When someone says they “love you” yet they do not esteem you… what they are really saying is that they love all the things you do for them and the best part is that it costs them very little or nothing at all… that’s not love… that’s selfishness.

If you are someone who accepts this type of love, you are dependent on the affirmation of others, whether it is sincere or not. The mere mirage of love is enough to keep you enslaved to this false sense of respect and admiration.

As I was studying in John 11 this week I was reminded of this as I did a word study on several of the words in this chapter… love being one of them.

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

John 11:5

The word love here in the Greek is agapaó and it means…

love, wish well to, take pleasure in, long for; denotes the love of reason, esteem.

properly, to prefer, to love; for the believer, preferring to “live through Christ“ (1 Jn 4:9,10), i.e. embracing God’s will (choosing His choices) and obeying them through His power. 25 (agapáō) preeminently refers to what God prefers as He “is love” (1 Jn 4:8,16). See 26 (agapē).

With the believer, 25 /agapáō (“to love”) means actively doing what the Lord prefers, with Him (by His power and direction). True 25 /agapáō (“loving”) is always defined by God – a “discriminating affection which involves choice and selection” (WS, 477). 1 Jn 4:8,16,17 for example convey how loving (“preferring,” 25 /agapáō) is Christ living His life through the believer.

…with the accusative of the person, to have a preference for, wish well to, regard the welfare of

To love is to prefer…  to set or hold before or above other persons or things in estimation; like better, to give priority to, as to one creditor over another, to put forward or present for consideration or sanction, to put forward or advance, as in rank or office; promote.

To love is to esteem… to have great respect or high regard for

When we esteem someone we place high value on them and we prize them accordingly. When we esteem someone we are willing to make sacrifices for them in order to demonstrate our love for them. 

Do you know what’s funny? One of mine and my husband’s longest battles is where or what are we going to eat. We have ended up driving home and eating cereal over this one issue more times than I can count. Do you know what I just realized was the cause of this battle?

We love each other.

Yep, that’s it.

We both want to offer preference to the other’s choice. We both want to esteem the other and submit to the other’s wants. We both want to regard the other over our own desire. We want to embrace the other’s will not fight for our own. When I look back on many of our “arguments” this has been at the heart of it.

How crazy is it that Satan has the ability to take our love and preference for one another and turn it into a fight… that’s the caliber of evil and conniving that we are fighting against in this world. He’s a slippery tricky little sucker… who really isn’t little at all. He’s out for blood and he will do what ever is necessary to get it.

Here is the question I have for you… when you use the word love… do you mean it?

As I am pondering this I am beginning to realize that many of us actually mean the word love in its truest sense most when we are discussing our flavor of ice cream rather than when we are discussing our spouse or especially when we are discussing our Christ.

Think about it…

Do you profess to love your spouse, but always fight for your own will and way in the relationship? Do you profess to love, yet you are not willing to make any sacrifices to prefer.

Do you think someone loves you, or that you love them, yet you show you little respect toward one another within the relationship and the bounds of the relationship are outside of what God’s will and choice is for relationships?

And what about your relationship with Christ? Are you actively and purposely choosing God’s choice over your own?

When you are faced with life… do you make preference for God’s will and what God says clearly in His Word is good and right? Or do you claim to love Him yet choose to do things according to your own preference or someone else’s?

Do you esteem and respect Him and demonstrate that by your willingness to sacrifice your desires for His will?

Or do you claim to love Him, but really you are just after for what He can do for you as long as it costs you little or nothing at all.

However, the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price, for I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.

2 Samuel 24:24

It has taken me a while to wake up and realize that what I thought was “love” for me was really the fact that others loved what I was doing because it costs them little… and it didn’t matter that it was costing those who really did love me much.

I am at a place now where I am stepping back and leaning into the arms of those who have demonstrated their love for me… instead of letting that old slippery tricky serpent of old twist true love into a fight while keeping me enslaved to a false one.