Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
I want to begin this Daily Visit with an excerpt from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. This is a portion of its definition of the Greek word “agape”, translated “charity” in the New Testament.
“In the King James Version in 26 places from 1 Corinthians 8:1 onward. The same Greek word, which appears in the New Testament 115 times, is elsewhere translated by “love.”
1. A New Word
The substantive agapē is mainly, if not exclusively, a Biblical and ecclesiastical word, not found in profane writings, although the verb agapā́n, from which it is derived, is used in classical Greek in the sense of “love, founded in admiration, veneration, esteem, like the Latin diligere”, rather than natural emotion.
2. A New Ideal
It is a significant evidence of the sense of a new ideal and principle of life that permeated the Christian consciousness of the earliest communities, that they should have made current a new word to express it, and that they should derive that word, not from the current or philosophical language of Greek morality, but from the Septuagint.
3. An Apostolic Term
In the New Testament the word is apostolic, and appears first and predominantly in the Pauline writings. I….. The word is not found in James, Mark or Acts, but it appears in Paul 75 times, in John 30 times, in Peter 4 times, in Jude twice and in Hebrews twice. Jesus Christ gave the thing and the spirit in the church, and the apostles (probably Paul) invented the term to express it.”
Notice the ISBE calls this word "agape," translated "charity," an invention of the Apostle Paul and an exclusively biblical and ecclesiastical (spell that CHURCH) word. Charity as it is used in this chapter, and indeed from 1 Corinthians 8 to the end of the Scriptures, is not the love of a man for his wife, or even the love of the believer for his fellow man. It is the love of a Christian for his or her church.
There is a unique thing that happens among the born again, something that is not expressed in the merely religious. They come to see the church God places them in as more than an institution but as a living organism—a body—to which God has attached them. Their love for their church is deep, instinctive, irrevocable.
The one who hasn’t got this sort of charity—love for his church—may make some talking about Christian things, but it is only so much noise. It is this love, this agape, this charity, this unique evidence of the “principle of life” that turns the sound of their voice into the melody of the believer.
#CharityNotNoise #AgapeLove #BiblicalTruth #ChristianCharity #LoveInAction
The Melody of Charity: From So Much Noise to Charity's Song
Call to Action
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