Last week, when I was talking to different ones about the studies, some said how rich they were for them, just the romance between the Shulamite and Solomon. And one person said, I got so much out of the introduction when you were talking about what it is to be a man and woman and so on, but I'm not getting very much out of the text. And I think that's the way it'll always be. At different points in our lives things become significant or are not significant to us. But it made me think a little bit and I thought perhaps one of the weaknesses in doing a study like Song of Solomon is that unless you have it very firmly fixed in your mind that there's a big difference between Eros and Agape. that you'll unconsciously be interpreting by Eros when you should be interpreting by Agape. And I'll explain that. Can you understand what I'm saying? So I've put this study deliberately in the whole set of tapes that will come out because I think it's a good point to be reminded after the number of chapters we've done that if we are thinking in terms of Eros, then we will never understand the Song of Solomon. And I've had a number of interviews and counseling situations lately and relational situations which have made me aware that Christians are still looking in this day in which they're deeply influenced by all the thinking that goes on around them. They're still looking at things from an eros point of view. First I want to read three short scriptures. As a matter of fact, you needn't even look them up. One is Romans 12. where Paul says, let love be genuine. In 2 Corinthians chapter six, verse six, he talks about the dynamics of his ministry and his suffering, and he says one of the things that was so powerful to him was genuine love. And then the third one, which you can look up with me if you wish, is 1 Peter chapter one, where Peter is talking about what has happened to the folk. He says in verse 22, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere love of the brethren, love one another earnestly from the heart. Now the word he uses, sincere love, and the word that Paul uses, genuine, are exactly the same word. And the word is a very, very powerful word. I'm not going to go into it. But it does mean that they had a problem in the early church where there was love which appeared to be genuine but which wasn't. And Phillips in his translation of Romans 12 and 9 said, let's have no imitation love. Now We were created in the image of God, and here's love, and everything that he created, he created in love. So we are really, by birth, love creatures. Now, I've already said some of this in our introductory essay on human love, but I pointed out there that C.S. Lewis talks about four kinds of love. Storge, which is sort of puppy love, happy love, you know, gambling love. And then he talks about philia, from which you get philiodelphia, the love of the brethren, and that's a very strong word in the New Testament. Then he talks about eros, and now he does, he talked, C.S. Lewis talks about eros, but you won't find that word in the Bible, which is interesting. And then, of course, he talks about agape, divine love, and Storge, we needn't worry too much about that, just family affection and fun. Filia is real affection, and if it's pure affection, then it's really the equivalent to agape, just fitting into a relational situation. Eros is a word which today unfortunately has got a very bad connotation, very bad associations to do with physical, sexual situations. So we talk about erotica and we talk about people being erotic and so on. Now the word as it was being used in history not only in Greek but the equivalent in other cultures was never that word. It was never for just that thing, just the relationship between a man and a woman. It could be used for that, but on a very high level. And by a high level, I mean not in the level at which it's used in our society today. So if you were truly an Eros, you could sacrifice your life for somebody. You could go as far as that, and it would still be Eros. But the thing about Eros is that it is always looking for what it can get. It gives in order to get, and it will give extraordinarily in order to get. And so it likes that which is attractive, it likes that which appeals to it, and it works in that sphere, in that area. Agape has no motivation, no desire, except the desire for the other one, only for the other one. So it's not looking for what it can get, it is looking for what it can give. And it's not even looking for what it can give so it can get some satisfaction out of giving, which in again would put it back into the Eros thing. Can you follow that? So they had this problem. And I said to you, and I mentioned it to you, and some of you were here for the gospel night when I spoke on this somewhat, that looking back on my own life, I would have to recognize now that a lot of what I thought rose from Agape really rose from Eros. And by that I don't mean anything at all that's linked with sexuality as we talk about it today. I can remember this young lady here rebuking me at a convention about the way I spoke about my wife or the kind of jokes that I made. And I fought her tooth and nail that there was nothing wrong with that and so on, but she was right and I was wrong. And so you've just got to come to this point. But what I'd like us to see this morning is something which I think will help us immensely. And I'm not suggesting that you don't already know it. I'm not suggesting it. I'm not speaking down at all. I'm just speaking with you as one human being to another. So in 1 John chapter 4, which is I guess one of my favorite passages, we lead off with this lovely statement in verse 7. Beloved, let's love one another, for love is of God. And he who loves is born of God and knows God. And he who does not love does not know God, for God is love. Now, there are two remarkable statements there. One is, see, let's love one another. That's remarkable in 1 John 4, 7. Did I give a wrong reference? 