Two Kinds of Love

The love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit is the sum and substance of all true religion, and everything else that rightly belongs to our Christian life either points toward this love or is an effect that flows from it. Any faith or purpose falls short that is not mindful of God’s love; neither do good works or zeal prove acceptable to Him without His having prompted these with an intention of pervading our actions with His love. Put succinctly, there can be nothing else but love in a religion having purity. And this love is gotten through His bestowing it, for since the fall of man, a sinful heart each has prevents us from dispensing, much less having or even knowing the divine love.

We love others—family more than friends and acquaintances, usually—yet all we express or feel at this level is the natural human love, and if this is all we have there is no way for us to distinguish it from the love God has and is. And yet the basic difference is just as great as that between the human soul and the perfections of the Divine Being. Natural human love may resemble divine love in many things, for it is a created affection made in the likeness of the divine, but in order to understand the Spiritual life we need a clear discrimination between these two kinds of love; the one human, the other divine; the one earthly, the other heavenly; the one natural, the other spiritual; the one temporal, the other eternal; the one fallen and full of defects, the other holy and without blame.

Were G. D. Watson alive, I would ask him two questions interesting to me. When Genesis 6 presents God’s appraisal of Noah’s generation: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart”, does this indicate the feelings of love within the family unit were also lost to depravity and worldliness? For the world must have been void of all aspects of love. Second, and later—up till the time Jesus entered heaven as the risen Lord—was the disciples’ love still only this worldly love that others equally were capable of within the natural realm? Jesus had given them his commandments and these were establishing how to live in the spiritual kind of love. The Scriptures of John 15:9 and John 17:21 explane this, that "continue ye in my love. If you—and the ones you are to instruct—keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love." From heaven, the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit to indwell believers individually and corporately as a unified church or the body of Christ.

Sinful mankind on its own tended towards depravity and eventually vastly outnumbered those righteous ones living. Conscience had had "its day" and came up inadequate. Next, with God-believers, the Law would eventually be issued with Moses’ instruction, yet he prophesied God's Word in Deuteronomy 18:18-19, “I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And it shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.” And then in Jeremiah 31:33 the Lord said, “But this shall be the ('new', v. 31) covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” The Law was a definite thing written down; Jewish men even "danced" with the scrolls. However, God promised an age where the commands of the Law would be written within peoples’ hearts. These verses taken together and combined, show us that Jesus who fulfilled the Law (Matthew 5:17, Galatians 3:24, Romans 10:4) and who is now in our hearts, makes or allows us as his followers to have the spirit of adoption whereby we address the Almighty as “Father” (Romans 8:15). Indeed, we have this Family love because we are the sons and daughters of God himself. This is the spiritual love we model and offer to the world and those “lost” in it still living in only the natural human love.

1. In the Greek Testament, the Holy Spirit has given us a strong distinction between these two kinds of love by using two separate words. The term “philos,” with its various forms, is the Greek word for natural or human affection, or that kind of love that springs up instinctively from relationship. The word “agape,” with its various forms, is the word for divine love, that is, the temper, the disposition, the goodness, the interior heart-feeling of God. It is true the word “philos” is used a few times in connection with God to express His love for Jesus, but it is to be understood as expressing a love of relationship for the man Christ Jesus, the parental affection for the humanity of our Savior. It is also true that in a few places in the New Testament the word “agape” is used to express the spotless sanctified affection of human beings for each other, and of love of husbands for their wives, but in such instances it implies that the whole heart of the perfect believer is flooded with the Holy Spirit, and that the natural human love is filled and overflowed with the divine love. With these explanations, the Scriptures make a clear distinction between the two kinds of love, and it is to be regretted that both of these words “philos” and “agape” are translated by the same word “love,” for it prevents the common reader from discerning the peculiar force of God’s word, and distinguishing the vast difference between that which is human, and that which is divine. It could be wished that the word “philos” was always translated by the term "affection", and then everyone could get a clear vision of the mind of the Spirit in the Scripture.

