“The opposite of darkness isn’t light; it’s love.”
This is a quote from the Disney Channel Movie titled Twitches. Though I am not going to brag or critique the movie itself, there was one aspect of the movie that stood out to me. The two main characters were trying to defeat an evil “Darkness.” The girls looked for the opposite of darkness and tried to use the light to defeat it. However, the light could not defeat the darkness and they were confused of what other than light could be the opposite of darkness. Then they realized that the opposite of darkness is not light, it is love. Love is the only thing that can defeat the darkness in our lives. As a Christian, this is a beautiful analogy for us. In life, there will always be lots of darkness. The darkness may feel like it is winning and nothing can defeat it but love always wins. Love conquers every darkness in our lives.
But what is love? This is a question that at least for me was easily overlooked. It’s one of the first words a child learns as their parents constantly say “I love you” since the day they were born. In everyday life, people will say that they love that outfit, or love the new movie that came out, or that they met the love of their life. The word love is used so often and in so many ways that it loses its true powerful meaning.
Agape is a Greek word meaning love, but it is more specific and special than just the love you feel for chocolate. There are four different words for the word love in the Greek language. Storge, Phileo, Eros, and Agape all mean love, but in different ways. Storge love is the love for someone or something, just like your love for chocolate. Phileo love is the love among friends or brotherly love. Eros is the romantic love. There is a love for stuff, for friends, and for lovers so what does that leave for the meaning of agape love? Agape is the unselfish love.
In the bible, Jesus describes this kind of love as the highest and most true form of love. John 15:13 states “No one can have a greater (agape) love than to lay down his life for his friends.” That is the truest and most pure act of love a person can offer to someone. Just before Jesus explains what real love is He gives us the commandment to “love one another, as I have loved you.” How did Jesus love us? He loves us with true agape love and laying down His own life for His friend.
In John chapter 15, Jesus does not just tell us once to “love one another, as I have loved you,” but twice. He continues into more detail saying “My command to you is to love one another. If the world hates you, you must realize that it hated me before it hated you.” In this commandment to love, we are foretold that we will feel hatred for our love. When we think of a perfect love, we often think of those love stories, songs, and movies where a man and a woman find that perfect eros love and they live happily ever after. We think that if only we find someone to love, they will give us the happiness we seek and all of our problems and loneliness will be solved. Which is true to an extent, but not in the way the world promises. If we find the truest and highest form of love it is not an eros love, but an agape love, a self-giving love.
One of my favorite quotes comes from Booker T. Washington. He said, “Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.” A lot of times we think of a relationship as two people that do things for each other. Some people become too focused on a ‘this for that’ agreement in a relationship. They think of showing love for each other as deals such as “I’ll cook the dinner if you do the dishes.” When people have a ‘this for that’ mentality in their relationship, they lose the opportunity to surround themselves with the beautiful and selfless acts of love. When someone is forced to do something in this kind of agreement, they no longer have the free will to offer the action as an act of love for the person that they love. However, when we are able to lose the idea of doing things for people we love to repay them and start doing everything out of our own self-giving desire to make them happy, we find that we are actually happier in the end.
We get a better idea of what this self-giving love looks like in St. Paul letter, 1 Corinthians 13:
“If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, love is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
If you are still confused on what is love, there is one more Bible verse that explains love perfectly in 1 John 4:16: “God is love.” God Himself is the definition of love! God is the one that “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16). God did not just give us his Son as a simple present like a parent gives a present to a child on their birthday wrapped in a pretty bow. Jesus explained laying down your life for a friend is the greatest kind of love so God gave us His Son to lay down his life for us in a gruesome death on a cross. That gruesome death is agape love. Love is the only thing that can defeat the darkness. God defeats the darkness. This is what makes love so beautiful. That selfless love is what lets you see the light of God in another person.
But God’s love for us is even deeper than dying a gruesome death on a cross for His friends. He died for you, individually. Even if there was no one else created. He still would have gone through that pain for you. Even more so, even if you reject His offering of Himself, His love, and His sacrifice, He still would have died that death on the cross just for the chance that you might choose to one day love Him back with your own free will.
There is a song called "Miss Missing You" by the band Fall Out Boy that has one line that states that sometimes “the person that you’d take a bullet for is behind the trigger.” Think about that lyric. Many times people say that they love someone so much they would die for them, but would they still feel the same way if the person they were dying for was the one that was actually killing them? Most of us would change our minds very quickly. But God’s love is so sacrificial that He put His Son into this world to redeem our sins that were the very cause His death in the first place. Every lash that Jesus felt, every spit in his face, every thorn in his head, every ounce of blood that was dropped, every nail that crushed through his skin was for your sins that were committed against Him. He died and felt pain for every time you decide to stab him in the back. So not only did He die for His friend, He died for those that hate Him, curse Him and insult Him. He died in hopes that His sacrifice may lead you back to accept His gift of unconditional love for you.
Many times, we may look at our relationship with God and think yea I love God, isn’t that enough? But what kind of love do we have? Do we love God the same way we love chocolate where it’s good to know it’s there for us on bad days or do we have a sacrificial agape love where we are willing to give our entire life, even death, to Him?
“My Jesus, fill my heart with so much love that one day it will break just to be with you. My Jesus, you know I have placed you as a seal on my heart. Remain there always.” -St. Bernadette Soubirous
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