Love is Not Love

I know, I know. That "love is love" phrase is a gay thing. But ... that's not this. I'm going somewhere else with this.

Words are interesting things. They don't, technically, exist. They aren't really a thing. Words are merely symbols that we use to express ideas. They are tokens with which we endow meaning together so that you and I can transfer thought. Think about that. We're trying to transfer thoughts -- me to you and you to me. But we can't connect our brains and do it directly in the "ones and zeroes" that computers do, so we have to do it with words. So when we change the meaning of symbols, we lose the capacity to communicate the thoughts behind those symbols. Take, for instance, the word, "awesome." Awesome used to mean "terrifying" and now it means "totally cool, dude." Take "moot" for instance. According to the dictionary, it originally meant "open to discussion" and for us it currently means "of little or no practical meaning." So, if you came across "awesome" in a 1600's manuscript, it would not mean at all what we mean today. The symbol would not convey the thoughts intended. This happens all the time. "Gay" used to mean happy and now it doesn't. "Making love" used to mean doing things that caused romantic feelings and now it doesn't. "Naughty" used to mean "having nothing," became "doing bad things," and is now a compliment. How can we communicate thoughts when the symbols change so much?

One of the most tragic is "love." Today it's "an intense feeling of deep affection." Not the same idea that Scripture uses. Jesus told His disciples, "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). He wasn't talking about "intense affection." He had just given His disciples a new command. "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another" (John 13:34). That's not "affection." He said it was laying down His life (John 10:14-18). Paul wrote, "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" (Rom 5:7-8). Husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ "loved the church and gave Himself up for her" (Eph 5:25). That's not mere affection. That's self-sacrifice. That's regarding the loved one as more important than myself and seeking their best over my own. But to suggest such a thing today is like speaking a foreign language. Husbands can abuse their wives today and say, when she complains, "But, honey, I love you!" They can only do that if "love" is simple "affection" because biblical love is self-sacrifice in direct contradition to self-centeredness.

We don't have that word anymore. Oh, it's not just us. When the King James Bible was made, they translated agapē in 1 Corinthians 13 as "charity," not because they didn't have the word, "love," but because they recognized that this was not the common term. "Charity" is rooted in the concept of "costliness" and aims at "benevolence for those with less." It isn't "passion," but compassion. That is closer to biblical "love" than our modern "feel warmly toward" (let alone "have sex with"). But charity now means "giving to the poor" and "love" now means "feeling warmly towards" and we have lost any symbol that will express this biblical version of "love." Certainly today's "love" is not love in the Bible. Why do you suppose that is?