The Greatest Commandment pt. 1: Philia

Gravetop Church

Main Idea: Love can be incredibly simple in one instance and overly complex in the next. We are commanded by God’s Word to love others to the best of our ability, and passages like 1 Corinthians 13 tell us that love is the greatest thing that we can ever aspire to. Yet, we as Christians often want to move onto more intelligent or spiritual sounding things. We check off love as we feel ready to move on while neglecting the many opportunities to actually show love to someone throughout our days.

Today, we are going to tap into love by focusing on the interpretation of the Greek word: Philia. This word refers to love in regard to friendship or brother love. We are going to learn to understand the essence of this type of love and how it is an entry level form of love for us to evolve in. We’re going to look at some practical ways in which we can show this type of love to others as Christians. And we’re going to unpack whom we ought to be showing this kind of love towards.

The reason that this topic is so important to talk about is because we often fail to recognize beautiful opportunities to love others even through basic friendliness. We have become so busy in our lives that we skip some of the foundational principles of our faith as we try to build castles of sand through our religion. Without love, we are wasting our efforts and time.

(1 John 4:7-21)

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1. Brotherly Love [EVERY PERSON DESIRES TO BE LOVED]

People typically give special allowances to their family members. We will move things around in order to make time for a family member who is in need, or we will even drop our plans for the day if there was a family emergency. While I’m not necessarily suggesting that we treat every stranger with that kind of importance, I am saying that we should take a small piece of that kind of love to share with other people.

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2. Really Love Them [LOVE IS AN ACTION AND A CHOICE]

Love is so much more than a flutter of the heart. Love is not merely an ideology or even a lens of perspective of how to view people. Love is able to be clearly seen and felt through our actions. Whether it’s as simple as giving up your seat for someone else or giving your last taco away to someone who is hungry, love is a tangible exchange that our souls can feel.

(Romans 12:9-18)

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3. Who’s My Neighbor [LOVE THOSE WHO CAN’T LOVE YOU BACK]

Sometimes the notion of “love everybody” can come off too broad or overwhelming to where we end up not necessarily changing the way that we behave towards people. Rather than seeing each person as an opportunity to show love, we end up just trying to work on ourselves to become more patient or polite. While that is still positive to do, we must understand that a slight general increase of positivity isn’t really the essence of love that we’ve been talking about. Rather than trying to love everybody, you should try starting by loving somebody.

(Matthew 5:46-48)

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