This one has been kind of hard for me to figure out. I know that agape is love, that’s easy. And I know that Eros really isn’t. How about Philia? This is one Robyn and I are still discussing. Let’s just launch forward with this and see where it takes us.
Through this
discussion I will tie up some concepts discussed in last week’s blog (on Eros)
while paving the way for what I will post next week (on Agape).
The
following verse is going to be the foundation of our discussion on love. Let’s keep our eye on the ball and remember
just how important it is to understand why the word “love” is under such
attack, why this world wants to convince us it is something that it simply is
not, and how important a true understanding of it is in God’s plans for you,
me, and the entire human race.
'YOU SHALL LOVE
THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL
YOUR MIND.' "This is the great and foremost commandment. "The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE
YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' "On
these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."
My initial
concept is that there is only one form of love.
Agape. It is Christ on the cross,
it is God’s love for us, it is totally 100% selfless and expects nothing in
return. IT REPRESENTS THE VERY NATURE OF GOD’S
HEART TOWARD US. ON IT, DEPENDS THE
WHOLE LAW AND THE PROPHETS. Ponder that for a second.
- God wants me to be one with Him,
- Freedom from this world is found in being one with Him,
- It is His love that allows me to trust Him, be healed by Him, and be set free through Him,
- Being His requires that I show Him to others,
- Showing Him to others requires that we allow Him to shine through us,
- For others to trust us as we lead them to Him we must look like Him,
- Looking like Him means that we show others His love,
- By showing others His love we experience and understand “His heart”,
- This is where we experience the emotions of living in “His image”,
- We come to understand that this sensation eclipses any feeling, emotion, or pleasure found in a flesh led life, and
- This is the fulfillment and perfection of our salvation as we are set free by choice from the chains of this world (choosing that which eclipses over that which is eclipsed).
If this is
all true, how can we show one kind of love to our spouse, another to our
children, and a different love to rest of the world? My argument is that by limiting our love
toward others we fall short of being Christ to them and we limit our ability to
let God perfect us. They lose out on the
very thing Christ brought us into the covenant to accomplish, and we lose out
on the liberty experienced through the experience of becoming one with
Him; we never experience what it is like
to have Him flow through us.
This leads
us into a few areas of discussion:
- How do we distinguish between our marriage relationships and those of the world?
- How do our past hurts, hang ups, and habits hinder us in this process?
- How do our relationships with Christ and our spouse prepare us for extending this kind of love to others?
- How does all this fit into God’s plan of salvation and Satan’s attempt to block it?
How do we distinguish between our marriage
relationships and those of the world?
The bottom
line here is that there is a difference between intimacy and love. The spiritually led physical connection
between a man and a woman is the soul’s response to true intimacy. In this context I would define intimacy as
the bearing of one’s soul before another.
It is the total and complete surrender in this regard (to the limits of
the spiritual growth of each partner and the unity) that produces a spiritually
physical response within the unity.
Simply put, the greater the Spirit leading the greater the trust, the
greater the trust, the greater the intimacy, the greater the intimacy the
greater the spiritually led physical attraction, the greater the spiritually
led attraction the less the tendency to lean on the flesh led physical
attraction (Eros). This sets up a
healing loop that grows the couple individually and the unity
cumulatively. I will go into more detail
in this regard when I discuss the aspects of Agape next week.
Based on the
above, it should go without saying that the intimacy between husband and wife
must far exceed the intimacy of our other relationships. If either partner attempts to seek this
intimacy outside of the context of marriage it is being done in selfishness and
is really nothing more than a pursuit of inappropriate affirmation. This is where it gets really tricky and where
the unity of the marriage becomes paramount.
What does it
mean to you when I say the “unity of the marriage”? Or when I talk about “a man and a woman
become one upon the covenant of marriage”?