1 John 4, 7. Let us love one another is a subjunctive, let's go into this, it's not a command, it's a call, let's love one another, and it's as simple as that. And as I say, all over Australia, there are little groups springing up everywhere, thank God, who are praying for revival and looking to God for revival. But we could have it in a flash, if we just love one another. There would be revival, and it would only happen If we started where we are, don't want to love the whole world, we can get to that eventually, but love your neighbor is a pretty close situation. So we start there. So let's love one another. Then he says love is of God. Now you take that statement, love is of God, means love is not of anyone else or from anywhere else or in any way possible can it be created or devised. Love is of God. So love resides in God and God only. Then he goes on to say God is love. God is love. If you do theology and you're told God has five attributes, love, holiness, righteousness, goodness, truth, and whatever the other one is, you think God has an element, five elements that constitute his being. But no, John is telling us something altogether different. He's telling us God is love. Not just that he has love, that's an attribute or an element of him, but that's what he is. And nobody else is love, not anybody. As a matter of fact, if you look at the context here, it is really saying the Father is love. It's really not saying God is love. You said it's written God is love, yes, but it then goes on to say, in this the love of God is manifest amongst the God sent his only son into the world. So it's the father is love. In Colossians 1.13 we read, he has transferred us from the powers of darkness into the kingdom of the son of his love. So the father is love. The son is not love. The son is the son of his love. That is to say, He is generated from the love of God and as Son. And thirdly, in Romans 15, 30, we read of the Spirit of love. I beseech you by the love of the Spirit. And if you just trace that out with Romans 5, 5, the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who's given to us. Then you see that the love of God The father is love, the son is the son of his love, and the spirit is the spirit of his love. And that is the way they work together. Now that tells us that the son could not be the son of his love unless the father were love. Do you follow that? And the spirit could not be the spirit of love. Now there's no question that they could not be. That is the way they always have been and always will be. But when you know God is love, then you will never try to manufacture love. You've got a pressure on you, because you've been created in the image of God, you've got a pressure on you to love. Whether you're the worst sinner in the world. The word I would think that is used more today in the secular world than any other word is the word love. And it's more financially beneficial to use that word than any other word. psychologically beneficial and so on. But still all of that is outside agape, divine love. It is all at the very best or the worst eros. Can you see that? Now John says that when you're born of God you know God, you know his love, so you know love and you know God. Otherwise you don't know God. If you know about him that he is love, you still do not know love. You still do not know God. So, you're to be born of God, then you will know God and you will love. And he who does not love, he says, has not been born of God. Only he who's been born of God loves. But we know as a fact that all the writers of all the epistles exhort their readers to love. And why do they exhort them to love? when that would be automatic and spontaneous? And the answer is it is not automatic or spontaneous because love is always a matter of the will. Always a matter of the will. I'm not saying it's a matter of willpower. I'm saying it's a matter of the will. You either will love a person or you won't love a person. Do you see that? Now, John says, of course love's got to be shown. It was always manifested in acts, and he says, in this the love of God was manifested, that he sent his son into the world that we might live through him. Now, to our good, biblical, evangelical ears, that is just about a cliche. In other words, if we came alive to that, something enormous would be happening with us. The incarnation should move us in the depths of our being that God should become man forever. Secondly, that he should become God forever in order to give us life. And he's not sending coals to Newcastle via his son. So we read in Ephesians 1, you who were dead in your trespasses and sins, who walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, who now works in the children of disobedience, in which we were all involved, says Paul, in the lust, the afflation of the mind, and the desires, and so on. And we're by nature the children of wrath, he said, but God, out of But God, out of his great love, but God in his mercy, out of his great love, wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sin, has brought us to life together with him and seated us with him in heavenly places. So he is saying that it is the love of God that takes us from death and brings us to life. Now, you could even take that at face value and still miss the whole point, because John goes on to say, after he said, and this the love of God, and manifestly sent his son into the world, we might live through him, or have life through him, he then says, and this is love, not that we loved him, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. There is no life given to us except via the propitiation for sins, except via the cross. And if you do not understand the cross, and I'm not talking about theologically, and I'm not talking about anything else, I'm not talking about a visionary understanding of the cross, I'm simply saying, if you do not understand that in the cross, the propitiation for sins is the cruelest, harshest, most painful, most emotionally terrible and awful experience that could ever be