Today marks a year since I started these blog postings. It’s been an amazing period of spiritual discovery. I’ve prayed about Paul’s use of that strange word “agape.” I read a lot and discovered that I disagreed with almost everything I read. So I had to start all over again and combine a fresh reading of the Bible with meditation.
This year has been the conclusion of the last several years of deeply seeking God’s agape for my life. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised to find that the search opened my life to profound changes; including, deepening and expanding my perspective on the ancient meaning of love.
I started the year with the understanding that the reality that we try to express with the strange word ‘agape’ is so powerful, and yet so essential to a person’s growth in faith, that over the centuries people have tried many different words to translate it. But all such words have fallen very far short of its true spiritual meaning. I saw as one example that the normal English word ‘love’ is just not what is meant by ‘God’s Agape.’ The ancient Greek word "agape" was not the common word for love (and "caritas" was not the common Latin word for love), so it was a mistake to start translating "agape" with the common English word "love."
But I’ve started to see that such confusion of language came about because of the awareness that ‘agape’ refers to a spiritual experience of an intense, intimate way of relating; and that it brings a meaningful depth and concern to life. (Of course, modern English is such a spiritually weak language, that there is no English word that expresses the full spiritual meaning of 'agape.')
When I focused my Bible study on Romans and 1 Corinthians, I found a new appreciation of Paul’s spiritual discoveries. So I understood Paul was pointing to the spiritual awareness that by giving us agape, God opens the guarded heart through intense, intimate relating. For those who respond to that, they will have a spiritual experience that will allow them to sense something like acceptance, support, caring, and even affection that is more profound than is possible in any other way.
So of course, just imagine what kind of a walk with God over many years it took Paul to truly, deeply understand that what is not possible for a human is possible for God. Paul bore witness thru personal experiences that God makes it possible for us to be able to find the level of intimate, intense affection such that we can give full acceptance and mutual respect to everyone around us. Only God could make that possible. And agape is how God does it.
Summary of what I discovered about the Meaning of Agape:
‘God’s Agape’ names a spiritual power flowing into the center of our being.{retranslation of Rom. 5:5} ‘Agape’ is used to name a spiritual opening that comes to us when we fully accept our true connection with the deepest aspect of Life. God’s Agape is given to us as our access to the manifested divine Presence. So ‘Agape’ is the name of a form of spiritual energy that can help us, because it has a transformative quality that makes it possible to be kind, compassionate, and charitable with everyone and the rest of Creation.
Matthew records Jesus as saying “You shall [agapan] the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all our mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall [agapan] your neighbor as yourself.’ (Mt 22:36-40). What is alike in the two Great Commandments is the verb form of agape. So the same spiritual power is an active force between God and us while also between others and us. Agape is the spiritual flow that opens us to our connection with divine Presence AND empowers us to go out to other people in compassionate, caring, loving, accepting, respectful, joy-filled ways.
