God’s absolute holiness demands that sin be punished. Because of sin, mankind stands condemned before a holy God. Mankind, in and of themselves, cannot bring about a redemption from sin’s penalty, but the cross upon which Jesus died speaks to and demonstrates to all mankind, God’s great love for mankind, His creation.
Wes Parker, former major league baseball player stated, “… that his earlier exposures to Christianity had had no effect, because they were mostly based on simplistic platitudes such as "God is love" which he found unconvincing.” If God is love, then we must ask ourselves, “How has He shown this love to mankind?” From the following verses we see how God demonstrated His love to mankind.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
“By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 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 John 4:9-10)
“For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
God demonstrated His love to mankind by the sending of His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. “By His (Jesus) substitutionary death the unmeasured, righteous judgments of God against a sinner were borne by Christ” (Chafer); “What Christ bore we are saved from bearing.” (Chafer). It is due to His love demonstrated on the cross that mankind finds redemption and hope from the penalty of sin; “In the cross of Christ, therefore, God hath declared His love, and this declaration is addressed as a personal message to every individual” (Chafer). It is also important to note from these verses an important fact, God’s love was demonstrated to mankind while still in a sinful state; “…in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. His love wasn’t demonstrated toward those who were saved (certainly the saved are loved of God), but His love was demonstrated to mankind while mankind was still in sin.
What does the word “love” mean? What does it express? There are four words in the Greek language for “love”; Stergein, Eran, Philein, and Agapan. So, when we read of God’s love for mankind in the above verses, which Greek word was used for “love”. Kenneth S. Wuest notes regarding the translation of the New Testament from the original Greek, “The reliable English versions give the meaning of the Greek in a translation which is held down to the fewest possible words which will best convey to the reader the thought of the original. However, no translation is able to bring out all that is in the Greek. There are delicate shades of meaning, vivid word pictures, language idioms, that no standard version can handle.” Therefore, to properly explore and define the Greek words used for love, I’ve taken those definitions found in “Bypaths in the Greek New Testament” by Kenneth S. Wuest.
Stergein is used in the New Testament in its noun form, with the letter “Alpha” prefixed which negates the word, that is, makes it mean the opposite to what it meant in itself. Stergein designates “the quiet and abiding feeling within us, which, resting on an object as near to us, recognizes that we are closely bound up with it and takes satisfaction in its recognition.” It is a love that is “a natural movement of the soul, “something almost like gravitation or some other force of blind nature.” It is the love parents for children and children for parents, of husband for wife and wife for husband, of close relations one for another. It is found in the animal world in the love which the animal has for its offspring. It is a love of obligatoriness, the term being used here not in its moral sense, but in a natural sense. It is a necessity under the circumstances. This kind of love is the binding factor by which any natural or social unit is held together.
Eran is a word that is not found in the New Testament. The word “passion” describes it. It is passion seeking satisfaction. It is not intrinsically a base word. In its use it is found at the two extremes of low and high. It was used in pagan Greek writings of sex love. It was used in Christian writings of divine love. It was used of the love of children to their mother. This love is “an overmastering passion seizing upon and absorbing into itself the whole mind.”
Philein is used forty-five times in its various forms of verb and noun. This is an unimpassioned love, a friendly love. It is a love that is called of one’s heart as response to the pleasure one takes in a person or object. It is based upon an inner community between the person loving and the person or object loved. The one loving finds a reflection of his own nature in the person or thing loved. It is a love of liking, an affection for someone or something that is the outgoing of one’s heart in delight to that which affords pleasure. The Greeks made much of friendship, and this word was used by them to designate this form of mutual attraction. “Whatever in an object that is adapted to give pleasure, tends to call out this affection.” It is connected with the sense of the agreeable in the object loved. The words which best express this kind of love are “fondness, affection, liking.” “It shows the inclination which springs out of commerce with a person or is called out by qualities in an object which are agreeable to us.”
Agapan is used in its verb, noun, and adjective forms about 320 times in the New Testament. It is a love called out of a person’s heart by “an awakened sense of value in an object which causes one to prize it.” It expresses a love of approbation and esteem. Its impulse comes from the idea of prizing. It is a love that recognizes the worthiness of the object loved. Thus, this love consists of the soul’s sense of the value and preciousness of its object, and its response to its recognized worth in admiring affection.”
Wuest notes when contrasting Philein and agapan, philein is a love of pleasure, agapan a love of preciousness; philein a love of delight, agapan a love of esteem; philein a love called out of the heart by the apprehension of pleasurable qualities in the object loved, agapan a love called out of the heart by the apprehension of valuable qualities in the object loved; philein takes pleasure in, agapan ascribes value to; philein is a love of liking, agapan a love of prizing.
