Love (25)
(agapao
related to noun
agape -
see
word study) describes the love
God gives freely, sacrificially and unconditionally regardless of
response -- love that goes out not only to the lovable but to one’s
enemies or those that don't "deserve" it.
Agapao speaks
especially of love as based on evaluation and choice, a matter of will
and action. This love is not sentimental or emotional but obedient and
reflective of the act of one's will with the ultimate desire being for
another's highest good. Since it is unconditional, this love is still
given if it's not received/returned! Agape gives and give and gives. It
is not withheld.
Agape love is
commanded of believers, empowered by His Spirit, activated by personal
choice of one's will, not based on one's feelings toward the object of
one's love and manifested by specific actions (see 1Cor 13:4-8 for a
succinct list of these actions). Agape love speaks of a love called out
of one’s heart by the preciousness of the one loved, a love that impels
one to sacrifice one’s self for the benefit of the object loved. It is
the love shown at Calvary. The prototype of this quality of supernatural
love is the Father's love for sinful men as manifest by the Son's
sacrifice on the Cross.
Speaking to
faithless Israel God speaks of coming days of restoration declaring...
"I have loved you with an
everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.
(Jeremiah
31:3)
In Romans Paul
explains that even while we were helpless and ungodly, Christ died for
the ungodly adding...
But God demonstrates His own love
toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (see
note
Romans 5:8)
John writes...
In this is love, not that we
loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins. (1 John
4:10)
Incorruptible (861)
(aphtharsia from a = not +
phthartós = corruptible from the verb phtheíro = to
corrupt, shrivel, wither, spoil by any process, ruin , deprave,
defile, destroy) is a state of not being subject to decay or death -
immortality, incorruptibility (state of being free from physical decay),
perpetuity. Aphtharsia defines the state of not being subject to
decay, dissolution or interruption. It speaks of an unending existence,
of that which is not capable of corruption. Aphtharsia indicates
immunity to the decay that infects all of creation.
The idea is conveyed in our English phrase with an undying love.
MacArthur comments that this love incorruptible is...
the love that belongs to true believers; so Paul is
really identifying the ones who will receive grace
as only those whose love is not temporary and thus untrue but permanent
and thus genuine! (MacArthur,
J: Ephesians. Chicago: Moody Press)
The Latin Vulgate translates aphtharsia as incorruptio.
Vine writes that aphtharsia is used
(a) of the resurrection body, 1Cor 15:42, 50, 53, 54;
(b) of a condition associated with glory and honour and life, including
perhaps a moral significance, Ro 2:7; 2 Ti 1:10; this is wrongly
translated “immortality” in the AV;
(c) of love to Christ, that which is sincere and undiminishing, Eph 6:24
(Vine,
W E: Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament
Words. 1996. Nelson)
Freiberg says that aphtharsia in this verse...
has three possible alternatives: (1) as qualifying love unceasing,
undying; (2) as qualifying grace with incorruptibility, eternally; (3)
as qualifying Christ and Christians in immortal life (Friberg,
T., Friberg, B., & Miller, N. F. Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New
Testament. Baker's Greek New Testament library. Baker Academic)
Aphtharsia is found only in the NT and is used 7 times...
Romans 2:7 (note)
to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and
immortality, eternal life;
1 Corinthians 15:42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It
is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body...50
Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable...53
For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal
must put on immortality...54 But when this perishable will have put on
the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality,
then will come about the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up
in victory. (Comment: The resurrection body has undergone a
complete change as compared with the body of flesh like the plant from
the seed. It is related to it, but it is a different body of glory.
Aphtharsia refers to the incapacity of the new resurrection
body to deteriorate or decay. This is a quality, however, that our
present bodies do not have but will have in the resurrection.)
Ephesians 6:24 Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus
Christ with a love incorruptible.
2 Timothy 1:10 (note)
but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus,
who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light
through the gospel
Blaikie writes that...
The
expression is peculiar—love the Lord Jesus Christ in incorruptible. The
word denotes, especially in Paul’s usage, what is unfading and
permanent. The love that marks genuine Christians is not a passing
gleam, like the morning cloud and the early dew, but an abiding emotion.
Nowhere can we have a more vivid idea of this incorruptible love than in
the closing verses of Ro 8, “I am persuaded that neither death nor
life,” etc. (The
Pulpit Commentary: New Testament;
Old Testament; Ages Software)
