Words of Love – Eros (Romantic Love)

Theme for this week:Words of Love

February 3, 2022 (Thursday)

The four Biblical words for love in the Greek language are storge (affection), philia (Friendship), eros (Romantic love), and Agape (Charity). We have written blogs about storge and philia, and today we are writing about eros (Romantic love).

Romantic love (“eros”) has a way of taking over a person’s mind for a while. I read of a pastor who no longer does pre-marrital counseling. Instead, he strikes an agreement with the couple to come back for counselng after being married for six months. He reasons that in that time, passion will no longer be in control and the couple is settling down so that they can discuss all that is involved in strengthening their marriage.

When the fires of passion begin to cool, the couple may think that love has died. Not true. C.S. Lewis writes, “The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intolerable the idea that it should be transitory,” says Lewis. “In one high bound it has overleaped the massive wall of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the center of our being.” Each person in the marriage must learn to nurture these noble thoughts and strengthen their marriage thereby.

Lewis taught that Scripture teaches this bond of man and woman, from Genesis onward, is the picture of God’s love for the world, Christ for his bride, the church. True love goes deeper into the hearts of married people if they give it a chance. We can learn to have the unconditional love that we started with and love each other more as the years go by.

The eros kind of love has been given to us by the Lord. It brings us together and we commit ourselves to each other for life, realizing that true love need not fade away but can grow and become stronger as the years go by.