Continuing the other Elements of Agape Love

Envy

Question 2. Please state your definition for envy. Lexical, New Testament, an example, and my definition for envy. Basically, I'm willing to do anything that I want to, and need to do to get it. And the lexical definition says to have “ill will or jealousy or spite.” And the broader definition says that is to have a feeling. The New Testament definition says “is to have a feeling of displeasure produced by witnessing or hearing of the advantage or prosperity of others.” This evil sense always attaches to this word. Envy involves the desire to deprive another of what he or she has in order to attempt to falsely fulfill a need for security. Jealousy involves a relationship in which one individual controls another's affections in order to fulfill the same basic spiritual need for relationship to God. Envy also attempts to falsely fulfill through a god substitute. Envy is a mass form of hatred towards God and others, which will manipulate individuals into the worst possible chain of events that could occur in order to obtain the person or object. That's a temporary God substitute with actions and attitudes that know no boundaries.  

Somebody said a good example of envy is the toy in a store that the child wants really bad, and as soon as you walk out of the store, he loses interest in that toy and wants the one that was next to the one he got. People can use things like cars, money, even another person, sexuality, relationships, power, prestige, position, in order to try to fill this material or emotional need rather than the deep soul need for God. A person who is envious is willing to do whatever it takes to get that thing, person, place, or experience. So, there aren't any boundaries, for actions, attitudes, or promises made. Most people don't seem to be envious. But what you want to remember here is the idea of the God substitute. It's an attempt to, in essence, say to God, you're not good enough, or you want too much from me, or I'm not willing to do this, and then find some other way to fulfill that need. People who are envious, covet things, covet cars, want to keep up with the Joneses usually to fill a felt need for God.

Boast

Question 3. The next element of love is about boasting, saying that love does not boast. And this is a very interesting concept. The lexical definition uses the words to boast, to vaunt oneself. The idea I think of boasting, people that brag a lot, look at me. I'm better than you. Drive fancy cars, wear almost gaudy, flashy clothes, or lots of jewelry. Most often boasting needs an object to compare itself to. The definition of boast is to vaunt oneself. At the Olympics when the athlete throws a javelin, they have to vaunt or launch this javelin into the air at a target. So, to vaunt oneself, it means to throw yourself out in the front: look at me. They're insecure, in the same way as those who envy, but in a boastful situation. The New Testament definition says this means to boast, or want oneself to be vain, glorious, or to be a braggart, one that boasts. Can also be described through the Greek word “megalaucheo”, means to know great things, very important things. And to lift the neck, hence to boast of great things, like an animal that struts or scratches or kicks up the dust, while an honest opinion of ability is realistic. Boasting signifies a wanderer about the country, another one as a vagabond, another concept hints as an imposter. A boaster signifies to wander about the country, to be a vagabond and an imposter, any or another variation of this thought is that of boasting, signifying quackery or a fraud or an arrogant, unsubstantiated, unsupported display of ability. This is done to elevate one's own worth and ability over another. That's the key idea in an attempt to make oneself a little divine, perfect. It is a willful attempt to deny one's own humanness, faults or flaws, problems, by making everything that one does appear to be always right and always better than what anyone else does. This causes the boaster to appear to be an imposter. It generates mistrust, causes strife, emotional pain, and leads to the potential dissolution of any relationship within which boasting occurs. 

Some examples of boasting can be things like two people in private comment, “I love you, honey.” “Yes, I love you, too.” Go out into public and then criticize, “You know, I really wish you'd dress a little nicer. Why do you keep your hair so short, it makes you look like a man.” “You know George, if you just made a little more money, we could have a nice car like they do, or live in a nice house like this, or I wouldn't have to wear these old rags.” You see, the boaster has built trust and then betrayed it. When they get home the conversation changes to, “Why'd you say that about my hair?”  “I didn't say anything. You're just making it up. I didn't mean anything. Why do you have to be so sensitive?” In private there's a yes, I love you. But in public there are criticisms and usually, there's the denial and a but, you know, I love you. There's the vagabond, the quack, the wanderer, the imposter. 

