The Love God Designed

What Is Love? | Day 6

 

"That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame." Genesis 2:24-25 (NIV)

 

Good morning. Today this series turns to a love the Bible describes in remarkable detail without ever giving it a specific name of its own.

 

The word eros is well known in modern culture and has been used by Christian writers throughout history, yet it may be the hardest of these loves to describe honestly, because it is a borrowed word from Greek and is never actually used anywhere in the Bible. Early Christian writers adopted it as a convenient shorthand for the marital, physical dimension of love that Scripture does describe, briefly in Genesis 2 and at far greater length in Song of Songs, even though the word itself never appears in either passage. The word's origins come from Greek philosophy, which already had several distinct words for different kinds of love: agape, phileo, storge, and eros. It makes sense why writers reached for that fourth word to complete the set, since three of the four, agape, phileo, and storge, already appear directly in Scripture. C.S. Lewis is the best known example, organizing love into these four Greek categories in his own writing. Using eros this way is similar to how theology uses the word Trinity, a label reached for to describe something Scripture teaches clearly without ever coining a specific term for it. The difference is that eros carries older baggage the word Trinity does not, since it was also used in Greek mythology to name a minor god, and caution matters here. The temptation with any borrowed word is to let its old baggage sneak back in, treating this love as either something faintly embarrassing to mention or as nothing more than appetite disconnected from the marriage covenant. This series has no interest in either error.

 

Interestingly, most of what Scripture actually says about this romantic and physical dimension of love does not come from the New Testament at all. It comes from the Old Testament, under a different word entirely: ahavah, the Hebrew word behind much of this vocabulary, carrying a far broader range than eros ever did. One of the ways Scripture uses ahavah is to describe this same romantic and physical devotion within marriage, the classical, theological sense of eros this devotion has been using, not the coarser meaning its modern descendants, erotic and erotica, have taken on in today's culture. Because ahavah has no single clean English equivalent, it has to be read the way any word from an unfamiliar language is learned, by watching how it behaves across several examples rather than handing it one synonym. Ahavah names God's covenant love for Israel, a father's love for his son, and, as we will see today, a husband's desire for his wife, all carried in a single word whose meaning has to be built from its own usage rather than handed to us in translation.

 

A Love Written in Full

God's design for this love (ahavah) begins in the second chapter of Genesis. After forming the woman from the man's own side, God brings her to him, and Moses records what follows in plain, unembarrassed language. "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame." (Genesis 2:24-25, NIV) The center of that passage is the covenant itself, one flesh, formed when a man leaves the family that raised him to be joined to his wife so completely that Scripture calls the two of them a single flesh. At that point in the story, sin had not yet entered creation, and neither had shame. The nakedness and the union alike were simply good, exactly as God made them, untouched by anything that would come afterward, in the next chapter, to corrupt them.

 

Solomon gives that same ahavah its fullest voice near the close of Song of Songs, where the bride describes this love using words most of us reserve for matters of life and death. "Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one's house for love, it would be utterly scorned." (Song of Songs 8:6-7, NIV) Ahavah, in this passage, is treated as one of the most powerful forces God ever set loose in creation, stronger than death, unquenchable by any flood, worth more than every possession a household could name.

 

A Love Enjoyed Across a Lifetime

Proverbs blesses this same love inside marriage rather than only admiring it from a distance. "May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer, may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be intoxicated with her love." (Proverbs 5:18-19, NIV) The word behind her love there is ahavah once more, the same word Genesis and Song of Songs have already shown us, now describing delight a husband is meant to actively enjoy rather than merely permit.

 

Ecclesiastes shows ahavah once more, in a far quieter key. Solomon, writing near the end of a long search for meaning under the sun, lands on something surprisingly simple. "Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun, all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 9:9, NIV) Here ahavah is not fire or intensity but companionship over the long, ordinary years, the daily gift of a wife to walk through life with. Four passages, four genres, one Hebrew word, each showing a different facet of a single design.

 

None of this suggests ahavah, or eros, is the only love present within a marriage. This series will look at marriage more fully later on, roles, responsibilities, and the other loves woven into it. What today's passages actually show is one more example of what this whole series keeps uncovering: English hands us a single flat word, love, for realities Hebrew and Greek carried under distinct, richly storied words of their own, whether Scripture's own word, ahavah, or a label later theology borrowed, like eros, to name what Scripture describes but never named itself.

 

Every one of these passages points to something larger than the words themselves. What God called good in the garden, what Solomon sang of in Song of Songs, and what he later wrote in Ecclesiastes as a quiet gift worth enjoying every ordinary day, all trace back to the same source. Jesus Christ designed marriage in the beginning, and he still honors it today. Wherever ahavah/eros has been neglected, forgotten, or mishandled across the years of a marriage, Jesus Christ does not withdraw the gift, he renews it. In every marriage where Christ's Word and forgiveness are trusted, he is still at work, and no history with this gift is too much for the mercy he freely gives a husband and wife today.

 

Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank you for designing this love and for showing it to me in so many different places in your Word, in Genesis, in Song of Songs, in Proverbs, and in Ecclesiastes. Thank you for giving your people ahavah and every picture that goes with it.

 

Lord Jesus, thank you for designing marriage from the very beginning and for renewing what my own heart has neglected or mishandled over the years. Thank you for continuing to honor this gift no matter its history. I pray this in your name. Amen.

 

Whatever your story with this particular gift in your marriage has been, know that the God who designed it has not changed his mind about its goodness or about you. Tomorrow this series turns to chesed, a love that keeps its promises long after every reason to quit has come and gone.

 

To God be the glory

 

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

 

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