BibleProject Podcast

Episode: Love: God’s Gift and Our Calling
Date: December 22, 2025

Overview

In this Advent series finale, the BibleProject team (primarily Tim Mackie [B] and John Collins [A]) explore the biblical concept of love—its meaning in scripture, the transformation of its definition through Jesus, and how Christians are called to live out this love. This episode unpacks the Hebrew and Greek words for love (ahav/ahavah and agape), examines key biblical passages, and reflects on how the birth of Jesus represents the arrival of divine love. Special guest Jodi (D) concludes the episode with a meditation on how love encompasses all Advent themes.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Advent’s Four Virtues (00:09–01:55)

• Advent is the four weeks leading up to Christmas: hope, peace, joy, and love.
• Each virtue is a Christian character trait, connected to “anticipating the arrival of God’s Messiah.”
• Love is the fourth virtue, and this episode focuses on its special place and meaning.

2. The Biblical Roots of Love (Ahavah) (01:24–09:44)

• The Hebrew Roots:

  • Focus on the main Hebrew word for love: ahav (verb), ahavah (noun).
  • Ahavah in scripture involves both emotional attachment and practical, tangible actions.

    “Love in Deuteronomy…is referring to both the emotional feeling of attachment. But then also, we’re going to see the practical displays. Actions. It’s an action word, man.” (B, 01:38)

• Deuteronomy 10 as the Key Text (02:03–09:44):

  • Moses’ farewell speech frames love as central: “Yahweh attached himself in order to love [Abraham, Isaac, Jacob].”
  • The unique attachment is a covenant bond, meant to bless them and all nations (04:08).
  • God’s love is shown through actions—liberation, provision, protection.
  • Israel is commanded to reciprocate by loving God (through obedience) and loving neighbors, especially the vulnerable (the immigrant, orphan, widow).

    “So you should attach yourself and cling to Yahweh…And you shall love Yahweh, your God and keep his obligations and statutes and regulations and commandments. So that’s the Yahweh love and attach himself to you. You love Yahweh and attach yourself to him. And then in the middle is this loving of neighbors, specifically vulnerable neighbors.” (B, 06:36)

  • The Deuteronomy text establishes love as a reciprocal, triune movement: God loves people, people love God, and people love others, particularly the vulnerable.

• Key Quote:

  “It’s a full reciprocity of divine human love and then human to human love. And they are like mirrors of each other.” (B, 07:38)

3. Love Summed Up by Jesus (09:52–12:34)

• The Greatest Commandments (Mark 12):
  • Debate among ancient scribes: which commandment is first?
  • Jesus: First is Deuteronomy 6’s Shema—“Love the Lord your God with all your heart…” Second: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

    “He just wanted one. He gave him two…the way he’s presenting it is to say there’s nothing else greater than these…the flip side of each other.” (B/A, 11:31–12:08)

  • Loving God and neighbor are inseparable; this is the “summary of the purpose of Israel’s existence…which itself is a way on reflecting on the purpose of human existence.”

4. From Ahavah to Agape – The Language of the New Testament (12:34–17:29)

• Transition to Greek: in the New Testament, “love” is primarily agape.
• Ancient Greek mostly used phileo for love; agape was rare and vague before Christianity:

  “Plato…uses the verb file almost 1500 times…uses the noun agape 0 times.” (B, 13:33)

• Jesus’ movement redefined “agape” as the distinctively Christian love.

  “So they adopt this obscure word and they’re like, this is going to be our word. The word was given meaning now, not by the Greek language. The word was given meaning…in the image of Jesus.” (A/B, 16:51–17:09)

5. The Radical Teaching of Jesus and Revolutionary Agape (17:09–21:02)

• Jesus redefines love:

  • Love enemies, do good, lend expecting nothing in return (Luke 6).
  • Breaks cycles of reciprocity (“you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”).

