What Do You Love?

Greek has a simple way of naming what a person loves. It takes the root phil-, the root of phileo φιλέω fil-eh'-o, and joins it to the thing that is loved. Phil- with argyros, silver, makes a lover of money. Phil- with xenos, a stranger, makes a lover of strangers. Phil- with adelphos, a brother, makes brotherly love. The New Testament uses about twenty of these compound words, and nearly every one of them names a person by what that person loves.

That is what the earlier chapters found in agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay, ahav and phileo. A love is judged by its object, and in the phil- compounds that object is built into the word itself.

Loves That Lead Away

The darkest compound may be the best known.

1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

“The love of money” is one Greek word, philargyria (φιλαργυρία), phil- joined to argyros, silver. Paul calls it “a root of all sorts of evil,” and he says what it did to some: they “wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

The same love stood in the crowd that listened to Yeshua.

Luke 16:14 Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him.

The Pharisees who scoffed at Him were philargyroi, “lovers of money.” Earlier, in Luke 11:43, the Pharisees were said to agapao ἀγαπάω ag-ap-ah'-o the front seats; here they are named with phil-, lovers of money. Both families of words for love are used for their wrong desires. Luke names them by the thing they loved, and he sets that love right beside their scoffing. What they had just heard explains why they scoffed. The verse before is Yeshua’s saying, “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other,” and it closes, “you cannot serve God and mammon(wealth)” (Luke 16:13). Men who were named by their love of money heard that a heart cannot belong to God and to money at once, and they laughed at it.

Paul’s description of the last days reads almost like a catalog of phil- words.

2 Timothy 3:2-4 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,

“Lovers of self” is philautoi. “Lovers of money” is philargyroi again. Near the end of the list stands the sharpest contrast in it: “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,” philedonoi rather than philotheoi. The same phil- stands in both words, and the only thing that divides them is what is loved, pleasure or God.

The list as a whole has a shape. It opens with lovers of self and closes with lovers of God. In the middle, in verse 3, stands “unloving,” astorgoi, without natural affection, and at the end of the same verse “haters of good,” aphilagathoi, which is phil- with agathos, good, and a negative in front: people who do not love what is good. Paul is not describing people who cannot love. He is describing people whose loves have been turned the wrong way round. They love self, money and pleasure, and they are without the love they ought to have for what is good and for God.

Friendship With the World

The noun philia, friendship, appears only once in the New Testament, and James is the one who uses it.

James 4:4 You adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Here philia is turned toward the world, and the one who wishes to be “a friend of the world,” philos φίλος fee'-los, “makes himself an enemy of God.” James begins the verse by calling such people “adulterers and adulteresses.” Friendship with the world is not a neutral warmth that sits alongside love for God. It is unfaithfulness to Him.

John names a man by what he loved.

3 John 1:9 I have written to the ekklesia ἐκκλησία ek-klay-see'-ah(called-out community), but Diotrephes, who loves to have first place among them, does not acknowledge us.

“Who loves to have first place” is one word, philoproteuo, to love being first. That love made Diotrephes refuse the apostles.

Yeshua Himself used the plain verb in the same way, with a person’s own soul as its object.

John 12:25 Whoever phileo(loves) his psyche ψυχή psoo-khay'(soul) loses it, and whoever hates his psyche(soul) in this world will preserve it for eternal zoe ζωή dzo-ay'(life).

Here phileo is the love that clings to one’s own life, and Yeshua sets it against the life that is kept “for eternal zoe(life).”

In every one of these, from the love of money to the love of one’s own soul, the word names its object, and the object decides where the love leads: away from the faith, away from the apostles, and away from God.

That is why a man who oversees the ekklesia must be free of one of these loves.

1 Timothy 3:3 not addicted to wine or pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.

“Free from the love of money” is aphilargyros, the same compound with a negative in front: not money-loving.

Loves That Build Up

The same root builds good words too, and they are good for the same reason the others are dark: because of what they love.

Hebrews 13:1-2 Let philadelphia(brotherly-love) continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels without knowing it.

After brotherly love, the words “to show hospitality to strangers” translate one Greek noun, philoxenia, the love of strangers. Paul asks the same of an overseer in Titus 1:8, that he be “hospitable, loving what is good”: philoxenos, a lover of strangers, and philagathos, a lover of what is good. A man who is philagathos is the exact opposite of the people Paul calls aphilagathoi in 2 Timothy 3:3. The letter to Titus names this love as a qualification for those who lead the ekklesia, and the second letter to Timothy names its absence as a mark of the last days.

Titus 2:4 so that they may encourage the young women to be philandros(husband-loving), to be philoteknos(child-loving),

Each of these two words names its object, a husband and children. And Romans 12:10 sets philadelphia and philostorgos side by side.

The phil- words do not compete with agape. Peter places them together.

2 Peter 1:7 and eusebeia εὐσέβεια yoo-seb'-i-ah(godliness) with philadelphia(brotherly-love), and philadelphia(brotherly-love) with agape(love).

Brotherly love is added to godliness, and agape is added to brotherly love. They stand in one line, as steps in the same growth, not as rungs where one must be left behind to reach the next.

Love Is Named by What It Loves

The root phil- is the same in every row. What changes is the second half, and the second half decides whether the word names a virtue or a vice. The same capacity for affection can be turned toward silver or toward a brother, toward pleasure or toward God. A person is known by what he loves.

That raises the question that matters most. The best of all these words is philotheos, a lover of God. Yet Scripture says plainly that no one’s love for God came first. Before anyone loved Him, He loved, and He chose to set His love on a people who had given Him no reason to do so.