When One Word Isn't Enough

Agapē is not a feeling you fall into but a love you decide to give. It is how God loved us: "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). When John writes "God is love" (1 John 4:8), this is the word. It is love as a choice and an act, not merely an emotion.

Phileō is the love of friends. The city name Philadelphia is phileō plus adelphos, "brotherly love." It is the word for the tender affection Jesus had for Lazarus (John 11:36).

Storgē is the quiet bond of family. You never see it standing alone in the New Testament; you see it in its shadow. When Paul describes a society falling apart, he says men became "without natural affection" (Romans 1:31; 2 Timothy 3:3), the Greek astorgos, without storgē. And he tells believers to be "kindly affectioned one to another" (Romans 12:10). A world with no storgē is a world where even a mother's instinct has died.

A note on ἔρως, erōs. You may have heard of a "fourth Greek word for love," the word for romantic, desiring love. In honesty, it belongs in the language but not in the Bible: erōs appears nowhere in the New Testament. It was a common word in the Greek world, but the Spirit did not choose it for Scripture. That is not because married love is shameful; Scripture celebrates it openly and gave it a whole book, the Song of Solomon. But when the New Testament speaks of a husband's love, it reaches instead for agapē: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church" (Ephesians 5:25). Even romance is pointed back to self-giving love.

Ahav is the everyday, strong word for love. Its very first appearance in the Bible is a father and a son on the road to Moriah: "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest" (Genesis 22:2). It is the word in the great commandment, "Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart" (Deuteronomy 6:5), and in "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Leviticus 19:18).

Chesed is the one to learn if you learn only one. Translators strain to carry it: lovingkindness, mercy, steadfast love, faithfulness, covenant loyalty. It is love that has made a promise and keeps it. "His mercy endureth for ever" rings twenty-six times through Psalm 136, and every "mercy" there is chesed. When God proclaims His own name, He calls Himself "merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth" (Exodus 34:6), and that "goodness" is chesed. This is not warm feeling; it is God being faithful when His people have given Him every reason not to be.

Rachamim is tender compassion, and it comes from rechem, the word for a mother's womb. It is gut-level, protective, aching love. "Can a woman forget her sucking child...? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee" (Isaiah 49:15).

Dod is the love of the bride and bridegroom that fills the Song of Solomon, "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine" (Song of Solomon 6:3). And chashaq is to set one's heart on someone. God tells Israel plainly why He chose them: "The LORD did not set his love upon you... because ye were more in number... But because the LORD loved you" (Deuteronomy 7:7–8). He loved them because He loved them. That is grace.