What are the different types of love mentioned in the Bible?

Answer

There are at least four distinct Greek words used for “love,” but not all are present in the New Testament. (In reality, there are more than four Greek words for “love,” but typically these four are the ones discussed.)

The first Greek term for “love” is eros, which denotes romantic or sexual love. It is the root of the word erotic. This particular term is not utilized in the New Testament.

The second is storge, which signifies familial love such as a mother’s love for her child or the love between siblings. It is not employed in the New Testament; however, the negative term astorgoi (“unloving”) appears in 2 Timothy 3:3, and a similar term, astorgous (“no love” in the NIV and “without natural affection” in the KJV), is found in Romans 1:31.

The third Greek word for “love,” philia, denotes friendship and camaraderie. This term is frequently translated as “friend” (one who is loved) in the New Testament. Once, in Romans 12:10, the New Testament uses the compound word philostorgos, which is rendered in the NIV as “devoted . . . in love.”

Lastly, agape is used to describe God’s love for the world and the love that Christians are encouraged to embody. This is the most commonly used term for “love” in the New Testament. Initially, it was believed that Christians had coined the term agape to describe a divine type of love unknown to the Greek world. However, agape was already in use in the Roman Empire and was not invented by Christians to convey God’s love.

While these four terms convey distinct nuances of the concept of love, they are not universally applicable. At one point, many believed that the Greek la

Language had an almost mathematical precision. However, as more and more ancient Greek manuscripts are discovered (and as more careful research is done), we find that Greek is no more precise than most other languages. Many times people use words in ways that are not technically correct, and strict definitions of words are not always honored.

The distinctions between the different kinds of love do not completely hold up within the New Testament itself. Jesus says in Luke 6:32, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.” Here, the word translated “love” is agape throughout the verse. How can sinners show God’s love for each other? Jesus’ point is that the kind of love sinners show for each other is not the selfless, sacrificial love that Christians are called to display. In Luke 7:5, the centurion is described as one who loves the nation of Israel—once again agape is the love mentioned here.

Most words can have a range of meaning, but the specific meaning of any word must be determined from the context. English speakers use the word love in a variety of ways from “I love ice cream” to “I love my wife” and many other things in between. No one gets confused by this because we understand what kind of love is meant from the context. When agape is used in the New Testament, it is usually in conjunction with some other words to give clarity as to the kind of love intended. Much of the time, agape is modified by the phrase tou theou (“of God”). The godly quality of agape is found in the modifying phrase, not just in the word itself. The revolutionary nature of love in 1 Corinthians 13 is found in the description of it there, not in the word itself. The type of love in view will always be clarified by the context.

Christianity introduced a new kind of love to the world, but Christians used words already in existence to explain the quality of this love. Love was communicated primarily by their self-sacrifice in imitation of Christ, not by

The term “agape.”