Have you ever heard the anecdote, a person can’t see the forest for the trees? The idea is that a person hiking through a forest concentrates so diligently on the trees within that forest (the bark, leaves, root system, bug infestation, disease, and plight) that she doesn’t see the magnificent potential and impact of the entire forest. Because the hiker takes this limited viewpoint, her own experience within the forest is unreliable and any thoughts she may have about the trees she is so focused on is actually flawed and inadequate.
That is the way I used to look at agapaō. I believed it was the elusive, eternal, unconditional love God dangles in front of us but we can never fully attain. I believed it was God’s perfect love and it was the highest level of love. As mere mortals, we could only scratch the surface of agape love and we had little hope of even doing that.
It was also the way I looked at phileō love. I believed this was humanity’s best effort when it comes to love. It was finite and earthly. It was conditional and selfish in its deepest motives. Phileō love was just one level of love: below agapaō and just above eros or storge. Phileō was something I had to move beyond if I was going to love like Christ.
All I believed about love was not wrong; it just was not complete.
It was the trees without the forest.
What no one ever told me or what I didn’t correctly understand (either way I missed it) is phileō and agapaō are used in interchangeable ways. I was looking so intently at specific trees about love that I could not see the beauty of the whole forest of love. Therefore, my very basic assumptions about love were flawed and inadequate. I believed agapaō and phileō are on different planes or levels with the one being superior over the other. The reality of love is this.
- Love is not a matter of levels. (Trees)
- Love is not an either/or. (Differences in the trees)
- Love is both/and! (The whole forest!)
There is no doubt agapaō and its noun form agape is used more often in the New Testament than phileō and its adjective form philos. In fact, some quick math from our Greek definitions will show the former is used five times as often as the later. Does this matter?
Many authors and commentaries are quick to point out that since agape is used far more often than phileō, it is agape that God is emphasizing and the love we should try to achieve. However, if we follow that line of thinking, we better start hearing a lot more sermons on God’s wrath, judgment, and hell because these are mentioned a whole bunch throughout Scripture. Or conversely, we can say we don’t have to pay much attention to being gluttonous because it is mentioned only three times from cover to cover.
We cannot and should not ignore passages such as I Corinthians 13, the great love chapter. There is no doubt that God expects us to understand and obey agape love. As we learned in chapter two, when God repeats something, like the commandment to agapaō (love) one another, we better pay attention. But what I have missed, and maybe you have too, is God’s holy intention for us to phileō (love).
I was taught if a person hasn’t moved from the lower level of phileō to the highest level of agape or if they can’t stay at that highest level, well then they just aren’t a very good one another!
I was also taught phileō is used negatively to denote a prideful or selfish love of man loving things or people. It is used this way in Scripture, but only nine times.
On the next page are samplings of positive uses of the New Testament word phileō which are translated as our English word, love. The second list is samplings of the New Testament word philos which are translated as our English word, friend.
Discussion
In your own words, explain the similarities and differences between agapaō love and phileō love.
One Another Living 