suffered, and it could never be suffered by one who was not himself holy and pure, and had offered obedience to God, both what we call active and passive, followed his laws, and finally submitted to the death of the cross. He's obedient unto death. If we can't understand that he tasted death for every man, that's to say he took every man's death into him. If we can't understand that God made him to be sin for us, and if we can't understand that he bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that finally the propitiation for sins is a, a revelation of God in his love that he should give his only son up, subject him up to that for us, and b, if we have never experienced the fruits of that act of propitiation in an entire cleansing and purification of our whole beings, know the justification of God so that our guilt and the penalty and the pain of that is gone and the impurity of our lives is totally and utterly purged, then we do not know the love of God. Therefore, we will always, as people in the Christian community, always be imitating God's love. You see, this is the order. God gives us a revelation of his love. The revelation of his love comes to us in our total beings The love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us. Even the love of God couldn't be there if the Holy Spirit were not given to us. The love is not a commodity. I used to think of God being the sun shining on us and the rays and beams of the sun were his love. I've since learned that that is not true. God does not give us love at all. God himself is love. And so he comes and dwells in us. He dwells as the Father and the Son and the Spirit. He dwells as love, which He is. His Son comes as the Son of His love. And the Spirit comes as the Spirit of love. And there is no love that you can have for anybody in this world just by deciding your will, even as a matter of will. You cannot have anyone's love. Your will must be one with God's will at the point where He works so that His love actually If you talk about the word emanate, or you talk about the word activate, or you talk about the word operate, he is the one who emanates, operates, activates at any particular point. That is the only way I can love anyone in this world. And of myself, I don't love anyone. Of myself, I don't love anyone, nor do you. I only love my soul, which is a perversion of the agape which God gave to us in creation. It is right and proper for all human beings to live and move and work and act in agape, but we don't. So that miracle of new birth, that miracle of revelation of the cross, that miracle of The action of the cross in completely liberating us is the action which brings us to love. And from then on, it is God who is loving in us and through us, but, and I say this, and I have to be careful how I say it, but subject to our wills. In other words, if I will not love, I do not love. And I've often said to you, don't ever ask God to give you love. If there's a person you dislike, for whom you have an enmity, don't ever ask God to give you love, because He has already done that. He is already present. And it's an insult to Him. It's a form of blasphemy. In other words, what you're saying is, override me, override me so I'll love that person when underneath it I hate their guts. Do you know what I'm saying? So that is the only way. And when I said it's a matter of the will, it is not a matter of me willing God to operate through me. It's a matter of God having given me a command to love. If he didn't give me a command to love, I wouldn't know where I was. He's given me a command to love, but at the point where I will love, at that point, his love comes through and acts. Now, the thing that has come lately, to me, and to do with counseling and so on, is that people come to you, two Christians, husband and wife, and they say, well, look, you know, we're both Christians, but we can't make it as husband and wife. And I say, well, to me, that's an impossibility, that people could not make it as husband and wife if they're Christians. But I can see why they don't. It's because they have both grown up in an eros view of marriage, Do you know what I mean? In other words, we've been told by the best authorities, marriage is a matter of give and take. Marriage is not a matter of give and take, marriage is a matter of give. In our studies on the Trinity, we saw that each member of the Trinity honors the other, serves the other, and gives to the other. And that is the action of God himself. in us. So when you read the Song of Solomon and you hear these young ladies and the women and the concubines and all the others admiring her and giving her praise and when you see the relationship of the man and the woman there it has to be agape or it's nothing. If it's eros then the book ought not to be in the Bible but I'll make an explanation of that in a few moments. Now when it comes to life We know that we received our knowledge of God's love through forgiveness, and nowhere else. And that day is said, they'll no more teach every man his neighbor, saying, know the Lord, for they shall know me, says the Lord, from the greatest unto the least, says the Lord, for I will forgive their sins and their iniquities I'll remember no more. And so this woman who had been forgiven much was the one who loved much because she had come to know God's love in the cross. And that's what John is saying. If God so loved us, then we ought also to love one another. So love is the natural outcome. We love because He first loved us. And that is the only way love will ever work. If you're saying, all these years I've been waiting for people to love me, why don't people love me? Then you've been, and I've been, on the wrong lines altogether. Because you must never wait for love, you must never demand it, you must never expect it, you must give it. You must always take the initiative. There is no way around that. Because God has no way around that. If God waited for us to love him, he would wait to eternity and the whole human race never