Everyone who goes on the sea will notice that when they are near the shore the water is a muddy or a light green complexion, but as soon as they get into deep water the color is a dark blue, and so it is when we read the New Testament. Wherever we find human love, it is shallow and sometimes earthy, but when we cross over into that word “agape,” we get into deep water, where the love is clear, and of a deep, rich, divine blue. Let us take just one sample from Scripture: Jesus saith to Peter, Lovest thou me? Have you “agape,” divine love, for me? Peter saith, “Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee,” philos; that is, that I have human affection for thee. Jesus saith again the second time, Simon, lovest thou me, “agape,” have you divine love for me? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord, Thou knowest I love thee “philos,” having a human affection for thee. Jesus kept using the word that indicated divine love, and Peter kept responding by that word which simply meant human affection, and so the third time when Jesus put the question, finding that Peter would not respond with the “agape,” or divine love, He dropped down to the plane of Peter’s soul, and put the question the third time, Lovest thou me? Using the word “philos,” asking, have you indeed human affection for me? This seemed to pierce Peter’s heart more than the previous questions, and he said, “Lord thou knowest that I have human affection for Thee.” That was just before Pentecost; but after Peter was purified, and filled with the Holy Spirit, he was lifted from the “philos” kind of love, into the regions of God’s feelings and affections, and in his epistle he speaks of the domestic affections as being spiritualized, and filled with divine love, and tells us to “have fervent charity,” that is “boiling, divine love,” “among yourselves.”

2. The human affection has its seat in the soul or the natural mind, G. D. Watson says, but divine love has its seat and operation in the spiritual part of our being. There is about as much difference between our spirits and our souls as there is between our souls and our bodies. Our soul or natural mind is that which opens up through the five senses to the external world, but our spirit is that part of us where lies the God-consciousness, or its inner feeling and intuitions which open up to the things of God, heaven, eternity, and holiness. There are myriads of people in civilized countries, educated, attending church, reading books, taking active part in the affairs of the world, and intelligent about things of time and sense, but who know nothing whatever of the great spiritual world, and of that deep, hidden world of God’s truth, the divine feelings, sympathies, intuitions, discriminations, compassions, harmonies, truths, moral beauties, and scriptural thoughts, which are just as real as, and far more rich and satisfactory than, all the world of matter or physical science, or political power and glory. This vast spiritual world is never opened to any human being except by the great miracle of grace so awakening, purging, and illuminating the spiritual part of man’s being. Just as the scientist, the poet, the mathematician, can look down on the lower animals, and say, “Poor things, if you only knew the glory of this world of mind, and intellect, and figures, circles, colors, and measurements, how happy you would be,” so the saint, filled in his or her inner spirit with the light and presence of the Holy Ghost, can look down upon poor worldlings, philosophers, politicians, and say, “O, poor things, if you only knew the purity, the tranquility, the interior brightness, vastness, sweetness, and divine personalities that I see, and enjoy, and repose in, how happy you would be.” Thus as the human affection pervades the natural fleshy feelings, so the divine love pervades and possesses the spiritual nature, and flowing out through it governs the whole being.

3. The only way we can enter into either of these kingdoms of human or divine love is by being born into it. People often speak of “joining the church,” but in reality nobody ever can “join” the true church of Jesus, for the natural way to get into it is by being born into it. Our children do not join our families, but they are born into them; and so the only door-way into either the Christian church or kingdom of heaven is by being born from above of the Holy Spirit. Love is what ought to be the normal feeling, or the living out-flow of any nature; for instance, the life of the rose is poured forth in its perfume, which may be defined as the natural affection of the rose. It is a fact that every bird or beast, or living creature, has a specific normal out-flow of feeling, emotion, or affection which is the expression of its nature, and there are as many kinds of natural affection as there are kinds of nature in creation. Now, the only way for anything in creation to have the natural affection of a human being, is to be born with a human heart and soul.

