Love is one of the few ideas that nearly everyone agrees on. Put 20 people in a room—with different backgrounds, religions, and politics—and I’d bet 19 of them (leaving room for the contrarian) would say, “The world needs more love.” But here’s the problem: while we agree the world needs more love, we don’t agree on what love is.

Why is that? How did we grow so far apart in this universally loved idea of love?

One of the reasons for this confusion is that English gives us just one word “love” to cover multiple very different things. In the Bible, Hebrew uses 6 words for love and Greek uses 5 words to capture the different shades of love. You can do a whole study on each of these words, but here is a brief list and definition of each of the Greek words: agapē (sacrificial love, unconditional), philia (affectionate, friendship-based love), storgē (natural, family-oriented love), and eros (romantic or passionate love).

Don’t worry there will not be a test on these words, but they are important to see because they illustrate that our word love is deeply complicated. It should not be a surprise to us that we can’t agree on love when we see that love is a catch all for every good feeling or act we do as a human species. We love coffee, we love our dog, we love our family, we love the smell of a campfire, we love a sunset, we love a nice car, we love a good joke. The word “love” is just too subjective and I think you’ll find just saying “we need more love” doesn’t get us anywhere.

But there is good news. Our Bible is specific. The kind of love that Pastor Michel was talking about this past Sunday (8/3) is a certain kind of love that we can look to and act on. The kind of love that the world needs more of is: agapē (“uh-gah-pay”) and this kind of love is primarily a sacrificial love. The world needs more sacrificial love.

What I love about this version of love is that it is actionable- it’s not about feeling. What does it look like to love someone? Sacrificing for them. This can look like your money, your attention, your stuff, and most often it can look like your time. Once you know this it is impossible to ignore the truth that God is calling us to love each other sacrificially. Agapē love is the love that holds together all of the other facets of spiritual fruit because it first requires us to give up our own wants and needs for the sake of others and that is modeled perfectly in Jesus Christ. Jesus who gave up everything to restore our relationship with God.

Let me be the first to say that I know this is one of those things that is easy to understand and a lot harder to do so let’s talk through some practical steps. My challenge to you this week is to sacrifice in three ways and I have provided some examples to help get you started.