would. So I'm not arguing the case, I'm saying we love only love because he first loved us. Which means that he has come to dwell in us and so his love operates through us. Now what I've seen is, in a clear way, is that so much of what we do in our churches is eros and not agape. Now, I'm not speaking critically or judgmentally, whatever, because I have to include myself in this. We often give and we complain because we've given so much, but what have we got? And you know, the curious arguments that you get across the board in churches and the terrible divisions that exist, even though they're unspoken and sometimes unuttered and un... Do you know what I mean? We just avoid all the situations. We make our way through them because we're still on eros. And by eros, you know, I do not mean just some kind of sexual connotation there. In marriage, there must be a sexual connotation. But if you have a sexual connotation with Eros and not with Agape, then you have denied what I would call true Eros. Because I believe that storge, philia, and Eros are really forms of fallen love. Fallen love. In the New Testament, brotherly love, philia, Philadelphia, is the equivalent and is really the same as Agape. As a matter of fact, in that passage that I read to you, it's from 1 Peter chapter 1, not 1 Peter chapter 1, the one I haven't read, but from chapter 4 verse 8. He says, above all, hold unfailing love for one another. That's Philadelphia, brotherly love. Since love, agape, covers a multitude of sins. So Philadelphia in the New Testament is a pure thing, but it is agape just simply in those categories of husband and wife or friends and so on. Can you follow what I'm saying? That if there were no fallenness in the human race, storge, philia, eros would all be agape. Can you follow that? So don't abandon those. Just simply say that agape will rehabilitate or whatever term you like, renew that. Now, when it comes to relational situations, we'll find that when we're battling along on eros, we're always battling and we're always in trouble. Just turn with me for a moment to 1 Corinthians chapter three. 1 Corinthians chapter 3, and we'll pick up the fact that Paul says that he couldn't speak to them as spiritual, but as carnal, as fleshly, even as babes in Christ. He says, verse 3, for while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men? For when one says, I belong to Paul, and another, I belong to Apollos, are you not merely men? If you go through that chapter, and there's a book coming out soon that we're publishing from New Creation called All Things Are Yours, and it's out at the end of that chapter where Paul says that all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Kephas, if you limit yourself to Paul or Apollos or Kephas, you are wrong. Now you would know that in our own situation here, if somebody said I'm a Binghamite or I'm a Methiumite or I'm a Thorbite, they would just be plain crazy. Because they are three men who are really saying virtually the one truth, just in the particular ways and ministries that God has given them. Is that clear? Of course it's clear. But that's not what Paul is talking about. Paul is not saying one man says, I will follow the way Apollos goes about it, or the way Paul goes about it, or the way Peter goes about it. They're not saying that. What they are saying is something they don't even understand, that they have substituted Paul for Christ. Do you see that? The substituted. Now, you, every man that God gives you, every minister that God gives you, every woman God gives you to teach, give them honor and give them place, but know that they're there in order to communicate Christ to you and not themselves. Because that will be eros, otherwise. Did you follow that? But everyone builds up a group because the Paulites, they weren't listening to Paul. They weren't teaching and living as Paul taught them. They were living as they thought it was convenient. In other words, they had put Paul through the grid of Eros. Can you hear me? They put Paul through the grid of Eros and What they had got out of that was a thing which was not Pauline because it would have been Christ if it had been Paul. Can you follow what I'm saying? So anybody who is looking for a little safety group, you can hear what I'm saying, that if I'm a Paulite and I'm saying I want to belong to Paul, what I'm doing is taking Paul and I'm actually changing all the things that he said and did, but I don't think I'm touching anything. I don't think I'm changing anything. The test of that is, you see, that since all things yours, Paul, Apollos and Kephas, life, death, the present, things to come, the world, all of those are yours, yours. They don't belong to Paul, they don't belong to Apollos, they don't belong to Kephas any more than they belong to you. And if you are not utilizing those and if you're not being in the midst of those, then you are doing despite to Paul, Apollos and Kephas. Can you follow that? So a lot of our ambition, a lot of our build-up theologically and ecclesiastically in that is Eros and it's not Agape. You see there's such a freedom about Agape that I couldn't describe it although I can sense it and it's the movement of my life. When Paul said Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone, he knew that Ephraim was Eros in Eros. Do you see that? He'd never get out of it. There'd have to be something happened, judgment, a whole lot of things, I can't go into those this morning, before he could get out of Eros. And then he says, later on in Hosea, O Ephraim, how can I give you up? And he says to him, I will love you freely. I will love you freely. So agape is utter, utter, utter freedom. It means you have been freed from everything. Thank God you've been freed from Paul and Apollos and Kephas. I have watched in my lifetime, particularly over the past 20 to 25 years, little Christian communities grow up. And it all works even like new creation and others grow up. And I see them become tightly relationally bound to one