Living Out Love
The word love is thrown around far too easily in our world. I have often lamented that we do not have 8 words for love like the Greek did. In English, there is no distinction between the love someone has for their favorite food and the love they feel for their children. It is a shame, and it creates a great deal of miscommunication. However, today’s reading only uses one form of the word love: agapao. Agapao means to be fond of and well pleased with.
We have all heard the command of Jesus to love our enemies. It is one of the things that sets Christianity apart from the rest of the world, and it gives us yet another example of how God calls us to do things contrary to what comes naturally. Walking in our faith requires effort and deliberate choices. In today’s reading we are told to do good to more than those who do good to us. This is a hard calling. Loving the unrepentant is hard. Being kind to those who have routinely hurt you makes people wonder if you are right in the head. If we don’t understand these verses, we could put ourselves in a position where we are used and abused over and over. I think that is because we don’t really have clarity to the different types and forms which love takes.
Agapao works with our will. William Barclay (New Testament Words, p. 21) explained that agapao “has to do with the mind: It is not simply an emotion which rises unbidden in our hearts: it is a principle by which we deliberately live.” We can be kind on purpose without becoming trampled upon. We can choose to live our lives by this principle of love without compromising the truth we hold fast to. To do this, we must live intentionally.
After twenty-three years of increasingly violent outburst, fits of rage, and emotional abuse which impacted me and my children, I left my husband and filed for divorce. Some very well-meaning people quickly informed me I must have turned by back on God and embraced a sinful lifestyle. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over the last few months, it was growing harder to hide what has happening in our home. Agencies and kind-hearted people reached out to me and offered to help me and my children escape. People who visited my home saw through my false laughter and lame excuses. They warned me of the damage I was allowing my children and myself to internalize. As my sons are growing and leaving the house for their own adult lives, I discovered there was no one to stand between me and my husband. I realized I was not strong enough to continue. It was not an easy decision but one I prayed for years about. I know God lined everything up for me and provided a wonderful place for me and my two children still living at home. He has blessed us abundantly since we left in November.
My divorce will be final in a couple of weeks. Many of my friends, my lawyer, and even the first judge to look our case over thinks I am crazy because I am showing agapao to my soon-to-be ex-husband. I am asking for $2,000 less a month than the state’s minimum for support. I agreed to allow him to have visitation with our daughter when I know that enough people have offered to testify in court that he doesn’t deserve it. I only asked for money from him for the next four years while I am enrolled in college online to get my teaching degree even though the state says I am entitled to it for life. I refused part of his retirement and even allowed him to keep the truck my father gave to me. I did these things because that is how I can show love to my enemies, do good, and lend expecting nothing. Love doesn’t have to mean we stay in a place where we are abused. It doesn’t mean we have to hate ourselves in order to love others. It means we make decisions as we hope Christ would. Forgiveness doesn’t have to mean we allow the offense to be repeated over and over, but it makes us look at things differently. I know my husband’s financial abilities. He has never been good with money. I don’t want to ruin him so I can live lavishly. Though he is not perfect, I do believe he loves his children. It would not be loving to deny him the only happiness I have in his life. He needs a vehicle to go to work. You see, love requires us to look with eyes that see more than our emotions do.
There are many ways we can live out Jesus’ command to love. How will you choose to live out love?
(Written by Keegan Harkins.)
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