“Stand in the ways and see
And ask for the ANCIENT PATHS where the good way is,
And walk in it.
Then you will find rest for your souls.”
Jeremiah 6v16
So far, we have looked at the Ancient Paths of WORSHIP, FAITH and INTERCESSORY PRAYER so now it’s time to come to the ancient path of the Agape love of God.
The word agape originated in ancient Greece and was considered to be the highest form of love. In Greek understanding it could be described as “universal love,” the supreme form of love that includes things like “love for all people.” It was adopted as the best possible word by the writers of the New Testament to describe God’s kind of love which is unconditional, sacrificial, pure and absolute.
The apostle John in his writings shows us that God Himself is Agape (1 John 4:8)
God is not just loving towards us - God IS love. Agape is His very NATURE - it is WHO God is - it is HIS ESSENCE and it qualifies everything else that He is:
He is ETERNAL - so He is eternally LOVE - it is what He has always been and always will be!
He is INFINITE - so He is infinite in LOVE – there is no end to His love!
He is OMNIPOTENT – His LOVE is all powerful and everything He does comes out of Who He is - out of His love!
He is OMINIPRESENT – His LOVE pervades the whole of creation and beyond. The ONE who IS LOVE is present throughout the material universe – and all through the heavenly realms where He dwells in unapproachable light!
He is OMNISCIENT – He LOVES us even though He knows all about our sins and failures – but He cannot ignore them:
He is JUDGE - even his judgements come out of Him being love.
Because God is Agape He HAS to judge what is WRONG
and because He is love He is JUST and FAIR to EVERYONE
and because He is love He can by no means acquit the guilty (Nahum 1:3).
– but because He is love He has provided the way for the guilty to be forgiven!
Because He is love – He is withholding His ultimate Day of Judgement - He is patient - He is giving the world the opportunity to repent before He does finally judge the world:
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9).
This follows through from the Old Testament revelation of the love of God. Many have said that the God of the OT is different from the God of the New but actually there are many references to God’s love in the Old Testament:
His unfailing love (40 times),
His love endures forever (44 times),
His great love (12 times),
He is abounding in love (8 times).
Nehemiah 9:17:
“You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.”
Exodus 34:6 “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” - “of those who hate Me” (Exodus 20:5)
Deut 7:6 “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.”
The people of God in OT times were exhorted to stay in God’s love by never turning to any other god. They were warned of what the consequences would be, if they did do that.
Joshua 22:5: “Be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you: to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to keep his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.”
We need to carry that understanding of the love of God as seen in the Old Testament into our New Testament understanding of love. We need to have a holy fear of the God who is love and is also a consuming fire (OT: Deuteronomy 4:24 and NT: Hebrews 12:29) - those two truths must be kept in balance.
We must not run away with the idea that the God is some kind of sweet benevolent being with a kind smile, who tolerates anything and everything people do regardless of how many others they hurt along the way - or how much they reject or blaspheme Him (even though in His love He is ready to forgive this, when they repent).
Remember His judgement comes out of His love. If you love someone you will not do anything to upset them and if we truly love God we will be careful to stay in His love.
The apostle John who said God is love also wrote: “If anyone obeys His word, love for God is truly made complete in them” (1 John 2:5).
I heard the story once of a young man who was studying God’s Word in a diligent way and someone asked him what he was doing. He said, “I’m trying to find out how much I love God” so the other person said, “How are you doing that?” The young man replied “I’m looking at the commands of Jesus to see how much I am obeying them.”
2 John 1:6: “This is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands.”
The New Testament teaches that when we have entered into God’s love through repentance, we have this kind of love within us – it is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).
So, when we have the agape-love of God in our hearts we can be just and fair to everyone in the same way that God is. We can be kind and patient towards everyone with God’s love inside of us.
Up to now I have tried to give examples from the Bible of those who have walked these ancient paths before us but with agape-love it’s been more of a challenge.
All the different kinds of love are from God and in the Old Testament we see the love that Jacob had for Rachel and his youngest son Joseph, Ruth’s love for her mother in law Naomi, Elkanah’s love for Hannah the mother of Samuel, and Jonathan’s love for David. All of these are examples of human love but going back to agape-type love, the Old Testament also has many exhortations to God’s people to love others as a reflection of the love God had for them. Here are a few examples:
Deuteronomy 10:17-19:
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.
Leviticus 19:18: “Love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”
Agape love is a gift from God that comes out of the agape-love that the Father has for the Son (John 3:35, 5:20). We receive this dimension of love - this supreme quality of love when we love God in return for His love for us: “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Jesus is the perfect example of the agape-love of God: Firstly in coming into this world for us, then on countless occasions during His earthly ministry relating to people wherever He went, and ultimately in dying for us.
The Apostle Paul is another example of walking the path of agape-love. A lot of people tend to think that Paul was a hard man who especially did not like women. This is not true at all, if you read his own words and reports about him in Acts you can see he worked well with women (Romans 16:1-2, 6, 12,15) and highly valued them and he was greatly loved by those who were close to him (Acts 20:37) and that does not happen if you are not a loving person. When he wrote I Corinthians 13 he was not writing that as a theory, it came out of his own great love for Jesus (who he was crazy about) and out of his life since meeting Him.
The New Testament has over 200 references to agape-love and exhorts us:
To agape-love God Himself (Matthew 22:37)
To agape-love one another (John 13:35)
To agape-love our neighbours (everyone we meet) (Matthew 22:39)
For husbands to agape-love their wives (Col 3:19).
For us to agape-love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-46)
So let us keep walking the Ancient pathway of true agape-love.
It is the safe way and it’s the way of blessing!
“Walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us
and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Ephesians 5:2
As you have heard from the beginning, His command is that you walk in love.
2 John 1:6.
“By this all people will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.”
John 13:35