The 4 Loves

3 Questions

• How are we ‘doing’ in these loves?

• What do these loves tell us about God’s love for us?

• How can our loving draw from His love?

Affection / Storge

Affection / Storge

• Source of love / relationship– Natural built-in affection of care-giver– The 120% dependence of the ‘weaker’ party

• Obligation (1 Way)– Puppy / Child: none (no ‘payback’ required)– Master / Parent : provision, shelter, security.

• Risk & Challenges– Perseverance– “Letting go”

“O Jerusalem!...how often I have longed to gather your children

together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings!”

(Luke 13:34)

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on

the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”

(Isaiah 49:15)

Friendship / Phileo

Friendship / Phileo

• Source of love / relationship– A common interest

• Obligation (2 Way)– Serve, Protect and Share (John 15:15)– Potentially the greatest love of all (John

15:13)

• Risk & Challenges– Exploitation

I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my

Father I have made known to you.

(John 15:15)

“Greater love has none than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.”

(John 15:13)

Romance / Eros

Romance / Eros

• Source of love / relationship– Each Other

• Obligation (2 Way + 1)– Husband: love wife as his own body– Wife: submit to husband– Both under covenant to God

• Risk & Challenge– Betrayal– Fear of vulnerability– Together “for better or for worse”

Ephesians 5:22-28

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of

the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the

Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to

their husbands in everything.

 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself

up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself

as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy

and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as

their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

“Having sex is like playing badminton.”

Who is the Bride of Christ?

Agape

Charity (Universal & Unconditional Love) / Agape

• Source of love / relationship– God and the Cross

• Obligation (it’s complicated)– “For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16)– “We love because He first loved us” (1John 4:19)– The Church is ‘obliged’ to love the world as God has

loved the church (John 13:34)

• Risk & Challenge– Indifference / Judgment– Ridicule and persecution

A new command I give you: Love one another.

As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

(John 13:34)