The word for “love” in John 3:16 is the Greek word Agapan. Wuest states, “The love exhibited at Calvary was called out of the heart of God because of the preciousness of each lost soul, precious to God because He sees in lost humanity His own image even though that image be marred by sin, precious to God because made of material which through redemption can be transformed into the very image of His dear Son. While it is a love based upon the estimation of the preciousness of the object loved, this from its classical usage, it is also a love of self-sacrifice, complete self-sacrifice to the point of death to self, and that for one who bitterly hates the one who loves.” While the reader is able to come to a good understanding of a passage of scripture in which the word “love” occurs, yet a fuller and greater understanding of the scripture’s use of the word “love” is only possible when one knows what the distinctive Greek word for “love” is.
According to Wuest, “The pagan Greeks knew nothing of the love of self-sacrifice for one’s enemy which was exhibited at Calvary. Therefore, they had no word for that kind of love. They knew nothing about the divine analysis of this which Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 13. So the New Testament writers seized upon the word as one that would express these exalted conceptions. Therefore, the word agapan in the New Testament is to be understood in its meaning as given above, but also in the added meaning which has been poured into it by its use in the New Testament.”
Therefore, we can see in the cross a message of love; a self-sacrificing love toward condemned mankind and though condemned they do not seek after, but hate and have no regard for God’s love. The cross is a message of love coming from the heart of God directed toward sinful mankind whom He see as precious. “The cross of Christ was the final answer to the great necessities and problems which sin had imposed on the very heart of God. This is revealed, and is knowable only to the extent to which God has spoken, and never because man has examined and analyzed the heart of the Infinite.” (Chafer). Today, Satan, human philosophy, man’s sin nature, and blind unbelief continue to conceal from the hearts and minds of the unsaved God’s message of love demonstrated in the cross.; “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)
“Only in the cross has God perfectly revealed His love to sinful man; not in nature, nor in the things and relationships of this life; for these may fail. And when they fail the stricken heart that has trusted these outward benefits alone as the evidence of God’s love is heard to say, “it cannot be true that God loves me,” God’s perfect and final revelation of His love is in and through the cross, and the heart to whom this message has come is possessed with all the consolations of grace in the midst of the trails and afflictions of life.” (Chafer)
Coming Soon - Lesson # 6 - The Three-fold Message of the Cross - Righteousness
See Blog for prior lessons:
Lesson 1 - Salvation
Lesson 2 - How God Views the Lost
Lesson 3 - There's No Sitting On The Fence
Lesson 4 - The Three-fold Message of the Cross - Introduction
Lesson 5 - The Three-fold Message of the Cross - Sin
(The inspiration for these articles regarding Salvation come from Lewis Sperry Chafer work entitled “Salvation” published in 1917)
Unless otherwise noted all Biblical text is taken from New American Standard Bible (NASB)
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
“By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 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 John 4:9-10)
“For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
God demonstrated His love to mankind by the sending of His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. “By His (Jesus) substitutionary death the unmeasured, righteous judgments of God against a sinner were borne by Christ” (Chafer); “What Christ bore we are saved from bearing.” (Chafer). It is due to His love demonstrated on the cross that mankind finds redemption and hope from the penalty of sin; “In the cross of Christ, therefore, God hath declared His love, and this declaration is addressed as a personal message to every individual” (Chafer). It is also important to note from these verses an important fact, God’s love was demonstrated to mankind while still in a sinful state; “…in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. His love wasn’t demonstrated toward those who were saved (certainly the saved are loved of God), but His love was demonstrated to mankind while mankind was still in sin.
What does the word “love” mean? What does it express? There are four words in the Greek language for “love”; Stergein, Eran, Philein, and Agapan. So, when we read of God’s love for mankind in the above verses, which Greek word was used for “love”. Kenneth S. Wuest notes regarding the translation of the New Testament from the original Greek, “The reliable English versions give the meaning of the Greek in a translation which is held down to the fewest possible words which will best convey to the reader the thought of the original. However, no translation is able to bring out all that is in the Greek. There are delicate shades of meaning, vivid word pictures, language idioms, that no standard version can handle.” Therefore, to properly explore and define the Greek words used for love, I’ve taken those definitions found in “Bypaths in the Greek New Testament” by Kenneth S. Wuest.
Stergein is used in the New Testament in its noun form, with the letter “Alpha” prefixed which negates the word, that is, makes it mean the opposite to what it meant in itself. Stergein designates “the quiet and abiding feeling within us, which, resting on an object as near to us, recognizes that we are closely bound up with it and takes satisfaction in its recognition.” It is a love that is “a natural movement of the soul, “something almost like gravitation or some other force of blind nature.” It is the love parents for children and children for parents, of husband for wife and wife for husband, of close relations one for another. It is found in the animal world in the love which the animal has for its offspring. It is a love of obligatoriness, the term being used here not in its moral sense, but in a natural sense. It is a necessity under the circumstances. This kind of love is the binding factor by which any natural or social unit is held together.
