Agape is the word New Testament writers reached for when love had to hold, whatever it got back in return.
Agape covers ground that English divides up. It names God's love for the world, a husband's love for his wife, a believer's love for a stranger in need, and, less flatteringly, Demas's love for "this present world" in 2 Timothy 4:10. Before the New Testament it was a fairly plain, ordinary Greek word, not a special term reserved for the divine.
What unites its uses is less a feeling than a stance: love that commits, acts, and stays put, whether or not it is deserved or returned. English wants to sort this into affection, loyalty, charity, or romance depending on context. Agape sits underneath all of those, closer to a decision than a mood.
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
God's agape for the world is defined by an act, giving his Son, not a feeling.
But God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Paul ties agape to timing: it was shown while its recipients were still enemies.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
The chapter defines agape entirely through behaviour, patient, kind, not envious, listing verbs not emotions.
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
The claim that God 'is' agape treats the word as identity, not merely an attribute he has.
The King James Version often renders agape as "charity", especially in 1 Corinthians 13, which now misleads readers since charity has shrunk to mean giving money. Most modern translations settle on "love" throughout, which is more accurate but flattens things another way: English "love" also carries phileo, eros, and storge, so one word does four jobs the Greek spread across several.
A once-popular word study claimed agape means pure, selfless divine love while phileo means a lesser, merely human affection. It does not hold up. In John 21:15-17 Jesus and Peter swap agapao and phileo back and forth with no clear shift in meaning, and 2 Timothy 4:10 uses agape for loving the world wrongly. Context carries the weight, not the word by itself.
Tap any word while you read and get its original-language root, its range of meaning, and everywhere else it appears — without leaving the verse.
Then understand every verse. BibleKey is free on iPhone and iPad.
Download on the App StoreFree on iPhone & iPad