4 But God being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which he loved us, Ephesians 2:4 (translated from the NA28 Greek text)
God’s love (ἀγάπη (agapē)) is often viewed today as some sort of shallow sentimentality, but God’s love is deeper than we can even begin to comprehend. When the average person today says “love,” they do not even know what they are saying because they do not mean “self-emptying self-sacrifice.” Love today is more “self-gratifying” than “self-emptying.”
It is interesting to note that in secular Greek was actually rather colorless. As one Greek authority explains, agapē originally carried an element of sympathy and spoke of the love of a person of higher rank for one of a lower rank; it even went so far as to speak of a low that was not self-seeking.1 However, the Lord Jesus transformed the word; it took on the much deeper meaning of being totally sacrificial. As the same authority says, “[It] thus creates a new people who will tread the way of self-sacrificing love that [Christ] took.”2 We, therefore, humbly offer the following definition of God’s love: “A self-emptying self-sacrifice in which God gave of Himself in the form of His only begotten Son Who gave His life for us.”