By: Steve Wilmot
Like most adolescent boys, I wondered what love is. My feelings were stirring for a classmate who I thought was beautiful, but I didn’t know if I loved her because I wasn’t sure what it was. So, I asked my mom.
She paused, trying desperately to come up with a definition to help her son. I leaned in toward her, anxiously awaiting the answer. She spoke, “Love is an itch deep inside your heart that you can’t scratch.”
Huh? Mom’s answer didn’t help much. All I surmised was that once you experience love, it’s hard to fall out of love. It wasn’t all that helpful.
Over the next few columns, I want to look at one verse in the Love Chapter of the Bible — 1 Corinthians 13. While this chapter contains many descriptions of love, we’ll take a deep dive into the four given in verse seven.
But first, we need to get a basic understanding of what love is. As you may know, the New Testament was written in the Greek language. God chose this language because it is very precise. For example, in English, there is one word for love, but in Greek, there are three, each designating a different kind of love.
One is agape (a-gah-pae). It portrays the way God loves and is the highest form of love. An unconditional, unending, no-matter-what kind of love.
Another is philos, which is the love friends share. I’m here for you; I’ve got your back; you can count on me; how can I assist you to reach your goals?
The third is eros. It’s used for sexual love. At its best, it’s a beautiful expression of love between a man and a woman who are committed to one another for life. At its worst, it’s a selfish act that’s all about your pleasure without regard for the other person, who becomes little more than an object.
Before we begin to examine the four key qualities of agape love, let’s consider eros love.
In God’s design for our happiness and pleasure, he reserved eros (sexual love) for marriage. But like most things he gave us, we’ve misused it. Pre-marital, extra-marital, and homosexual sex are considered options on an equal footing with marital sex. You feel an urge; you satisfy it with whomever you can find.
God doesn’t deem eros as a “love” to be shared with a wide range of partners. He regards it as one expression of agape love you share with the man or woman you’ve chosen to build a family and grow old together with.
That sounds restricting. Many people justify sex with whomever they want because they think God doesn’t want them to have fun or enjoy themselves. They reason: Sex is fun. God is a killjoy who wants to deprive me of fun. That’s why he forbids sex outside of marriage.
Think about it. Each of the Ten Commandments prohibits actions that result in misery, loss, and brokenness. Murder. Theft. Lying. Adultery.
God doesn’t forbid these “fun” activities because he’s a party pooper. He bans them to shield us from consequences that really take our fun away. Things that hurt us and others around us.
That’s what eros love outside of a loving, committed marriage does. God loves you too much to see you suffer the many negative consequences of unrestricted sex with anyone you want to go to bed with.
Talk to someone whose ignored God’s design for sex. If they’re honest, they’ll tell you they wish they’d saved themselves for marriage. They’ll say their extramarital affair was one of the worst things they’ve ever done.
Why? Because you can’t sin and avoid the negative effects that arise from it. Like venereal diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and abortions.
Like divorce, leaving confused children wondering why Dad and Mom don’t live together anymore, and trying to grow up without two parents.
Like soul ties that emotionally and spiritually connect two people who have had sex and produce unhealthy and damaging impacts on their marriage later.
God wants you to experience joy and intimacy in your marriage. That’s why he instructs us to reserve eros love for the marriage relationship. It’s not because he doesn’t want you to enjoy sex. It’s because he loves you and wants you to enjoy sex and a healthy relationship with your spouse for life.
God invented love. Who better to tell us how it works best? If you follow God’s design for love, you will avoid many sorrows, difficulties, and troubles, and you will experience a love relationship with your spouse that you can only imagine now.
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Steve Wilmot is a former Edgerton, Ohio area pastor who now seeks “to still bear fruit in old age” through writing. He is the author of seven books designed to assist believers to make steady progress on their spiritual journey.