Readings: 1 Corinthians Chapter 13.
The greatest of these is love!
Chapter 13 of Paul's letter to the Corinthians deals with the question of love.
There are three, or perhaps four Greek words translated as "love", and they relate to agape, Eros, philia and another that I cannot remember. Eros, of course, is erotic love, and philia is brotherly, filial love, even family love, motherly or fatherly love.
Agape is, I think, the one that Paul refers to in this chapter - undeserved love, given with no expectation of return and no requirement of gratitude. God loves us, despite ourselves, and while He obviously would like to have us thank Him, and worship Him in return, His love remains constant, the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Now when Jesus summarized the two great commandments into "Love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength", and "Love your neighbour as you love yourself", was He concentrating on agape love and ignoring the other types of love? And does Paul's great chapter also ignore them?
Jesus said: "In these two commandments are contained all the Law and the Prophets"; and the whole of chapter 13 hinges on these two commands.
And love of neighbour, it seems, is dependant on love of oneself, a love that can only stem from our realisation that we are God's creation, and are loved by Him, so much so that He died or us. The first Commandment makes the second do-able. We must put God first, then we can obey the second.
It is normally taught that self-love is bad; selfishness is the opposite of self-less service, and so on. But we are told to love others as we love ourselves! So what sort of love is this?
An awful lot of people do not love themselves these days: They do not like the way they live, the way they look, and the way they are forced to make a living. Anorexia, binge drinking, sexual assaults all reflect this self-hatred, I suggest, so what does loving oneself entail?
It is a human trait, to love oneself- so is Jesus saying: I start with this, because you ubderstand it? You all want your life to count in some way. This self-love was built in to you and it should be the basis for love for your fellow-traveller, your neighbour, your family, and so on
And it seems to me that if you read the verses of Chapter 13 with each of the alternative types of love in mind, you can apply almost everything in the Chapter not only to agape love, but to both sexual and filial love as well.
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