Agape (Greek: ἀγάπη, agapē) is a word for love that describes a deliberate, self-giving commitment to someone's good, rather than an emotion that rises and falls on its own. It's the word behind "God so loved the world" in John 3:16 and behind the entire description of love in 1 Corinthians 13. Unlike English, which uses one word — "love" — for everything from romantic feeling to loyalty to affection for a hobby, New Testament Greek had several distinct words for different kinds of love, and agape was the one used most often to describe the love God has for people, and the love people are called to have for one another.
What are the different types of love in the Bible?
English forces "I love my spouse," "I love my friend," and "I love pizza" to use the exact same word. Greek didn't have that problem. The New Testament draws on a handful of different words, each carrying its own shade of meaning:
- Agape (ἀγάπη) — a love rooted in will and commitment rather than feeling; the love the New Testament most often uses to describe God's love for humanity and the love Christians are told to show.
- Phileo (φιλέω) — warm affection, friendship, fondness; the root behind the name Philadelphia, "brotherly love."
- Eros — romantic or passionate love. This word doesn't actually appear in the New Testament text itself, though the concept is present elsewhere in scripture, including the Song of Solomon.
- Storge — family affection, the natural bond between parents and children. Also not used as a standalone noun in the New Testament, though it appears as part of compound words.
It's worth being careful here: the popular idea that the Bible has "four Greek words for love" with agape as the "highest" and the others ranked below it is a simplification that goes further than the New Testament text itself supports. Agape and phileo, in particular, are sometimes used in ways that overlap rather than sit in a strict hierarchy — even within the same conversation, as in John 21 when Jesus and Peter use both words while talking about the very same love. The safest approach is to look at how a specific passage uses a specific word, rather than assuming a fixed ranking every time.
What is the difference between agape and phileo?
The clearest place to see both words at work is John 21:15-17, where the risen Jesus asks Peter three times whether Peter loves him. In the Greek text, Jesus's first two questions use a form of agapao (the verb form of agape), while Peter's answers each use phileo. On Jesus's third question, he switches to phileo himself. Because English translations render all of this simply as "love," the shift is invisible unless you're reading the underlying Greek — which is exactly where a lexicon and word-by-word study become useful rather than optional.
Some readers take this exchange as proof that agape is unconditional, "higher" love and phileo is a lesser, merely emotional love that Peter is settling for. Others read the shift as simple Greek stylistic variation, common enough elsewhere in John's writing that too much shouldn't be built on it. Both readings have real defenders among careful readers of the text, and the honest answer is that this is genuinely debated rather than settled — which makes it a good passage to read for yourself rather than take secondhand.
Where agape appears in scripture
Agape and its verb form appear across the New Testament, but two passages carry an outsized share of the word's popular reputation.
John 3:16 — "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (KJV). The verb here is a form of agapao. The love described isn't primarily a feeling; it's demonstrated by a specific, costly action — giving.
1 Corinthians 13, the passage most people know as "the love chapter," is built entirely around agape. Paul describes it not by defining the word abstractly but by listing what it does: "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up... Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things" (1 Corinthians 13:4, 7, KJV). Older English translations like the KJV render agape here as "charity," an older English word that originally meant something closer to selfless, committed love than its modern sense of giving to those in need — which is why most later translations render the same Greek word as "love" instead.
What is an example of agape love?
The clearest biblical example is the one 1 Corinthians 13 spends the whole chapter describing: patience, kindness, the absence of envy or self-importance, not being easily provoked, and simply enduring — sustained action and posture toward another person, not a passing feeling. John's Gospel offers a second concrete picture: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13, KJV). In both passages, agape is shown through what it costs and what it does, rather than described as an emotional state.
Is agape always about God's love specifically?
Not exclusively, and this is another place the popular summary oversimplifies. Agape and its verb form are used for God's love toward people, but also for the love people are told to have for each other, and — more uncomfortably — for love directed at the wrong things. 2 Timothy 4:10 describes Demas as having deserted Paul because he "loved this present world," using the same verb, agapao, that describes God's love in John 3:16. The word itself doesn't guarantee a good object; it describes the shape of the love — committed, will-directed, sustained — regardless of what it's aimed at. That's a useful correction to the idea that agape is automatically virtuous just because it's used for God's love elsewhere in the same book.
Agape and 1 John: love as evidence
1 John returns to agape more than almost any other New Testament book, and it makes a claim that's easy to read past quickly: "he that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love" (1 John 4:8, KJV). The logic runs in a specific direction — not "love proves you're a good person," but "love is the visible evidence of actually knowing God," because God's own character is described as love itself. A few verses later, the same letter grounds this in the same event John 3:16 points to: "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him" (1 John 4:9, KJV). Read together, John's Gospel and John's first letter form a consistent pair — agape is defined first by what God did, and only afterward held up as the standard for how people are meant to love each other.
Studying agape for yourself
Because agape carries so much theological weight, it's a word worth tracing yourself rather than taking someone else's summary of it. A concordance search will surface the word's many occurrences across the New Testament — noun and verb forms together run to several hundred — and reading through a representative sample, rather than just the two or three most quoted verses, gives a far more grounded sense of how the word is actually used than any single definition can. Pay particular attention to who is loving whom in each verse, and what the love leads to — action, sacrifice, patience — rather than trying to reduce the word to a single tidy definition that fits every occurrence equally well.
--- FAQ ---
Q: What is agape love? A: A Greek word for love centered on will and committed action rather than feeling — the word most often used in the New Testament to describe God's love for people and the love Christians are called to show others.
Q: What are the four types of love in the Bible? A: Greek had several words for different kinds of love — agape (committed, willed love), phileo (affection, friendship), along with eros (romantic love) and storge (family affection), though the latter two don't appear as standalone nouns in the New Testament text itself.
Q: What is the difference between agape and phileo? A: Phileo describes warm affection and friendship; agape describes a deeper, will-based commitment to someone's good. The two words sometimes overlap in use, and scholars genuinely disagree on how sharply the New Testament distinguishes between them in every instance.
Q: How many times is agape used in the New Testament? A: The noun and its related verb form together appear several hundred times across the New Testament. Exact counts vary by manuscript tradition and by how forms are counted, so a concordance search is the most reliable way to see the full list.
Q: What is an example of agape love? A: 1 Corinthians 13's description of love — patient, kind, not self-seeking, enduring — and John 15:13's statement that laying down one's life for a friend is the greatest expression of love are both direct biblical pictures of agape in action.
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