Agape in Robert Morris' "Provocative Grace"

The first time I read Robert C. Morris' creative research into the New Testament was in a study group 9 years ago, but when I reread it recently, I realized that parts of his book, Provocative Grace, fit into this section of my blog, where I've been quoting from books that discussed spiritual love.

Although I'll start quoting Morris with the one time when he uses the word 'agape,' I'll follow that one-time quote with quotes where he uses 'love' in a spiritual way that the meaning is 'agape,' and I'll change the word to 'agape.'

      "Jesus calls us toward agape, a broader form of love that intentionally seeks the well-being of others simply because they are fellow creatures.
      "Our overall goal is clear: participation in the compassionate Agape of God, by whose power we can have agape for ourselves, others, and all of life with wisdom, skill, and grace.
      "Jesus wants to spur us into a maturity that can collaborate with the Agape that gave us birth. This Agape seeks partners in making real 'the kingdom' or reign of God which heals the hurts and develops the life of this world.
      "Jesus invited people then and now to see the world in a wholly new way, through different eyes: as a place where God's own powerful agape for the world itself, for all that makes and keeps life holy, is meant to be the central passion of human life. As we let this agape have its way with our personal and communal life, he said, we begin to enter, here and now, on earth, the realm of God's active grace.

      “The man from Nazareth saw earthly life with heaven’s eyes, and he invites us to have agape for each other, earth, and all earth’s creatures with heaven’s agape, God’s own just and merciful agape. As we live into the agape at the heart of Jesus’ halavah, our actions more and more reveal that we are Wisdom’s ‘children,’ offspring of the very agape that shaped the world and our deepest nature. This agape was the driving force of his life and the center of his message.

      “To speak of love can sound shallow and sentimental if we think that the power of soul is simply a pleasant emotion, [but] the agape Jesus received and gave is not only warm and comforting but challenging and purifying, both food and medicine for the human heart, like the sunshine that both strengthens unfolding plants and destroys mildew.

      “This divinely sourced agape, a reflection of God’s own declaration that the creation is ‘very good,’ is the flame at the core of our being.

       "In its more extraordinary forms, agape drives forgiveness after deep injury, and for those quite different from us, and can even open our heart to the humanity of an enemy.

       “Before all else, agape is the capacity to see everyone and everything as interconnected, ‘held together’ in one cosmic embrace.

       “Because behavior that crafts the soul toward ever fuller experiences of agape is so central to fully functional human life, Jesus makes it the central commandment or challenge of his message.

       “Agape is not only power of the psyche or soul, but it’s meant to rule all the rest.

        “Jesus’ command takes his apprentices into a training course in agape.

        “Jesus invites us to learn agape for our whole self by letting agape flow to every part of us.

       “The path of wisdom embodies all the ways the mysterious Agape that shapes the universe has befriended the human race and desires each human’s God-like potential to flourish.”