Agape Can Love the Wrong Thing

Picture an empty glass jar on a kitchen table. The jar itself is neither healthy nor poisonous. Pour fresh water into it, and what it holds gives life; pour bleach into it, and what it holds kills. The jar does not change what goes in; it holds whatever it is given. If you want to know whether it is safe to drink, you do not examine the jar. You look at what is inside it.

The familiar sermon about the Greek words treats agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay as something other than a jar. It treats the word as a kind of purifier, as if whatever agape touches becomes holy because agape is God’s love. If that were so, the New Testament could never use the word for loving something evil. The way to find out is to collect the sentences.

Loving the Darkness

The first of them is in the third chapter of John.

John 3:16 For God so agapao ἀγαπάω ag-ap-ah'-o(loved) the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal zoe ζωή dzo-ay'(life).

John 3:19 This is the krisis κρίσις kree'-sis(judgment): that the light has come into the world, and men agapao(loved) the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil.

In verse 16 the verb agapao (ἀγαπάω) describes God, who “so agapao(loved) the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.” In verse 19 the same verb describes men, and what they love is darkness: “men agapao(loved) the darkness rather than the light.” John even gives the reason: “for their deeds were evil.”

That single verse is enough to overturn the first half of the sermon. No one can have a holy, divine, unconditional love for darkness. If agapao meant such a love, John could not have written this sentence. But he did write it, three verses after John 3:16, and the sentence makes perfect sense once agapao is read as what it is: a strong devotion, which these men gave to the darkness.

A Shelf of Wrong Loves

It is not one verse alone. Several more stand beside it.

John 12:43 for they agapao(loved) the approval of men rather than the approval of God.

Many even of the rulers believed in Yeshua but would not confess Him openly, and John explains why: “for they agapao(loved) the approval of men rather than the approval of God.” The Greek word behind “approval” is doxa δόξα dox'-ah, glory. They gave their devotion to the glory that comes from men.

2 Timothy 4:10 for Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia.

Demas had been Paul’s fellow worker, and then he left him. Paul gives the reason in a single Greek word, agapesas, “having loved,” a participle of the verb agapao. What Demas loved was “this present world,” the present age. Two verses earlier in the same chapter, Paul used the same verb for the opposite love: the crown of righteousness is laid up “not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8). Within the space of three verses, the same word names the love of all who long for the Lord’s appearing and the love that led a man to desert Paul for the present world.

1 John 2:15 Do not love the world or the things in the world; if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

John forbids it outright: “Do not love the world.” The verb is agapao again. If agape were always a holy love, why would believers be commanded not to give it to the world? There would be nothing here to forbid.

The end of the verse goes further still: “if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” In one sentence John uses the verb agapao for loving the world and the noun agape for “the love of the Father,” and he says that the two cannot live in the same person. If the word itself made a love holy, the sentence would make no sense. What separates the two loves is not the word but what each of them loves.

2 Peter 2:15 Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray; they have followed the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved gain from wrongdoing,

Balaam “loved gain from wrongdoing.” The verb is agapao, and the thing loved is misthos adikias in Greek, the wages of unrighteousness.

Luke 11:43 Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the front seats in the synagogues and the greetings in the marketplaces.

Yeshua pronounced a woe on the Pharisees because they “love the front seats in the synagogues,” and the verb is once more agapao.

Luke 6:32 And if you love those who love you, what charis χάρις khar'-ece(grace) is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.

This may be the plainest of them all: “even sinners love those who love them.” Sinners agapao. If agape were the untouchable top rung of divine love, sinners could not practice it by definition. Yeshua does not say that sinners have some lesser love; He uses the very same word. And He does not praise their love either. He asks, “what charis(grace) is that to you?” A love that loves only those who love it back is something sinners already have. It is the same word, and it earns nothing. The word agape does not lift a love above the ordinary. Only the One to whom it is given, and the way it is given, can do that.

The Whole Shelf at Once

Set side by side, these verses show one verb and seven very different objects.

A love does not become God’s love because the word is agape.

Back to the Jar

This is where the picture of the jar helps. Agape is not a purifier. It is a container: a strong devotion, an attachment, a giving of oneself to something. What makes that devotion holy or evil is what is poured into it.

Filled with darkness, it becomes a love of darkness. Filled with the praise of men, it is vanity. Filled with the world, with gain, or with the front seats, it remains the same word while the love becomes something God forbids. Filled with God and with His appearing, it is the love that receives a crown.

John himself shows where the difference lies. Right after forbidding the love of the world, he says what the world is made of and what lasts.

1 John 2:16-17 For all that is in the world — the epithymia ἐπιθυμία ep-ee-thoo-mee'-ah(lust, desire, strong craving) of the sarx σάρξ sarx(flesh) and the epithymia(lust, desire, strong craving) of the eyes and the arrogance of life — is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its epithymia(lust, desire, strong craving), but whoever does the thelema θέλημα thel'-ay-mah(will) of God abides for ever.

The one who abides for ever is not whoever uses the right word for love, but “whoever does the thelema(will) of God.” The line is drawn by doing, not by vocabulary. A person can love the world with all the strength the word agape can carry, and that love will pass away with the world it loved. A person who does the will of God abides, because what that person loves does not pass away.

So the sermon’s first promise cannot stand. Agape is not holy by the word alone. That is not bad news. It takes our eyes off a dictionary and puts them where the Bible puts them, on what is loved and on what is done.

Someone may answer that this is only a feature of Greek, and that the Hebrew Scriptures, written in the language of the Shema, keep a purer word for love. Yet the Hebrew word for love, the word of the Shema itself, shows exactly the same thing.