Tidbits: Love & Other Things

Continuing my mini-series on interesting things I find in the Bible, the passage in 2 Timothy 4 w/ Demas always comes to mind... Paul refers to Demas as a “fellow worker” in the gospel (Colossians 4:14, Philemon 1:24). 

Here's the infamous passage though:

2 Timothy 4:10

“for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world...”

I got to thinking about this passage & the more I did, the more it bothered me, I knew I had heard this before but I couldn't place where I had, then it hit me, the most famous passage about loving the world:

John 3:16

“For God so loved the world...”

Well, it was time to dig into the Greek & see just how similar these passages were:

John 3:16

For God so loved [agapao] the world [kosmos]...

2 Timothy 4:10

Having loved [agapao] this present world [aion]....

The word agapao is used both times, it means “of persons: to welcome, be fond of, to love dearly” & “of things: to be well pleased, be contented at or w/ a thing”.

Now, agapao is the verb form of the noun agape, which has many times been taught as the God-kind of love, Divine-love, etc.

So, God had a Divine-love for the kosmos (the world, the universe, the inhabitants of earth, the human family) & the implication is that Demas had a God-kind of love for this aion (eternity, the worlds, universe, period of time, age).

The passage in 2 Timothy says that Demas forsook Paul, it doesn't say he forsook God.

I just find these two Scriptures & their parallels interesting...