There are many ways to answer these questions. One of them would be that at the moment of
marriage, every hurt, betrayal, rejection, hardship, pain, and other life
experience of the one instantly becomes imposed on the other. This is easy to see if we understand that the
way we respond in situations is based on how we were created combined with our
life experiences. It is our responses
that bring this baggage into the marriage relationship.
Here is
where intimacy “the bearing of one’s soul before another” is so important
within the marriage. It is the intimacy
of the marriage that allows Christ to use the male and female aspects of the
unity to break the chains of bondage relative to the baggage that each partner
brought into the marriage. If we are
careful to watch we will notice that the Spirit will be working on each partner
individually to prepare the way for further growth and healing within the unity
itself. For those that are single the
same work is done directly between Christ and that person. In both circumstances God perpetually uses our
interactions with others to bring about an understanding of what He is
ultimately attempting to communicate to us.
On the other hand, it is the work of evil that takes this same baggage
and attempts to lead the unity (or individual) into a place of added hurt, rejection,
betrayal, pain, and ultimate destruction.
It is our ability to listen to the voice of the Spirit over that of our
flesh that ultimately dictates which direction we go. Saying this another way…..It is how deeply we
allow the Spirit to move, lead, and guide within the unity that paves the way
for our ability to agape beyond the limits of the unity.
How do our past hurts, hang ups, and habits
hinder us in this process?
First of
all, our past hurts, hang ups, and habits push us toward false intimacy based
on the physical world instead of the Spirit.
It is the very nature of these aspects of our life that keep us from
embracing God’s love from Him, or through others. Until we have trusted God in His promise that
we are capable of being spiritually beautiful we will remain convinced that we
are hopelessly ugly on the inside.
Convinced that we will never be spiritually affirmed by others we seek
affirmation the “easy way” which proves to be as productive as bailing water
out of a sinking boat that has a gaping hole in the bottom. Sooner or later we run out of steam and go
down with the ship. Bottom line, we
convince ourselves that arm’s length love is safer than agape. Truth be told, people in this spiritual
condition really don’t even understand the concept of agape. Every aspect of their “love” relationships
are based on a physical or implied spiritual extension of love that really is
all about manipulating affirmation from others.
This is exactly where the enemy wants us; thinking we are extending love
while really being nothing more than totally selfish. As soon as our “love” does not generate the
response we expect we feel hurt, betrayed, and rejected. This makes us feel more spiritually ugly and
pushes us toward gaining affirmation the world’s way.
So the
answer to the question is multi-level.
Our unhealed past keeps us addicted to physical affirmation (looks, performance,
material things, wealth, gifts, wisdom, success, …..) for fear of further
rejection that will only make us feel even more spiritually ugly than we
already do. On the other hand, it is this
need for affirmation that leads us toward doing acts of kindness in a hope that
we will get a positive response that will make us feel spiritually
attractive. Nothing is less attractive
than someone trying to be attractive.
Get the picture? The truth is
that we are ugly, God is beautiful. As
long as we are “working” to try to gain approval for ourselves we fail
miserably because…well, we don’t deserve it.
On the other hand, when we come to realize that we don’t deserve it, we
drop the need for seeking it, and step back and let Christ take the glory He
deserves, we gain it….but for Him. As we
allow Him to live through us people see us as beautiful but instinctively we
know the truth…it is Him that they truly see.
Even in the
context of great healing we continue to keep a huge fence around our hearts
because we simply do not trust ourselves.
Maybe I am being naive on this but I just can’t see the spiritual
freedom in putting a massive fence around my heart and only letting a little
out for fear I will fall back into my spiritual ugliness. Will I ever truly be one with God if I only
trust myself to experience His love moving through me when directed in the
safety of my marriage? Isn’t an aspect
of what He desires for me to experience the ability to share His love with
others without the fear of selfish motivation, without feeling cheap or dirty,
without it feeling like it is wrong? Is
it possible for God to transform me to the point that I can truly extend His
love without any attempt to manipulate affirmation for myself in the
process? Is it possible for Robyn and I
to reach a point in our relationship where we keep Christ at the center and
allow Him to transform us to the point that we are capable of showing the world
our entire heart, His heart? I have to
believe it is. Maybe not immediately,
maybe only a little more each day, but some day…it is my hope in Christ.
