Deut. 6:4-5; Mk. 12:29-31, Love!

We want to embark on some observations on the term “love.”   We will not do an exhaustive study, but we will spend time in both the OT and NT.  The passage that is providing the inspiration for this study is Deut. 6:4-5/Mark 12:28-34. 

Perhaps you are aware of the Greek words for “love.”  Books have been written on the subject.  There’s “agape” (divine or selfless love), “philia” (brotherly love), “eros” (sexual or physical love) being used in the NT along with “storge” (family love).  Hebrew has one family of words for love: aheb (208x)/ahab (2x)/ohab (1x)/ahaba (40x).  As TWOT (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament) puts it, “there is little variation in the basic meaning of this verb.  The intensity of the meaning ranges from God’s infinite affection for His people to the carnal appetites of a lazy glutton.”  It is the love of God that inspired Him to bring Israel out of Egypt (Dt. 7:8) and the love of Amnon that inspired Him to rape his half sister (2 Sam. 13:1,4,15ab). 

This great variety does not make a study of the word useless or trivial.  On the contrary, what it does is lead us to clarify the one think is our lives that we will always yield to.  We need to understand both what is our love-object and also what should be our love object.  We have many “loves” in our lives, as the Scriptures will tell us.  But at the same time, we are called to have one love, to love the LORD with all our heart, soul and strength. 

The first use of a term in the OT is usually a defining moment for the term.  Gen. 22:2 is the first time we hear of love and it is God speaking to Abraham: take now your son, your only Isaac, whom you love … offer him … as a burnt offering.  We know this is a story about God’s plan of salvation.  Thus, in the NT we read: In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 Jn. 4:10).  Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends (Jn. 15:13). 

The Patriarchs in Genesis had other “loves.”  Isaac loved Rebekah (24:67).  Isaac loved Esau; Rebekah loved Jacob (25:28ab).  Both Esau and Rebekah fixed Isaac food that he loved (27:4,9,14).  Jacob loved Rachel, working an extra seven years for her, and loved her more than Leah (29:13,20,30), though Leah hoped her husband would love her (29:32).  Shechem raped Dinah, clinging to her because he loved her (34:3).  Jacob loved Joseph more than all his sons (37:3,4), and then loved Benjamin more than the rest (44:20).

In all these stories you see people making decisions and taking action, sometimes good but mostly bad, being “inspired” by their loves.  We think and do according to what we love!  We need to submit our “loves” to the one love for God, a love that is with all our heart, soul and strength.