These behaviors and words cause pain and suffering in a relationship. This especially is destructive when both claim to be submissive to God as explained in Ephesians. But even the non-Christian wants the same thing; to be with someone who doesn’t misuse them that way. The idea of love lacks arrogance and boasting. Yeah, that's love, but the reality is different. I don't want to be submissive to God, but I want you to be. Why do you treat me that way? Well, they were probably both boasters. This is an example of a person who is so insecure, and has no submission to God that they're seeking to be a false god, to have a false position of authority. I'll submit and then snatch it back. In this relationship you have both the boaster being insecure and playing mind games, and the object of the boasting, seeking security through someone taking care of them and treating them right. And they both willfully enter into this broken relationship wanting to have the other person fulfill their need instead of God. The boaster seeks to be in control. 

Pride

Question 4. The next one we'll look at is Love is not proud. My definition means someone that's arrogant, cocky. Look at me. There's no willingness to worry about what you think about what they do. They're just going to do it. They've made a decision to do, be, act, say, or whatever. The lexical definition says, “To inflate, to blow something up, to make proud or haughty, to puff up.” And the New Testament definition reads, “pride involves a sense of being puffed up with pride, evil. Pride glories in the praise to self and yearns for the applause of men rather than of God. There's a pretty fair description of Satan in Ezekiel 28:11-19. It describes him as being dressed in gold and having precious stones, glorious in beauty. And it says that he became so consumed with his own beauty and self, that he decided that he was better than God, didn't need God, and wanted to be God. He was cast out of heaven because of his pride. Each proud person yearns for what others say or think, rather than accepting the reality of sin, being fallen, needing to be forgiven, being submissive. Pride is expressed in two ways: in speech and in thought. Going back to Cognitive Biblical Therapy which says, your thoughts will determine your actions. 

Pride is the root of sin. It's the willful decision, the rebellious note that says, I'm right, God's wrong, leave me alone, which is enmity. Enmity means, literally, a burning hatred against the rule of God in the individual's soul. Pride can exist in the heart of the believer, but will draw the believer toward sinful rebellion. There's a remedy for pride, which is promised by God to complete the spiritual work which he began in the believer through Christ. The free will that God gave us says, “I want you to choose to love me, but I know that I have to give you the right to reject me.” Well, the right to reject God is another way of saying pride, which is a basic condition of man, the decision to sin.  Each person needs to admit that is wrong and repent. Pride is a burning hatred against the rule of God in the soul. And when he says, Love is not proud, God is not proud. The regenerated, redeemed, born again, saved, cannot be proud. It means I cannot have a burning hatred toward the authority of God. When he talks to me and asks me to stop, think, repent or change, I have a choice to obey. 

An example of pride is one case where the husband was in a secular setting, in a graduate program, but had marital problems. He would beat his wife at times. He was raised in a church, but basically thought that it wasn't any good, wasn't true. He would not stop his physical abuse. He would not stop the adultery he was in. He never surrendered his pride. So ultimately, what happened, unfortunately, was that couple divorced. But the woman was restored, because she did surrender her pride. She found out the things she'd been doing wrong, she changed those through God's grace and strength. But if you see pride, if it sticks, then there's a rebelliousness that never, ever says, I want to be patient, I'm willing to submit: it just stays. I'm in charge. I'm not doing this. I'm doing this my way. I know more than you do. Leave me alone! 

Rude

Question 5. Love is not rude, or God is not rude is the next element of Agape love.  Rude is something that almost everybody is very familiar with.  You want to think about rudeness as having many types of expression, but basically, it's that action or attitude that says you don't matter to me, or I've got a right to do this or that, or it's okay for me to treat you the way I am. A lexical definition reads this way “to be ignorant.” Now that's an odd thought there. I don't mean lack of intelligence. That's not what the word is saying. If we go further into this, the New Testament definition says rudeness is scripturally analogous or comparable to a person without professional knowledge who is seen by others as unskilled, uneducated and unlearned. In this sense, the apostle’s mode of speech was interpreted as rudeness by the Corinthians, just as Peter and John were considered to be ignorant men by the rulers and elders of Jerusalem. Think about these words, “feigned ignorance.” This will help you with rudeness. The word feigned means to pretend like or to be phony. So, I am pretending like I am unaware, ignorant of what I'm doing; being manipulative, or harshness in my voice, using body language, or raising my eyebrow. 

