It’s the familiarity of, “the people with whom you are thrown together in the family, the college, the mess, the ship, the religious house,” says Lewis.

For example, when a man and woman fall in love it is often because of certain affections – a particular location, experience, personality, interest – that begin to wrap around the couple so to make love an expected and familiar part of their shared lives. “It lives with humble, un-dress, private things soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes, the thump of a sleepy dog’s tail on the kitchen floor, the sound of a sewing machine…” Affection can sit alongside other loves and often does. “Affection almost slinks or seeps through our lives,” he says. It relies on the expected and the familiar. Like animals, the care of mother to babe is a picture of affection.

“For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?”Īffection covers an array of loves. “Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God,” Lewis says. We are in total need of God and his love, grace, and redemption. Paul says that this is our reasonable service (Romans 12:1). Yes, we give our bodies as living sacrifices so to be found holy and acceptable. Here’s a synopsis of Lewis’s thoughts published in 1960 based on a radio series he did with the BBC a few years prior to the book’s release.įirst, Lewis addresses our relationship to God as Need-love. Lewis’s book The Four Loves is a helpful guide. How can we best know more about love in its various forms, especially with the hope of being pointed rightly toward the love of God and of neighbor? C.S. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. I Corinthians 13:1-3 says, “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. So let’s look at the four types of love found in the Bible. As we know, Scripture tells us that love is the highest attribute. We may not consciously distinguish one use of love from another, in part because our speech is becoming more and more informal and reduced every year, but it’s important to be intentional about the differences. We love everything from foods to cars, from movies to retailers, from people to God himself. Today, the word “love” is overused and undervalued at the same time.

Four types of love cs lewis