In like manner, the only way to have the feeling, the affection, or out-flowing disposition of the living God is for fallen men and women to be born again of the divine Spirit into the divine Family relationship. Love is by birth, not by evolution or by development, either as regards human or divine love. The dog is the most affectionate animal of all the lower creation, and yet it can only love with a dog’s nature. But suppose it were possible for the dog to be born all over again, and born a boy, he would then have a human heart, with human love running out in all the higher, nobler, more intelligent channels of a human soul. Thus, unregenerated people and Adam’s fallen race may be amiable, affectionate, and possessed with many beautiful and attractive manners and dispositions, yet all their good qualities, multiplied a thousand-fold and cultured to the finest pitch, can never be divine love, and can never develop into the love of God, or cross over that great gulf that separates between fallen human affection and the spotless love in the divine nature; and it is only when human beings, on the condition of repentance and faith in Jesus are touched with the Holy Spirit, and born into the divine love, that they can ever experience that love which is from God.

4. While there are some likenesses between human and divine love, there are also many contrasts. Human affection, even at its best, is weak because it is conditioned on so many things in our lives as like for children who experience little of a parent's affection as a teaching—thus it depends on part by education—and, too, on the hereditary considerations of health of body and various gifts of intellect. Thus, in thousands of instances, natural affection breaks down. Divine love is strong and fresh, and when the inward hindrances, such as inbred sin, doubt, and moral fear are removed from the heart, and it can take entire possession, divine love turns the inner person into a moral giant of boldness and perseverance. Human affection is not in itself sinful, but it falls an easy prey to the fallen state of the heart, and almost universally is poisoned with selfishness, or greed, with fleshly lusts, ambition or avarice. So that while on the one hand we have beautiful instances of human love and unselfish benevolence and sacrifice even to the death, yet, on the other hand, the world is full of scenes where human love is a gigantic instrument of congregated selfishness and perverted passion. On the other hand, divine love, not only introduced in the heart by the new birth, but perfected by the sanctifying baptism of the Holy Ghost, and filling the whole soul, is a constant fountain of compassion, of charity for others, longing to save and bless all mankind, and is always thinking, praying, planning and going forth in enterprises to lead souls to Jesus, to bless the poor, to purify the church, to evangelize the heathen, to lift up the fallen, to alleviate pain; for when divine love has its normal action through the human soul, its supreme gladness is in giving out for the benefit of others.

Human love is soon exhausted, its fountains are not deep enough, it often dwindles into the poor sentiments of good wishes, but nothing more; whereas, divine love has in it a fountain of satisfaction, and can constantly increase, despite poor health or poverty or hard work or bad treatment; and the other things that often kill out human affection can become the occasions for the love of God in the soul to increase, to deepen and sweeten with marvelous power.

We were originally constituted in Adam to be vessels of divine love, and the various parts of our compound being of body, soul and spirit never reach their normal state till entirely possessed and governed by the love of God—the feelings, and dispositions that run out in liquid rivers of light from the nature of God. Any effort to make the body or the mind to live right apart from the pure love of God, is simply legality or bondage to the law; but when divine love becomes the supreme possession of a person’s inner being, their physical and mental being will harmonize with God’s law easily. Thus we need divine love to purify, elevate, and properly utilize the natural affections. This is the divine element that St. John speaks of when he says, “He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God"—1 John 4:16.

Here is a prayer we all can pray: "Lord, it could have been the choice of yours that I should live during the time of Jesus' earthly walk and ministry, and that I could have learned directly from him; yet now I live in this modern age where you strongly make your presence in the world over the Internet. It is still this Holy Spirit Jesus gave who operates in the world today, and the longings of my heart are equal to the longings of those original disciples to learn your truths, your wishes or our commandments, and to have fellowship with your Son and experience and practice heaven's love—the love that comes from you. Dear Father, flood my being now with this love that I may, afresh and anew, serve you in the world as Jesus did back in the day of his earthly ministry. Let my ministry be your divine ministry, let me show you out to the world. I give you the glory now for this, and my fullest thanks. And in Jesus' name I pray. Amen."