For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. (2 Peter 1:5-7)

Here we come to the end of the list of virtues that Peter puts out to us.  Yesterday’s word was “Philadelphia,” the word for “brotherly/sisterly love” or “mutual affection” in our translation.  Today’s word steps that up a notch by using the word for the highest form of love—that particularly Christian form of “unconditional love” that we call “agape” (ah-gah-pay).

This is the word that describes the whole of the good-news Gospel of Christianity in a nutshell.  God so loved (agape) the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.    

Agape love is God’s love.  It is unconditional love—a love that sets no pre-requisite conditions.  But is more than that.  As Mark Buchanan suggests in his book on Peter, it’s more like “unprovoked love.”  We are loved this way by God (and sometimes our parents too) out of the blue at times, and for no good reason based in our activity at all.  

Agape then is not just a love that sets no prior conditions—it is a love that actively commits to pursuing those who never could have deserved it and who might even actively resist it.  Even when our actions anger God—his commitment to love us in Jesus Christ stands firm.  Even when our actions disappoint, disregard, or demean God—God’s commitment to love us in Jesus Christ stands firm.  It is Agape love—a commitment to love that overcomes and continues to love despite absolutely everything that comes against it.    

It is only because of this Agape love of God for us that any of us can come even close to displaying this kind of counter-cultural love-commitment toward anyone else.  But it is this form of love, more so than any other virtue, that displays what it means to “be like Jesus.”  

This is why Paul says the greatest of the virtues is love in 1 Corinthians 13, and why this virtue gains such a central place in that letter as the linchpin of all Christian community and action.  It is, says Paul, one of only three things that remain into eternity of all our earthly works and virtues, and of those three, it is the greatest.

Of course—there’s a good reason that this virtue comes at the end of the list.  It is the hardest of them all to live out.  Yet it is also the clearest and most oft-repeated command given to us—by Jesus in the Gospels, and by most every New Testament author throughout the letters.  “They will know we are Christians by our love.”

There are two sides to the coin of learning to live this kind of Agape love, I think.  First—each day we must remember and believe that this is the way that God loves us—we must be grounded in the Agape love of God.  Then, second, we must seek to “go and do likewise.”  Step by step, interaction by interaction, conversation by conversation we must practice this Agape love day by day in the power of the Pentecost Spirit.  

Can we take one step further toward loving someone else in an unconditional, unprovoked way today—especially those that frustrate or disgust us?  This is the call if we are to love as God has first loved us, remembering always that when we fail, God’s own Agape love continues to hold us fast: forgiving us, setting us back on our feet, and sending us out to try it again. 

As you journey on, go with the blessing of God:

Grace and peace to you many times over as you deepen in your experience with God and Jesus, our Master. Grow in the grace and understanding of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ. Glory to the Master, now and forever! Amen! (2 Peter 1:2; 3:18 MSG).