Agape love leadership
What is Agape love?
Agape love is the choice to deliberately, decisively, and actively lift others by practicing compassion and intentional devotion toward that person.
In the Bible, aheb and hesed were two words used to express God's love for Israel. It was also the love the Israelite people were to show one another. After Israel had been under Greek rule for many centuries, Jewish scholars began to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek during the third and second centuries B.C.E, as many Jews spoke Greek.
When the translation work began, these scholars could not find a familiar, comparable Greek word to represent the aheb and hesed love of God. The most often used Greek words for love were philo for brotherly love and eros for passionate love. The Jewish translators decided to use a little-known Greek word, agape, to reflect God's aheb and hesed love. To keep close to the Hebrew understanding of God's love for man and God's expectation of man to love one another, the New Testament writers continued using the word agape when they wrote about love.
Agape Love in Deuteronomy 6:5
You must love the LORD your God with your heart, your soul, and all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:5
In Hebrew, the word for heart is lēb. It means "seat of all emotions and intellect."
The word for soul is nephesh, the neck through which we breathe to live – nephesh was used to express life.
The Hebrew word for strength is mēʼōd. We might look at this word through Greek influence and think it is power. However, this word, which appears only twice in the Old Testament as a noun, represented economic or social strength.
According to Old Testament scholar Samuel McBride, the essence of Deuteronomy 6:5 is to love God with our emotions, intellect, wealth, and even life.
Agape love in Luke 10:25-37
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. -Luke 10:27
In the story about a Samaritan, Jesus illustrated how we are to love our God and others with all our intellect and emotions, economic and social wealth, and with our lives.
The Samaritan saw a man beaten and left for dead on a highway that was known for armed robbery. No one stopped to help him. However, this Samaritan stopped to help the man without caring for his own life. He used his knowledge of first aid and intellect to bandage the man's wounds and continued his journey, carrying the man on his donkey. When the Samaritan reached his destination, he admitted this man to care and paid all of the wounded man's medical bills out of his wealth. This Samaritan understood how to love others as God wants us to love.
Applying the Bible at work
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. John 15:12
In obedience to Jesus' command, we choose to intentionally love our customers, subscribers, partners, vendors, and team members using our intellect, wealth, and lives if God calls us to that, as He has with the heroes of our faith.
Further, as a global team, we create an organizational culture of agape love. Love enables us to operate in an environment of truth and trust. When trust breaks, we will forgive one another. Our organizational principles and policies reflect our commitment to agape love in leadership and management.
Finally, we extend our services to our customers, subscribers, and partners, reflecting agape love in our interactions with them.