How To Know How Real The Love Is by Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Love is one of the most misused and confused words there is, because English has only one word for it. A person can say "I love apples," "I love my club," and "I love my wife" using the exact same word, while other languages separate these clearly. Words carry meaning, so the next time someone says "I love you," it is worth asking which kind they mean. There are three kinds of love that matter for marriage, and knowing which one is present at any given moment changes how a person should respond to it.

Amnon and Tamar

2 Samuel 13:1-15

Amnon, David's son, became so consumed with desire for his sister Tamar that he made himself sick over her. He could not eat, he grew haggard, and his advisor Jonadab noticed and helped him devise a plan to get her alone. When Tamar brought him food, he seized her. She pleaded with him, pointing out that if he simply asked the king, she could be given to him properly in marriage, but he refused to listen and forced himself on her. Immediately afterward, the Bible records that his hatred for her was greater than the love he had felt for her, and he had her thrown out.

The Bible does call what Amnon felt love. The problem was never that his feeling was fake, it was that he mistook one kind of love for a foundation strong enough to build a marriage on, when it was never designed to carry that weight.

Three Kinds of Love

1. Eros, the Passionate, Sexual Love

   This is the love that makes a boy notice a girl and a girl notice a boy, the love absent in early childhood and awakened as people mature. It is a good love, part of God's design, and it is what keeps drawing men and women toward each other. The mistake is treating the intensity of this feeling as proof that marriage should follow. This love is not designed to lead directly to "I want to marry you," it is designed to lead to "I want to know you." It can be felt for many people at once, even after marriage, because it is simply a feeling, an emotional and physical pull rather than a judgment about character. Someone who does not understand their own sexual passion will mistake its intensity for confirmation that a particular person is right for them, only to discover afterward that they cannot actually get along with that person once the passion settles.

2. Philia, Friendship Love

   Titus 2:2-4

   The older women are to urge the younger women to love their husbands. The word used here in the original language is philia, brotherly, companionable love, not the same word used elsewhere for passionate love. This is the love that should follow the first: not "I want to marry you," but "can we actually be friends." What sustains a marriage after the wedding photographs are put away and physical attraction has settled is friendship, shared values, things to talk about, ease in each other's company. Many marriages fail not because passion faded but because friendship was never built in the first place, since the couple moved straight from attraction to the altar. Unlike eros, which can be felt for many people, friendship takes time and reasoning to cultivate, so it is naturally felt for far fewer people. Men in particular tend to value this stage highly, wanting a friend in a spouse, while learning to separate emotional tension from ordinary conversation matters for both partners; sustained negative emotional pressure is something men in particular tend to withdraw from rather than work through in the moment.

3. Agape, Sacrificial, Committed Love

   Ephesians 5:25

   Husbands, love your wives. This is the love scripture specifically instructs husbands toward, sacrificial, prioritizing, willing to put the other person first even at personal cost. Unlike the first two kinds, this love cannot genuinely be given to more than one person, because it is not a feeling but a pledge, a loyalty, a commitment that holds even when feelings for someone else might arise elsewhere. A person can feel sexual attraction toward many people and enjoy friendship with several, but agape is reserved, an act of will sustained even when it is not convenient.

The healthy order moves from attraction, to friendship, to committed love, each one building on what came before rather than substituting for it. A marriage built only on the first stage collapses once the intensity fades; a marriage that never adds the third stage never becomes the covenant it was meant to be.