WHAT IS LOVE, HOW MANY KINDS OF LOVE ARE THERE?

Love is the act of expressing the innermost feelings toward another person. It’s a feeling that shows either you are satisfied with them, or you have accepted them, or you want to have closer relationship with them.etc

Biblically there are three kinds of love.

The first one is the love which comes from emotions. Is also know as EROS,

This is love of husband and wife. Solomon had tried to explain about this kind of love. He said..

Song of Solomon 1:13-17 (KJV)

¹³A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.

¹⁴My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.

¹⁵Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes.

¹⁶Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.

¹⁷The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.

One can not compare this love with the love of people like friends, parents or relatives,

2. The second kind of love is love which born from related things.Also Known as “PHILEO”.

This love arises from the particular relationships one person has with another person, whether it be a relative, or a friend, or a playmate, or a co-worker. It is a love that can not come if there is no closeness or some kind of benefit that one can get from one another,

Believers exercise the kind of love, We must love one another, the Bible tells us so (1 John 2: 9-10), it also tells us to love one another as brothers in the Lord, but this kind of love is not available only to believers, but also to unbelievers

As we read in.

Matthew 5:46-47 Kjv

⁴⁶For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

⁴⁷And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

Publicans care those who care them back, They Love who show love back, but those who don’t. They don’t also.

See, this love has not yet reached its own standard of genuine love..

3. The third kind of love is unconditional love.Also know as “Agape” (Godly love).

This is the love that Jesus Christ was speaking of, it is love that you love another person without any cause, it is superficial love, which does not count whether a person loves you back or not, whether he hates you or does not hate you, whether he speaks on you wrongly or correctly , if he has benefits to you, or he has not.

This love is what JESUS had for us, when the Bible says that He “loved us unto the end” (John 13: 1). it meant to say that He truly loved us not because we were saints, or because we were evil … or because he was seeking greatness from us, No he just loved us, the way we are, deep from his heart, to the point of giving his life for us.

And this kind of love is what the Lord wants each one of us to have, We know It’s hard to reach, especially when we see someone who hates us or speaks wrong of us that is the one we should love, there is some kind of hardship.

It doesn’t matter how much love we express to our husbands, or wives, or brothers or friends if we have not yet been able to reach this AGAPE love, before God we still have no love.

These are the qualities of Agape love.

1 Corinthians 13 :4-7 (KJV)

⁴Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

⁵Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

⁶Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

⁷Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

So, in order that you and I can achieve this kind of love, we must not wait for it like the two above, but we must cultivate it patiently, by not retaliating with evil, without gossiping others, etc

We should all pray that God will help all of us get into that point, because that’s where God Himself dwells, and that’s what is known as the greatest gift. With it you are more than any prophet, or any teacher, or any evangelist, or any apostle in the world. That love will bring you closer to God than any thing in this world.

God bless you.

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