How do our relationships with Christ and
our spouse prepare us for extending this kind of love to others?
Bringing
together some key concepts from the above we find some critical points:
- If we allow ourselves to be fully intimate with Christ (and our spouse) we find that we have a partner that is fully intimate with us. Fully intimate in this context is that they are one with us. Husband and wife are one, and through Christ the Holy Spirit comes into us and makes us one with Him. These relationships are the only place where the intimacy is so great that we find ourselves met with another who is actually partaking in everything that we partake in. It is this intimacy that literally brings another to the very place where we are at, in the depths of our nakedness, where they take us by the hand, and gently lead us toward God, His truth, His righteousness, and His love. This is a love so powerful that when felt, the only response is to follow, to be transformed, and to be healed. The key here is that we are not met where we are for the purpose of feeling good where we are….we are met where we are to be healed enough to move….where we can be healed more….so we can move more….
- As we progress through this process of healing we discover that we become more and more satisfied with our spiritual connection with Christ and our spouse. This spiritual connection gives us the affirmation and sense of wellbeing that makes all the false intimacies of the world pale in comparison.
- This process helps us approach relationships with fewer tendencies toward flesh led satisfaction and a greater awareness of the Sprit, Christ’s voice, and a desire to be one with Him.
- This fully prepares us to move out into the world and show His face, His heart, and His love to others. We come to a point where we no longer seek affirmation for our flesh because we know it really doesn’t deserve it. We accept that any beauty seen in us is really just Him shining through us.
- We become free to expressing His love with little fear of temptation because we have come to know a greater and more powerful experience than anything this world has to offer; The sensation of allowing God’s love to flow through us.
How does all this fit into God’s plan of
salvation and Satan’s attempt to block it?
Following
the above points in a reverse order of our deliverance into Him we find ourselves meeting others where He met us:
- God wants us to choose to love like He loves,
- He knows that once we experience it, we will choose it over the false intimacies of this world,
- We must experience it to choose it,
- Through the “law and the prophets” and the “voice of the Spirit” God provides a life journey that presents the opportunities to experience it,
- It is His meeting us in our hurts, habits, and hang ups that opens our hearts to try it His way,
- It is the ways of the world that lead us into the pit that prepares our hearts to accept His love,
- This is where we come back to after we are healed, where we find others who are just like us, and where we introduce them to Him as we “love” them His way,
- His way is pure, true, without any selfish flesh led need for affirmation, it does not accept the lies of this world, and it does not take advantage of situations.
Understanding
God’s need for us to understand His love to the point we can live it exposes
the foundation of Satan’s plan to undermine it.
- If we let ourselves believe that flesh led anything is healthy, appropriate, and an aspect of love we will never allow the spirit to convince us to move away from a flesh led existence,
- If we do not move away from a flesh led existence we will continue to seek flesh led affirmation,
- If we continue to seek flesh led affirmation we will continue to be left feeling betrayed, hurt, and empty,
- This will lead us toward lower levels of intimacy with God, Christ, and our spouse,
- This will drive us toward false intimacy from the world,
- Our understanding of this need will make it necessary for us to put fences around our hearts to protect us from the temptations that we have little power over and where we remain in complete bondage,
- This leaves us ineffective in showing God’s love to others in any real magnitude,
- This leaves the hurt and desperate people of the world alone and isolated in their misery, and
- It leaves us tormented by our flesh led desires, never fully experiencing His nature, and never fully understanding what it is that He so desires for us to choose over the experiences of this world.
I pray that
this has inspired you to spend some quality time with your spouse, given you
the courage to pray to the Spirit and ask for direction, that you will hear His
voice, and allow Him to do a mighty work within and through you. God bless.
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