The Love Humans Couldn’t Invent…
I’ll be honest: for a long time, I just accepted the Bible as true because that’s what I was taught. On one hand, wasn’t I supposed to be able to feel truth all the way through my bones? On the other hand, I felt like I was just “supposed” to know it was true… whatever that means. I was “last month years old” when I finally asked myself: Why? What makes this book different from every other piece of ancient literature or folklore? The answer I felt the Holy Spirit lead me to was simple: Agape.
What is Agape?
In the original language of the New Testament, there are different words for love. Two of the main ones are agape (ah-GAH-pay), which means unconditional, sacrificial love, and phileo (FIL-lee-oh), which is more like friendship or affection.
We see this difference most clearly in a conversation between Jesus and Peter on the beach in John 21:15-17 after the Resurrection. Before Jesus was arrested, Peter had boasted he would never abandon Him. Then, on the night of Jesus’ arrest, Peter denied even knowing Him not just once or twice, but three times.
When Jesus finds Peter on the beach days later, He asks: “Peter, do you love (agape) me?” Jesus uses the word for total, sacrificial devotion.
Peter, carrying the weight of his failure, can only answer with phileo, or friendship and affection. He responds, “Lord, you know I love (phileo) you.” Essentially, Peter is saying, “Lord, I care for you, but I’m too broken to claim that kind of love right now.”
Jesus asks a second time using agape, and Peter again answers with phileo. Finally, the third time, Jesus meets Peter exactly where he is. He switches His word to phileo. He doesn’t demand a devotion Peter can’t give. Instead, He accepts Peter’s honest, bruised affection and uses it to change the world in building the Church.
I believe this is the heart of the Gospel: a God who knows our limits and loves us through them anyway. If this kind of love is so radical and so foreign to everything we know, where did it come from? It certainly didn’t come from us.
The “Human” Filter
Scripture doesn’t soften this reality. Romans 3:10-12 says it plainly: “There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one.”
If that is the baseline of human nature, how did we end up with a love story like this one? When we look at human history, our stories usually reflect our nature.
Ancient Myths: Filled with gods who are petty, vengeful, and power-hungry–just like us.
Folk Tales: Like the original Brothers Grimm, these are often transactional. If you break a rule, you get eaten. There is no grace, only a moral.
Modern Heroes: Even in Marvel movies, a hero’s value is tied to “worthiness.” If Thor isn’t worthy, he loses the hammer.
Human stories are almost always about earning–earning power, earning a happy ending, or earning your way into favor, but the Bible turns this on its head. Instead of a ladder we have to climb, it’s about a God who descended the ladder to find us.
As fallen, limited people, we create stories based on what we know. So, how could a fallen humanity invent a love as radical as the one found in the Gospel?
A love that breathes forgiveness from a cross.
A love that pursues the rebel.
A love that doesn’t just explain the world, but fundamentally transforms the person reading it.
A God who willingly dies for the people who rejected Him–that idea appears nowhere else in human religious history. We simply don’t think that way.
The Divine Fingerprint
In fact, no matter where we are in our life journeys, God is already here. He has been waiting and knocking on our doors for us to invite Him in this whole time. Jesus himself said it plainly i n John 3:17 , “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
That kind of love–Agape–is a “foreign language” to our natural hearts. The fact that this radical, selfless love exists on these pages suggests that the source isn’t human at all. It’s a divine fingerprint.
Paul wrote in1 Corinthians 2:9-10, “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived–God has prepared these things for those who love him. Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”
I believe that this epiphany was shared with me by the Holy Spirit and has given me a renewed confidence in the Bible as Truth. I no longer just “believe the Bible because I’m supposed to.” I know it to be true now because I have seen a love in its pages that we simply aren’t capable of dreaming up on our own.
And because this love is real, here is its scope:
“Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”– Romans 8:38-39
Sisterhood Discipleship Questions
Hi Sis! No wrong answers here. Sit with them privately, journal, or share in the comments below–whatever feels right for where you are today. If you share in the comments, speak from your own experience. Curiosity and doubt are welcome. Honest and messy are welcome. We’re not here to perform our faith, but to grow in it together.
When you think about how you’ve experienced love from other people (parents, friends, partners) how does that compare to the kind of love described in this article? What’s the biggest difference you notice?
Peter couldn’t claim agape love for Jesus after he failed. He could only offer phileo–friendship, bruised affection. Have you ever been in a season where that’s all you had to give God? What did that feel like?
How have you come to know the Bible as Truth? Not just accepted it, but actually know it? If you’re still working that out, what’s the honest question underneath your uncertainty?
The article argues that a God who dies for people who rejected him is an idea humanity couldn’t have invented on its own. Do you agree? What would you say to someone who pushes back on that?
If God meets us where we are, like the way Jesus met Peter with phileo instead of demanding agape, what does that change about how you approach your own failures and limitations in your faith walk?
The human filter section argues that our stories almost always reflect earned love, such as worthiness, deserving, climbing a ladder. Where do you still see that earning mentality showing up in your own relationship with God, even as a believer? What would it look like to actually live from agape rather than just believe in it?
