The Four Loves

Cultural Compass
Jul 3
4 min read

Updated: Jul 23

Contributor: Josh Bunnell

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16; NIV

Love is the world’s greatest mystery, so often talked about but so little understood. On the other hand, it is only a mystery until one looks for the answer in the Bible. Since the extent of God’s love is boundless, it is only appropriate that we return His love.

Where Is Love?

Now, God is not asking us to emulate Abraham and offer our children on the altar. Instead Christ gives us a different command: “Love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12 NIV). If we love God by loving our neighbor, then how do we love our neighbor?

Those who lived during the life of Jesus had it easier than most of us do today because the Hebrew language had a slew of words for different kinds of love. Today, the English language combines all these variations into one word.

Fortunately, C.S. Lewis explored four different definitions in his book The Four Loves. Lewis clearly describes which loves are conditional and temporary and which love is the unconditional, everlasting love which Jesus had for mankind when He died on the cross.

According to Lewis, the four main loves are Affection, Friendship, Eros, and Charity. While they are all honorable to some degree, the first three loves are merely conditional.

The Conditional Loves

Affection, which Lewis describes as the humblest of loves, is the warm feeling that people have for those whom they see most often. It is not necessarily an intense or even noticeable feeling, but it is a comfort and an unassuming love that can be given to anybody. In other words, Affection is simply the appreciation of a person for who he or she is.

Although this love is admirable for its humility, it is not necessarily the love which Jesus speaks of when He commands us to love each other. After all, Affection can only be given to those with whom one has had more than an acquaintance, and it is based more on feelings, albeit subtle, than on works.

Friendship is stronger than Affection and is usually established on one or more common interests between the friends. Lewis also describes Friendship as “the least jealous of loves” because one cannot have too many friends, nor does having many friendships take away from the importance of one friendship.

Nonetheless, Friendship comes and goes depending on certain circumstances, especially if the common interest that initiated the friendship in the first place ceases to exist. Thus, Friendship is not the ideal Christian love because, though He had His circle of friends, Jesus understood that it is impossible for any person to be friends with everybody on the planet.

Without a doubt, the most intense and (unfortunately) worshipped love is Eros, which is Greek for romantic love. Lewis distinguishes Eros from Venus (the Roman goddess of sexual pleasure), for while Venus is concerned primarily with self-pleasure, Eros loves the person for who he or she is. Thus, Eros is sometimes mistakenly appraised as the greatest love; after all, it seems to fulfill Jesus’s commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31; NIV).

It is important to understand, however, that this particular command is only the second greatest commandment in the Scriptures. The first greatest commandment is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30; NIV).

Some romances fail because the lovers do not merely love each other; they worship each other, or even Eros itself. This is why Paul the Apostle expressed that falling in love and marrying are not more important than obeying the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:8-9; NIV).

The Unconditional Love

In truth, the love that Christians should be striving for is Charity. Unlike the other loves, which are emotions to be experienced, Charity is a task to be performed. Lewis shines a light on the fact that to practice Charity is to “love the unlovable.”

To love is to serve. We must put others’ needs above our own, even when we can find absolutely nothing to love about them. But even if we cannot find something to love in others, Christ certainly did: He died for them!

It is most humbling when we realize that we are the unwilling recipients of Charity. Lewis makes this bittersweet observation:

In reality we all need at times… that Charity from others which, being Love Himself in them, loves the unlovable. … We want to be loved for our cleverness, beauty, generosity, fairness, usefulness. The first hint that anyone is offering us the highest love of all is a terrible shock. – C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

While it is entirely against human nature to love those who are wicked, repulsive, arrogant, and deceitful, Christ did this exact thing for us. Our sin repelled God, and yet He still sacrificed Himself for us. This is the Charity, the love that Christ calls us to have for our neighbor. And if Christ can find something to love in sinners, we can too. We begin by appreciating the fact that they are the shattered image of the perfect God – just like us.