Wedding Meditation: The Meaning of Love

As M and L sat with Lois and me before the wedding, I asked what passages of Scripture they might want me to speak on. They gave me a wonderful selection. Hosea 2 reminds us of the way that God’s love creates acceptance and identity in the emptiness of human rejection and failures. The letters of John – including 1 John 4 – have the constant theme of God’s Love. Love defines God, and God’s love defines us. Ephesians 4 locates the source of our love and unity within the work of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives. Psalms 25 and 116 remind us that we find God’s love and care when we come to the end of our own resources. These are good passages! Read them often and read them well. 

 

As I read the passages myself, I decided to do something other than work through the Scriptures. One thread that ties them together is the meaning of love – God’s love for us, and our love for each other. Marriage is more than love. Marriage includes as its lifeblood promises made and promises kept. Marriage grows and changes over the years. Sometimes marriage is full of fun and frolic; sometimes it is held together by a stubborn commitment not to give up. But love is the heart of marriage; love is the essence of human life as God’s images, so I want to talk a bit about love. 

 

When I was young, the Beatles sang, “All you need is love”. A little over 50 years ago, Lennon and McCartney wrote this song. They were right, but only if we have some idea of what love is. To many people in North America today, love is reduced to the attraction we feel between the sexes, but of course love is much more than that. 

 

I suspect that many of you know that the Greek language (used in the New Testament) has four words for love, where in English we have one. (More, if you include synonyms such as “like” and “adore”.) These four words make a useful tool to explore a fuller meaning of love than the Beatles had in mind. 

 

The first is “storge” – affection, or family love. Family love is the affection we feel for those people who we are related to, like it or not. Sometimes we say, “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your relatives.” We may fight with those who we love as family, but let someone from outside attack us and we bond together. We are family! 

 

There is something divine in this kind of love – loving the other person even when they annoy you or hurt you. This love is important enough that Jesus showed it as he hung on the cross: “Mother, behold your son. John, behold your mother.” In his own extremity, Jesus reached out to take care of his mother. 

 

Family love also has its dark side. Sometimes it sets itself up as the ultimate authority in our lives. You may remember the moment in the gospels when Jesus’ own family tried to take him from his ministry to provide psychological and spiritual help. At that moment, Jesus turned from his family and declared that the family of God was his true family. 

 

The second word for love is “philia” – friendship. We can’t choose our family, but we do choose our friends. Friends are bound together by shared interests. I love the game of chess, and I have observed that when I find another chess player, friendship is easily formed. Notably, one of the words that Jesus used for the disciples was to call them his friends. As with storge, there is something divine about friendship. As we come together with those who share our interests, we are bound together in something that resembles the love that Jesus had for his disciples. 

 

There’s another reason that friendship is incredibly important. Sometimes in North America we think that our spouse must be everything to us. No human relationship can bear that burden. To have a healthy relationship with our spouse, we need other people outside the relationship to share interests and life with; we need friends. 

 

Friendship also has its dark side. When people bond with each other around a demonic interest – as the Nazis did in the 1930s and 1940s – the friendships they form are not good. Bad friends are all the worse because friendship itself is so important. 

 

The third word we look at is well known – eros, or physical sexual attraction. Eros brings sparkle and joy to the marriage relationship. This committed relationship provides a safe place for Eros to shine. This form of love is, of course, what the Beatles were thinking about in their song. Stephen Sills expressed a similar thought in 1970 with the song, “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.” A Christian view of eros emphasizes instead the place of sexual love within the marriage covenant. 

 

In its place, eros is wonderful! Eros is so wonderful that it is actually one of the gods in the Greek pantheon, but like the other forms of love, eros has its dark side. When sexual love becomes the “be all and end all” of life, it becomes destructive of marriage and of life itself. 

 

You see a common theme here in the first three forms of love. They each reflect something of divinity. They each bring us closer to each other and to God. And they each have their dark side. They each become God’s enemy when they try to take God’s place. [Note: I have taken this insight, along with much of the description of each kind of love, from C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves.] 

 

All of this brings us to the fourth word for love – the word that is used when John says, “God is love”. The word is “agape”. This is the New Testament’s favourite word for love. This is the love that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13. This is distinctively Christian love. 

 

Agape differs from the first three words. Storge, philia, and eros each tries to take God’s place; agape lives within God as God. The first three show themselves as a matter of emotions and feeling; agape is primarily a choice, a matter of the will. The first three give of themselves, but they also ask for something in return. They are what C.S. Lewis calls “need-love”. Agape gives itself completely for the good of the other and asks for nothing in return. God is Agape. 

 

What then is “agape”? What sort of love is this? Many years ago, a friend of mine described it as “wanting God’s best for the other person”. When we say that God loves us, we know that means that God wants the very best for us. But it is often the case that when we say, “I love you”, we mean simply that I need you and I need what you give to me. This is not bad; it is in fact the way that God has made us. It is good! But it is not agape. 

 

Agape love, then, reflects God’s heart for the other person. It brings us closer to each other, and it brings us closer to God. When you are filled with this God-love, all other forms of love become good and beautiful. Eros and philia and storge become almost divine themselves, ruled by agape flowing from the heart of God. 

 

What does this mean in practical terms? Well, that is for you to figure out over the rest of your lives, but I will say just this much today. It’s good that you have warm feelings about each other. It’s good that you feel deep affection for each other. It’s good that you share interests and values. But none of these is enough to build your lives on. 

 

Build your lives on God. Build your lives on God’s love, which works in you for God’s best in you. Desire God’s best for each other. Choose God and choose what is good. Build the foundation of your lives with God’s perfect love, which sanctifies and celebrates all other forms of love. 

 

You know of course how God’s love shows itself for us. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) God’s love is most visible on the cross. Your love for each other will grow and develop and become what God wants when it begins with your own embrace of the cross. 

 

You will have to work out what that means: Giving yourself for each other; caring more about each other’s needs than of your own; seeking God’s best for each other at all times. If you do this, if you bring yourselves and your marriage to the foot of the cross, God’s love will flow through you in good times and in bad times. May God bless you and your marriage from this day and forever.