls us to love in this way.