Agape and Grace

I've been thinking recently about love and grace and how they relate. The primary New Testament word for love is agape. To describe it conceptually we usually emphasize sacrifice, unconditionality, and selflessness. This is over against eros love which is primarily sensual and /or erotic. At its worst, eros is made to take over the main definition of love and, when it occupies this central place, twists itself into selfish, emotional, sensually driven desire. Eros spirituality, as David Wells rightly puts it, is the prevailing notion of love in our culture and even in the whole of this age. It is connected very much to the Garden incident when our first parents placed personal desire first at the prospect of being like God. The sensory nature of the fruit itself is illustrative of the superficiality of eros. Paradise is lost to the cravings of the stomach, though it surely represented deeper dangers.

Agape on the other hand is entirely different. It can, as I've noted, be defined conceptually, but is properly understood only as it relates to a particular event (the cross) and a particular Person (God in Christ). And this is where grace comes very much into the picture. Those who experience agape know grace like no other can know. In Christ, God sacrificed His very self for those who had not and could not earn His affection. "For by grace you have been saved..." (Ephesians 2:8). In utter helplessness we, who willed ourselves into the poverty of a life consumed with eros, receive the free gift of salvation. We are helpless to save ourselves and equally helpless to resist the love of God in Christ. We cannot brag that we have saved ourselves, nor can we brag that we have refused the aid of another. This sort of experience is one that breaks, but it is a sweet breaking as one where all defense comes down and we simply collapse into the arms of our Comforter.

Agape is thus incredibly transforming. That is certainly the expectation of the New Testament writers: "We love because he first loved us," says John. When all grounds for bragging, righteousness, and dignity are based solely in the free gift of Another and decidedly not in ourselves, we dare not trampling even the lowest of the low. When all that we have we have received, we give with joy that we have anything to give at all. This, of course, is not always the daily reality, but it is the upward call of Christ.

These are only a few (quite late night) reflections. I have been captured recently by how important it is to see all things as gift rather than merely as a given or, worse yet, an earning. Agape and grace are rich realities in Christ with which I, personally, and the church, communally, must season all that we are and do. S.D.G.