I can remember a couple I worked with talked about this issue and got all the way down to the end of the session. The wife was writing out their check to me and the husband said something like, “Well, didn't you check that? Or don't you know what to do here?” The wife just looked at him, slammed her hand down on the checkbook and stared, and then shook her head and kept writing. And I stopped him. I said, “Wait a minute. What did we just talk about here for 45 minutes?” I said, “Let's break this down. When you said, what you said, did you know that you're raising your voice? Did you sense God saying you shouldn't?” And he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “So you just said, so what?” And he said, “Well, yeah.” And I said to the wife, “What about you? What about your actions that you just went through? You went through a progression. You slammed down your pen so that it made a noise. You looked at him, you didn't speak, then you shook your head, then you picked up your pen and did all that in silence. Was that feigned ignorance?” See what God's saying here is, if I am sacrificially submissive to him, I may have those thoughts, but I've got to funnel them through patience. He needed to look at her and say, “I'm troubled by what you're doing here. I'll think and pray about it.” And she needed to look at him and say, “Well, I'm troubled too, and I need to seek God and think and pray about it.” And then when they spoke, they could have talked about the real problem, the assumptions, the issue. Maybe they needed to work out a different system, talk more, schedule things, whatever it would take to have a better solution than rudeness. 

But rudeness never confronts biblically. I can predict for you, that people will say, “This is stupid. I'll spend all my time in prayer.” And I say, “You do that because that’s the best thing you could do, and stop doing this junky rudeness to each other. So that you won't exasperate each other.” For men, in the scripture there in Ephesians 5:26 God says, “Wash your wives with words like water.” If you do a study on the words “wash” and “water”, you're going to see the word says, “Speak to them with the freshness of a spring shower.” Any relationship that I have, starts and continues with my submissions. In previous verses in the same chapter in Ephesians 5:21 says to, “Submit yourselves, one to another, to God.” Well, I’ve got to stay submitted, so I can't be rude to anybody. There's never a place where I am perfectly right. I always have to work with myself first to avoid these temptations to be rude. 

God is explaining that when someone is rude, you're going to feel bad and be tempted to react to defend yourself. The raised eyebrow, the silence, or the sarcastic voice is like a thumb in your back pushing you to rise up and get angry; or run away, don't say anything and lick your wounds. None of those responses work to have a healthy relationship. In other words, you have to identify it, and refuse to respond with rudeness. A person can be rude by simply never addressing problems, feigning ignorance. “I shouldn't, I can't, I won't, I don't want to. God can't help me. God's not big enough for this.” One person can be rude by always getting self-righteous and saying, “I’m in control and you will do as I say!”  Sometimes a man will block a woman in a room and us his body to keep her from getting out. In one case a woman ripped a window off including the storm window and screen in order to escape, because the guy was so rude, that she felt trapped and terrified. See, the other part of this is God is never rude. 

You'll find people who have a distorted view of God. Rather than someone they can go to in times of need, they see a God that they fear and cower with their arms over their head, waiting for God to rain blows on them verbally, spiritually. A lady the other day called me and said, “God spoke to me and said, If I don't do this, he's going to let my children get very, very sick and possibly die.” She was just in tears. I said, “Wait. Jane, that's not in the word, that's not in the Bible, that's not the love of

God! He is not rude. If he's got a problem with you, he'll tell you with patience. Help you work it out”. I said, “Go back and pray that idea through the process of patience, and ask God to help you see where that lie came from. Or ask God to bind any oppression if you need to, but get your brains free. Because to call me in tears, tells me your brain isn’t working, because you have a false concept here, and that's a problem.” It turned out that the problem was she didn't want to talk to her husband about why she didn’t want to go with him “to get away.” She was afraid of intimacy with Him, because their relationship was so bad. Rather than confront him, she agreed to go. The hurtful message came from her fear. She needed to pray through patience first. Not doing that was an act of rudeness on her part toward God and herself. She was wrong to even think that God would hurt her children, because he didn't like what she was doing. You see, with rudeness, feigned ignorance means that there's a phoniness involved in an action, attitude or behavior that isn't right, and you should never accept it or respond in such a way that is not in the love of God, in the patience of God.