another. And they can't think outside of that. They can't be open to what is outside of that. because it is their hideout. I've got to say that. It is their thing. Now it may be that I'm a charismatic, it may be I'm a reformed theologian, it may be I am a liberal theologian, whatever it may be I am, it is my My poorest situation, can you follow that? It's my safety group and everybody else is on the same level of eros in that group as I am and so we have a great time together. But we don't have freedom. I have watched the terrible pain and agony and wounding that has come when little groups have broken up. You know, good little communities have broken up, and I have had to counsel many people out of those groups, and they say, I don't think I can ever get over this, because in fact, to put it bluntly and rudely, they put all their eggs in one basket, which was not the basket of Agape, but the basket of Eros, and they expected the returns to come to them, and they were shocked beyond measure when they didn't come. Now, The freedom that is freedom that is freedom is what Peter talks about. He says in 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 22, he says Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, that means by believing the gospel for a sincere love of the brethren, love one another earnestly from the heart. Love one another earnestly from the heart. If my heart has been cleansed out of everything that made me hard, harsh, bitter, cantankerous, rancorous, noise, malice, clamor. You know what I'm saying? Relationally, all of that has come out of eros. Every bit of it's come out of eros. Disappointed love. A man will go and shoot his de facto wife because he's been disappointed in eros. Can you follow that? And so there's no freedom. But if my heart has been purified, then it means I don't have any hang-ups. have anything that I've got to take off to a therapist or to a psychiatrist or to anybody else, I am free before God. And I'm free before you, and you are free before me. Then he goes on to say, you love earnestly from the heart. So that means it is pure action, because it is God who dwells in the heart, and out of his love through your heart, the actions of love take place. And then in 1 Peter 4, 9, 8. Above all things, hold unfailing love, that is, brotherly love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins or the multitude of sins. Now, there is nothing that we have ever done, that God is not covered by the cross. Blessed is the man whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is covered. Right? That's what kippur means, to cover. That's the propitiation, is to cover. There is nothing that can ever be uncovered again. Nothing can ever be uncovered because God has covered it. Now, when it comes to one another, do we cover one another? I'm not saying cover for one another. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, do we see God's covering and try not to penetrate that, to break it open, and to reassert the failures and sins of another? See, Paul says, love thinketh no evil. Love rejoices in the truth. that does not rejoice in iniquity. See, love wants not itself, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, is not provoked, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, never fails. That's what love is. But that love, you and I must admit, could never originate in us and could never be provisionally improvised by us. It would have to be God's love and God's love only. And there is a circuit of love. God loves me, and he is in me, and I love you, and you love me, and you love God, and God loves you. There's a constant circuit of love. Call it what we did from time to time, perichoresis or circumciseo, that action of God's love. That is the only way it is, but it is free. It is free. And you can test it out. If you are inextricably caught up in an ironcast system or group or situation or attitude or theology, then you are not operating in agape. And you'll have your problems. Now, to take a person who came to me to talk to me once about the fact that she wanted to marry a man 20 years, younger than self. Another man came to me once, wanted to marry a woman 20, I'm sorry, a woman came, wanted to marry a man 20 years older than herself. I could cite case after case where, which if you heard them you'd say, well that can never work out. And you know it can't work out because the only resources you have are Eros, and it certainly will never work out in Eros. but the dustman can marry the queen, and in agape, they can have a wonderful life. Can you hear what I'm saying? Ethnic, racial divisions, we say we must not observe racial divisions, ethnic divisions, gender divisions. I say let us not even attempt to overcome those, Just let us say in Agape, for us they do not exist. Love is so free. The images that we have for one another in marriage, the images we have for one another in human relationships are also terribly, terribly wrong because they come from Eros and not from Agape. Agape is beautifully free. God says, I will love you freely, which he has done. And you can say, no matter what the situation may be or the person may be, I love you freely. I mean, I don't mean you've got to go and say that to a person, probably better not to, but what I'm saying is you can and you must, and that is what it is in agape. Now, take that and put the Song of Solomon in the midst of that setting, it's a different book altogether. Remember I talked about prurience, which is evil-mindedness, and which makes a secretive thing out of sex, which is horrible, pornographic. Pulchritude, the admiration of that which is beautiful. Beauty is not skin deep, it is heart deep. But the beauty that is skin deep is not the beauty that is heart deep. And so it means no one in this room, including myself, has any excuses, whatever, in regard to the whole matter of Agape. If we're in Eros, that's our problem. Coming out of Eros, that's our privilege and our joy, for the love of God to be flooded abroad into our hearts.