Eros V. Agape

eros -a desire for sexual intimacy. sexual desire, concupiscence, or physical attraction

agape -selfless love of one person for another without sexual implications (especially love that is spiritual in nature)

Today is Valentine's Day. Romantics take the opportunity to get gooey, cynics call it a Hallmark holiday, and Hallmark benefits either way.

You can count me somewhere in between the romantics and the cynics. If the most love you ever show someone is because a day was set aside specifically for you to do so, there's a problem. On the other hand, why miss an opportunity to love on your loved ones just because everybody else is doing it?

Sure, it can be a Hallmark holiday, one that's wrapped up in eros, in the moment, in attraction and in lust. It can make those who have somebody feel extra special and those who don't feel depressed.

It can also be a time to simply reflect and remember what love is, to celebrate it and practice it.

However, on a day when the pictures of love tend to be hearts pierced with arrows, I reflect hands pierced with nails. On a day that can be all about eros (and there's nothing wrong with a little eros), I remember a day that was all about agape.

A Biblical writer named John put it this way, "This is how we know what love is; Jesus Christ laid down His life for us."

This act was the very definition of love. How appropriate, then, that when I looked up agape in the dictionary, the second definition was the one that begins this post. The first definition was this: the love of God or Christ for mankind.

The Bible says that "God is love." Not that we can define God in our own terms of love, but that we define love in terms of God. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Love is and does these things because they are what God is and does. And so those of us who seek to love each other, must follow the example of God who loved the world so much that He gave His only Son, that whoever believed in him would not die, but have eternal life.

Today I celebrate eros, my sexy wife and her curvy body and that smile that won't quit. But, more than that, I celebrate agape, my wife who sacrifices daily for her husband and her son and her church and her friends and her clients and for strangers on the street. I celebrate the people I know who love others as themselves. And I celebrate the God who is agape, whose love made the ultimate sacrifice for us.