God’s Perfect Agape Love
Agape Love
While there are all kinds of definitions out there for Agape Love, I would define God’s Perfect Love as eternal, intentional, personal, sacrificial and victorious. Agape Love also serves as a foundation, inspiration and model for other types of love. I would include in these; philos, or the love of friends, eros; or the love of a man for a woman, and vice versa; and then in the Christian context, koininia, or the love the Holy Spirit shares among Christians within a church or a ministry. Agape, or God’s perfect love sets a high bar for friends who share love. Agape also exemplifies the very best romantic love partners can share with each other. And certainly, Agape Love offers to believers a beautiful model in God’s Love for the other loves—between friends, between marriage partners, and among brothers and sisters in a faith family.
God’s Perfect Agape Love
Today and everyday
I give glory to God
for His eternal and for His
intentional and for His
personal and for His
sacrificial and for His
victorious Agape Love.
I give glory to God
for His eternal Love
extravagantly given
from before the very
beginning of our world
and also now and
beyond even the end.
I give glory to God
for His intentional
and His chosen Love
purposeful for all who
heed His call and turn
to Him with hearts open
to receive His all.
I give glory to God
for His personal Love
reaching deep inside
my soul lighting up
my joy and hope and all
my strength inspiring
all of me to follow.
I give glory to God
for His sacrificial Love
laying down His life
incarnate so I may
turn and find in Him
splendid light to walk in
and blessed life to live.
I give glory to God
for His victorious love
delivering me from sin
and death and crying
and pain and placing
inside my heart gloriously
perfect peace in Him.
Today and everyday
I give glory to God
for His eternal and for His
intentional and for His
personal and for His
sacrificial and for His
victorious Agape Love.
Jeremiah 31:3
. . . the LORD appeared to him from far away.
”I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”
Agape Love is certainly eternal. It has always been God’s blessed plan for the world and each of us. It is now even as we live out our lives on Earth. It will ultimately be the foundation of our eternity with Him in Heaven. Eternity is a difficult reality for us to grasp. Because we are born into time with all of its limitations, we cannot imagine what it means to live beyond time, and all of the possibilities that raises. We do know God is eternal. He has always been. He is now. He will always be. Before the Universe, He was. Before the earth, He was. Before any of us, He was. And He has always been Agape Love. He has always been shaping and arranging history as we know it to build His Kingdom on the earth, and beyond. In Creation He was setting the stage. In the Fall He was already opening for us the Way. In the miraculous rise of Israel He was continuing His plan. In every singular event, from Egypt, to Sinai, in the wilderness, under Moses, under Joshua, under the judges, under Saul, then David—God was moving toward the coming of the Son, the Messiah who would make plain how real was His Agape Love. Even now He is working through His people, through the chaos of movements—wars and rumors of wars, devastating natural and unnatural events, through those who assume they are God—toward the ultimate culmination of this old Sinful and Fallen World. Soon now, as soon is counted by Him in eternity, His eternal Agape Love’s eternal Gospel plan will be achieved.
Psalm 139:14-16
”I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.”
Agape Love is intentional. God chose to create the world. He chose to create human kind in HIs image. He chose to place the first man and woman in a beautiful garden. He chose to redeem even the mistaken choices of Adam and Eve. He chose to redeem Enoch when He took him home into Heaven. He chose to redeem the earth through Noah and his family, the animals, and the ark. He chose Abraham and Sarah to bear the seed of righteousness. He chose David to carry that seed forward as the admittedly flawed Great King of Israel. Then he chose Mary to bear that seed miraculously as a virgin, and Joseph to be her earthly protector and provider for Jesus, the Messiah and the Savior of the world.
I John 4:16
So we have come to know and to believe
the love God has for us.
God is love
and whoever abides in love abides in God,
and God abides in him.
Agape Love is personal. God’s Spirit pursues individual men and women as He surrounds them with blessed challenges which lead them step-by-step toward entering His Kingdom. In the Old Testament He worked trough faithful men and women, blessing them as they obeyed Him, with extraordinary lives filled with amazing events which pointed God’s People to Yahweh, who led them collectively and individually to obey and serve Him. I think of Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, Ruth, David, Esther, Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets. I think of New Testament men and women, certainly including, Zechariah, Elizabeth, John the Baptist, Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, Wise Men, Peter, Andrew, James, John, and each of the disciples, Paul, and too many others to be named. God’s Holy Spirit presents to every human heart the Love of God in the Person of Christ. His loving life, death, and resurrection declare Agape Love lived out in perfection so Jesus could become the unblemished sacrifice to establish forever the loving relationship between God and any man, woman, girl, or boy who chooses to receive God’s perfect and perfect gift.
Genesis 22:9-14
When they came to the place of which God had told him,
Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood
in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar,
on top of the wood.
Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife
to slaughter his son.
But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him,
for now I know that you fear God,
seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked,
and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns.
And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up
as a burnt offering instead of his son.
So Abraham called the name of that place,
“The Lord will provide;”as it is said to this day,
“On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
Romans 5:8
. . . but God shows his love for us
in that while we were sinners,
Christ died for us.
Agape Love is sacrificial. God chose to give the Son, the unblemished One, as a sacrifice for every believer’s sins. We each in our heart recognize we cannot keep from doing wrong. We, every single one of us, need cleansing and forgiveness. We have no standing to do that for ourselves, for even with our best efforts, we fall short of the perfect Love of God. We need a perfect Lamb who can bear our imperfection and so remove the penalty for our selfishness and disobedience. The only perfect man to ever live is Jesus. He hung on the Cross for each of us. He lay in the tomb for each of us. Then, He arose from the grave for each of us. In Him we find cleansing forgiveness, the death of our old imperfect selves, and the defeat of evil in His glorious resurrection.
John 16:33
”I have said these things to you,
that in me you may have peace.
In the world you will have tribulation.
But take heart; I have overcome the world.
Agape Love is victorious. Victory began upon the Cross. It continued in the Tomb. It arose victorious on Resurrection Day when God’s eternal Gospel Plan defeated sin and death once and for all. The Old Heaven and Earth as we know them, will disappear. New Heaven and New Earth will appear. As we are told in Revelation 21, God will dwell among His people and they will dwell with them. Agape Love will become the foundation for the incredible fellowship relationship taking place between His people gathered from among the peoples of the earth. He will abide among them and be their God. There is no possibility of imagining that eternal relationship in which there will be nothing but good, nothing but perfection, with not even the slightest hint of imperfection or suffering. Even the best moment of our lives will then seem so colorless and dull. And there will never be an end to possibilities and joys and glories for us to explore.
Certainly, if you were making your list of the attributes which belong to God’s Agape Love, you would perhaps choose other words, other ideas, other illustrations—for one of God’s gifts to us is the miraculous way He reveals HImself and HIs Love in beautifully unique ways. Then He takes us all and all of our understanding created by HIm in us, and blends them together even as He forms each rainbow which could never be a rainbow without the sunlight He, Himself, shines through the vapor droplets in the air. Whatever Agape Love means to each of us, we can agree, God eternally, intentionally, personally, sacrificially, and victoriously loves us with Agape Love, each and every one of His children. Praise His Holy Name now and forever.
