Love LINKS

Whether on the Internet or in a chain, links connect us to one another (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).

Love links divinity and humanity. In three distinct stages of love, these links intertwine, and relate to mankind.

The underlying premise is that God lives to agape, man was created to phileo, and woman was built to eros. Please understand what I am saying: God must agape for that is His nature. God is love (1 John 4:8).

As His image bearer, man must also love. Initially, a man should love his Maker vertically for by loving his Maker man receives love and subsequently learns how to properly love other human beings horizontally.

As the co-image bearer of God and man’s counterpart, the woman must also love.

It is God Himself who voluntarily teaches human beings to love properly, but He does so by model relationships. The Bible is a complete user’s manual for operating in these three stages of love. It is filled with examples of proper and improper associations between God and man (agape), man and man (phileo), and man and woman (eros).

Together and in this order, these three stages of love enable each and every person to experience the greatest levels of intimacy with God and other people.