Agape love.. What does it mean?
There are four main types of love in the bible, agape is the highest level of love. Agape love is a selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional love. Love that doesn’t waver, thats full, inclusive, and giving. Agape love isn’t taking. It’s not about you and it’s not about me. Agape love comes from serving. Agape love is God; His character, His patience, His comfort, His closeness. His everything. Other than salvation, agape love from our Father is the greatest gift you could ever receive. Resting fully knowing that you are so loved and known by your Creator; someone who won’t ever leave and won’t ever do you wrong. How tender of a love is that?
Let’s break it down…
Agape love is a love that practices selflessness, what does that mean? It means you are concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with one’s own. Being selfless is reflecting a heart to serve and not be served. It is showing a kind, considerate, and compassionate spirit! Next, agape is sacrificial. How do you love sacrificially? Loving sacrificially means you have a love that possesses and continues to constitute a surrender. Loving without fear of what the result is for you. Loving to carry out the wishes of others. Lastly it is unconditional. We don’t really know how to love like that, we pretend and strive in friendships and marriages but we will never love as unconditionally, unreserved, and wholeheartedly as the Lord loves us. Unconditional is without fail; everything that we do will fail unless it is through the Lord yet we will still never love as deeply and richly as Him. Some ways we can resemble agape love like Jesus shows reflecting what he teaches us in the bible. The most prominent way we see agape love in the bible is through Jesus’ death on the cross. That is the most selfless act we will ever see, the most sacrificial gift where he gave his life for us, and the most unconditional love because He didn’t deserve the death that he had, we did, yet he still did it for us.
My thoughts…
For the longest time I have struggled with love. Feeling like nobody truly loves me. Feeling like it’s only temporary, that if I mess up it goes away. Feeling like I love others way more than they could ever love me. Feeling like nobody truly knows me, appreciates me, or sees what I do, but then I was wrecked with this. God does. He sees, knows, and loves me more than anything. He loves me way more than I could even wrap my mind around. His love for me is deeper and more pure than anything I will ever experience. His love for me is way stronger than my love for both Him and others could ever be. In comparison, my love is a dried up puddle to the Lord’s love as deep and vast as the oceans.
I have always known that God loves me, it’s something we are all told but it was and is really hard for me to understand and wrap my mind around. How could someone who is so perfect love someone who is so broken? How could someone be so compassionate? How could someone still love the fact that I am a broken sinner? How could someone still see me as beautiful when it’s hard for me to do when I look in the mirror? How do I even accept this love that I don’t deserve? That’s the beauty of the gospel. We don’t deserve it yet still as a gracious gift, we receive it. For the longest time I wouldn’t receive it because I didn’t think God could handle my brokenness. That was just a doubt of my own faith, I was doubting his forgiveness, goodness, and agape love. It has taken years for me to be vulnerable and admit that I didn’t even want to receive the love of God because I was scared of what could happen. Scared of letting go of the brokenness and struggle and pain I hold onto. That hurt has become comfortable. God seeing the deep roots of hurt and pain that I knew he wanted to uproot was so uncomfortable.
I am overwhelmed with the love of our Father. Without knowing, He has been taking my brokenness and turning it into good. He has been reshaping my heart for a long time and I am finally accepting the fact that I am loved by the father. Agape love. A deep selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional love.
My hope and prayer is that you read this and get hit with a deeper realization that the Lord oh so loves you. His love is the only love you need, the only love that matters. His love is the reason you can love others. And for that we can be thankful!
Thanks for reading 🙂
– Corryn Scharff <3
