Love: God’s Gift and Our Calling
We’re ending our short Advent series with a reflection on love. In the Hebrew Bible, the word “ahavah” involves faithfulness to God and living by his wisdom, but it also means showing practical care to others—especially the vulnerable. Jesus views this love for God and neighbor as the greatest command, and he expands it to be indiscriminate, radical kindness and generosity even toward our enemies. The New Testament authors were so blown away by this kind of love that they adopted an obscure Greek word for love, “agape,” and redefined it to be a self-giving, sacrificial love that Jesus demonstrates in his life, teaching, death, and resurrection. In this episode, Jon and Tim explore the main biblical words for love, showing how the story of Advent characterizes agape as God’s own essence and our calling.
Episode Chapters
Show Notes
Reflection Questions
How does God’s covenant with Abraham, and Israel as a whole, demonstrate his love?
How does Deuteronomy’s call to love God connect with caring for the orphan, widow, and immigrant?
Why does Jesus place love for God and neighbor at the center of the law?
Why does Jesus extend the command to love neighbors even to enemies?
Why did the New Testament authors adopt agape, an obscure word for love, and how did they redefine it?
How does the meaning of agape summarize the Christmas story?
How does John’s phrase “God is love” reshape our vision of God and ourselves?
Chapter 1: The Hebrew Bible’s Understanding Of Love
Advent culminates with love, the fourth virtue that completes the cycle of hope, peace, joy, and love in anticipation of the Messiah’s arrival. In Deuteronomy, the Hebrew words for love, ahavah (noun: love) and ahav (verb: to love), mean faithfulness to God alone and living by his wisdom, but they also mean tangibly caring for others—especially the most vulnerable (Deuteronomy 10:14-21; Deuteronomy 11:1) When asked what the greatest command is, Jesus points back to this principle in Deuteronomy of loving God and neighbor (Mark 12:28–31; Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
Chapter 2: Agape And Jesus’ Redefinition Of Love
The Jesus movement redefined the obscure Greek words agape (noun: love) and agapao (verb: to love) to mean indiscriminate generosity, care, and kindness, even toward enemies (Luke 6:31-36).
Chapter 3: God Is Love
The Apostle John declares that “God is love,” grounding Christian identity in God’s unique, self-giving love revealed through Jesus (John 3:16-17). And he encourages the Church to embody that same self-giving, indiscriminate, generous love in how they relate to one another (1 John 4:7-11)
Chapter 4: Reflections On Love With Jodee
Our podcast editor Tyler talks with JoDee, a member of our Patron Care team, about how love brings all the themes of Advent together.
Scripture References
Referenced Resources
- The Affections of Christ Jesus: Love at the Heart of Paul’s Theology by Nijay Gupta. Tim notes this book as a recent study showing how the apostle Paul put love (agape) at the center of his theology, reflecting the radical redefinition of love in light of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
- Ahavah / Love: Though not referenced directly in the episode, this 2017 video explores the same biblical word ahavah.
- Agape / Love: Also not referenced directly in the episode, this 2017 video explores the same biblical word, agape.
Interested in learning more? Check out Tim's extensive collection of recommended books here.
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Show Music
- “Clouds ft. ahmo” by Lofi Sunday
- “Warm Hugs” by Lofi Sunday & Cassidy Godwin
- “Snowflakes” by Aves
- BibleProject theme song by TENTS
Show Credits
Production of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer, who also edited today’s episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty writes the show notes. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie. Special thanks to our guest JoDee Atherton.
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