Eran is a word that is not found in the New Testament. The word “passion” describes it. It is passion seeking satisfaction. It is not intrinsically a base word. In its use it is found at the two extremes of low and high. It was used in pagan Greek writings of sex love. It was used in Christian writings of divine love. It was used of the love of children to their mother. This love is “an overmastering passion seizing upon and absorbing into itself the whole mind.”
Philein is used forty-five times in its various forms of verb and noun. This is an unimpassioned love, a friendly love. It is a love that is called of one’s heart as response to the pleasure one takes in a person or object. It is based upon an inner community between the person loving and the person or object loved. The one loving finds a reflection of his own nature in the person or thing loved. It is a love of liking, an affection for someone or something that is the outgoing of one’s heart in delight to that which affords pleasure. The Greeks made much of friendship, and this word was used by them to designate this form of mutual attraction. “Whatever in an object that is adapted to give pleasure, tends to call out this affection.” It is connected with the sense of the agreeable in the object loved. The words which best express this kind of love are “fondness, affection, liking.” “It shows the inclination which springs out of commerce with a person or is called out by qualities in an object which are agreeable to us.”
Agapan is used in its verb, noun, and adjective forms about 320 times in the New Testament. It is a love called out of a person’s heart by “an awakened sense of value in an object which causes one to prize it.” It expresses a love of approbation and esteem. Its impulse comes from the idea of prizing. It is a love that recognizes the worthiness of the object loved. Thus, this love consists of the soul’s sense of the value and preciousness of its object, and its response to its recognized worth in admiring affection.”
Wuest notes when contrasting Philein and agapan, philein is a love of pleasure, agapan a love of preciousness; philein a love of delight, agapan a love of esteem; philein a love called out of the heart by the apprehension of pleasurable qualities in the object loved, agapan a love called out of the heart by the apprehension of valuable qualities in the object loved; philein takes pleasure in, agapan ascribes value to; philein is a love of liking, agapan a love of prizing.
The word for “love” in John 3:16 is the Greek word Agapan. Wuest states, “The love exhibited at Calvary was called out of the heart of God because of the preciousness of each lost soul, precious to God because He sees in lost humanity His own image even though that image be marred by sin, precious to God because made of material which through redemption can be transformed into the very image of His dear Son. While it is a love based upon the estimation of the preciousness of the object loved, this from its classical usage, it is also a love of self-sacrifice, complete self-sacrifice to the point of death to self, and that for one who bitterly hates the one who loves.” While the reader is able to come to a good understanding of a passage of scripture in which the word “love” occurs, yet a fuller and greater understanding of the scripture’s use of the word “love” is only possible when one knows what the distinctive Greek word for “love” is.
According to Wuest, “The pagan Greeks knew nothing of the love of self-sacrifice for one’s enemy which was exhibited at Calvary. Therefore, they had no word for that kind of love. They knew nothing about the divine analysis of this which Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 13. So the New Testament writers seized upon the word as one that would express these exalted conceptions. Therefore, the word agapan in the New Testament is to be understood in its meaning as given above, but also in the added meaning which has been poured into it by its use in the New Testament.”
Therefore, we can see in the cross a message of love; a self-sacrificing love toward condemned mankind and though condemned they do not seek after, but hate and have no regard for God’s love. The cross is a message of love coming from the heart of God directed toward sinful mankind whom He see as precious. “The cross of Christ was the final answer to the great necessities and problems which sin had imposed on the very heart of God. This is revealed, and is knowable only to the extent to which God has spoken, and never because man has examined and analyzed the heart of the Infinite.” (Chafer). Today, Satan, human philosophy, man’s sin nature, and blind unbelief continue to conceal from the hearts and minds of the unsaved God’s message of love demonstrated in the cross.; “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)
“Only in the cross has God perfectly revealed His love to sinful man; not in nature, nor in the things and relationships of this life; for these may fail. And when they fail the stricken heart that has trusted these outward benefits alone as the evidence of God’s love is heard to say, “it cannot be true that God loves me,” God’s perfect and final revelation of His love is in and through the cross, and the heart to whom this message has come is possessed with all the consolations of grace in the midst of the trails and afflictions of life.” (Chafer)
Coming Soon - Lesson # 6 - The Three-fold Message of the Cross - Righteousness
See Blog for prior lessons:
Lesson 1 - Salvation
Lesson 2 - How God Views the Lost
Lesson 3 - There's No Sitting On The Fence
Lesson 4 - The Three-fold Message of the Cross - Introduction
Lesson 5 - The Three-fold Message of the Cross - Sin
(The inspiration for these articles regarding Salvation come from Lewis Sperry Chafer work entitled “Salvation” published in 1917)
Unless otherwise noted all Biblical text is taken from New American Standard Bible (NASB)