Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing

Some background information will help us to better understand the poignant dialogue we have been examining, from John 21. “Do you love me?” Jesus asks. “You know that I love you,” Peter answers. But each is using a different word for “love,” and each word has very different connotations.

In Greek, the language of the New Testament, there are several words for love. Philia was a common word that signified a tender, warm, “feeling” kind of love that is perhaps best described as brotherly love, or the affection of close friendship. Prior to Jesus’ teachings on love, philia was the most sublime form of human love known. It was a deep love – deep enough to entail willingness to die for a friend.

But the love that Jesus taught (using his native tongue, Aramaic) was qualified with characteristics that transcended even the beautiful philia kind of love. So the early scripture writers adopted another Greek word for love – agape – for use in the New Testament, and they enriched it with more sublime connotations that it had enjoyed in secular speech and writings. Agape came to describe God’s kind of love – a God “who so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son” (Jn 3:15). It entails even more than willingness to die for a friend: it entails willingness to die for an enemy. It is a generous, sacrificial, Christlike love that Paul describes as a “willingness to die for the powerless, for the ungodly, or sinners and for those at enmity with God” (Rom 5:6-10).

Peter and the other disciples did not know about the agape kind of love at the time of their post-resurrection encounter with Jesus. Why? Because agape love is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22) and is God’s own love “Poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5); it required a Pentecostal outpouring of that Spirit, which “had not yet been given” (Jn 7:39).

This explains why John’s Gospel, which was written in Greek, employs both these words to translate “love.” Jesus uses agape in his first two questions, but Peter replies using philia all three times. Twice Jesus asks, “Do you love [agape] me?” And Peter answers, “Yes, you know that I love [philia] you.” The third time he asks the question, Jesus substitutes the word philia – as if to say, “Do you love me even with a lesser [philia] love?” Jesus understood the process of spiritual maturation, and knew that in time Peter would indeed come to love him more and more.

This should not encourage us to indulge in an immature, “God loves me that way I am” mentality. Instead we must listen for God’s response to our faltering steps of faith: “I love you too much to leave you the way you are!”

Can any of us say that we really obey God’s most basic command? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength…These commandments are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (Dt 6:5-7). This is no mere counsel. Jesus affirmed that the command to love God is the first and greatest mandate for human creatures (Mt 22:8). We will never fully attain total and perfect love, of course. But if we think of ourselves as already “good enough," we sabotage our very striving towards the goal.

How do we know if we’re really striving to reach that norm? God’s holy Word answers that question clearly, frequently, firmly and unevasively. John says, “This is love for God: to obey his commands” (1 Jn 5:3). Also with emphasis, Jesus puts it another way: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father” (Mt 7:21). Love of God is not “a warm fuzzy” – although for some mystic souls it may entail a depth of emotion that reaches even beyond ecstasy. Essentially, our love for God is an uncompromising obedience to his will and laws.

God’s will is revealed in the divine laws handed down by his Church (laws against euthanasia, abortion, and birth control fall into this category), but also in the divinely backed human laws officially established by the same Church (canon laws regarding priestly celibacy, for example, or church precepts regulating fasting, Mass attendance, confession, and Communion). The scriptural basis for love-authenticating obedience to such laws is extensive. Jesus says, “He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me” (Lk 10:16). And again, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven” (Mt 16:19; see also Matthew 18:18). Paul demands obedience to church authority (see 1 Thessalonians 5:12; 1 Timothy 5:17; Hebrews 13:7). A detailed examination of conscience in these matters will reveal clearly just how much we really love God.

Of course, Jesus as the God-man is our contact point with God: “No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6). When Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?” he was inquiring about the apostle’s love for God. And when we obey the mandates of Jesus, we obey the mandates of the Father, in the Spirit: “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching…The Spirit whom the Father will send will teach you and remind you of everything I have said” (Jn 14:23-26). Paul encouraged the Thessalonians to persevere in such love-authenticating obedience to God and to Christ: “We have confidence that you will continue to do the things we command directing your hearts into God's love and Christ’s perseverance” (2 Thes 3:4-5). Likewise, our obedience – Christ-centered and thus God-centered – will be a sign that our love for God is deep and persevering.

This excerpt is from the book The Art of Loving God by John H. Hampsch, C.M.F., originally published by Servant Publications, 1995. This and other of Fr. Hampsch's books and audio/visual materials can be purchased from Claretian Teaching Ministry, 20610 Manhattan Pl, #120, Torrance, CA 90501-1863. Phone 1-310-782-6408.