Second of Four Greek Words for Love
The Written Word
The response to last week’s post was encouraging. To begin with this week, I would once again note that the written word refers to words put in writing, whether God’s words (the Bible) or the written words of this blog or my books. And my approach will be to develop a “brainwave” that will hopefully be of interest to my readers. I started last week with a series on the four Greek words for love.
Revisiting the Four Loves
As previously mentioned, three of the four loves are found in the New Testament. Last week we looked at eros. Although eros does not appear in the New Testament like the other three, I felt that understanding its nature had value. Readers appeared to agree.
The other three loves are storge (family love), philia (affection or friendship), and agape (a selfless, sacrificial love of choice).
Here are links to several of articles on the four loves: truthortradition, faithgateway and mcleanbible
The Second of the Four Loves
Storge, as with eros, is not chosen as second in order because it is more important than philia or agape. It is important in its own right but is not as important as the latter two. Furthermore, storge is not used on its own in the New Testament, but rather as a compound with other Greek words that expand on its meaning. Also, the negative form of the word, astorgos, is found in Romans 1:31, the idea being without family affection, hard-hearted, unfeeling. The negative form also appears in II Timothy 3:3 as heartless or without family affection. The passage tells us that a lack of storge will increase in the end times, which is certainly food for thought.