    “If you love those who love you…even sinners do that…But I tell you, love your enemies…” (B, 18:20–19:07)

• Agape is indiscriminate, self-giving, and practical:

  • Tangible acts of service and support, even to those who cannot repay.
  • This love imitates the indiscriminate generosity of God.

• Key Quote:

  “Always on Jesus’ mind with this love vocabulary is actually very practical, tangible acts of service and support…with a very radical view of who you give that support to.” (B/A, 19:45–20:00)

6. Divine Love: God is Agape (21:02–26:44)

• 1 John 4: God is Love

  • “Let us love one another, because love is from God. Everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God because God is love.” (B quoting 1 John, 21:36–21:57)

• The essence of God is agape—inventive, unconditional, self-giving.

• God’s love is manifested as giving the “only begotten son”—a gift meant to bring life and repair what is broken (atonement).

  “It’s a gift that’s just like pure survival for us…Indiscriminate generosity. Yeah…God took the thing that’s so precious to him…so that others might have life.” (A/B, 24:12–24:39) “Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as…a gift given that repairs a broken relationship.” (B, 25:46)

• The Christian obligation is to pass this love on—love others with the same liberality, not based on benefit, but pure generosity.

  “Beloved ones, if that’s how God loved us…then we also ought to love one another. So we ought to. There’s the obligation.” (B, 26:44)

7. Advent as Arrival of Divine Love (27:31–30:57)

• Advent celebrates “the birth of the gift”—the coming of Jesus as the embodiment of divine agape.

  “It’s a story of agape. Divine agape, divine love…you already, just by the sheer fact of being human, are beloved because of what God has done in and through Jesus.” (B, 27:42–28:07)

• The gift of Jesus calls us to “love others with that same type of liberal, indiscriminate generosity, to love others without obligation.”
• Through the four Advent words—hope, peace, joy, love—we prepare and make room for this arriving love.

8. Reflections: Love as the Source and Summit of Christian Life (31:11–34:09)

Mini Meditation with Jodi (31:25–34:09)

• Love is the core need and longing of every human; to belong is to be loved.

  “I think every single person born on this planet, their deepest desire is to be loved or belong.” (D, 31:52)

• The more we open ourselves to God’s love, the more we realize its depth and our own limitations. True love is “loving when it’s difficult, it’s not convenient.”
• All Advent themes (hope, joy, peace) flow from love.
• Love is a circle, not a start-end line: God loves us, we love others, and this reflects God’s love back.

  “It’s a circle. And I feel like that tension of what does it really mean to walk with Jesus?…the only way we can be transformed is that continually turning to who our source of truth and love?” (D, 33:24)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the reciprocal nature of love:

  “Love God, love your neighbor. Yeah, that’s it.” (A/B, 09:47)

• On the revolutionary aspect of agape:

  “The word was given meaning…in the image of Jesus.” (B, 17:07)

• On the transformation Jesus brought to the concept of love:

  “Jesus so reshaped a whole community’s view of reality that they had to rethink how they treated each other and how they talked about how they were treating each other.” (B, 17:11)

• On God’s love as gift:

  “The act of indiscriminate, generous gift giving—that is the essence of the very being of what a Christian means by God.” (B, 24:50)

• On the obligation created by God’s love:

  “There’s the obligation. So God gave us a gift. So we do have an obligation now. And the obligation is to love each other the way we experience God’s love.” (A/B, 26:44–26:49)

Important Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------------|------------------| | Advent Virtues Introduction | 00:09–01:55 | | Deuteronomy & Hebrew Concept of Love | 02:03–09:44 | | Jesus’ Greatest Commands (Mark 12) | 09:52–12:34 | | Transition to Greek (Agape) | 12:34–17:29 | | Jesus Redefines Love (Luke 6) | 17:09–21:02 | | “God is Love” (1 John) | 21:02–26:44 | | Advent as Arrival of Divine Love | 27:31–30:57 | | Staff Meditation & Final Reflections | 31:11–34:09 |

Conclusion

The episode ties together the four Advent themes, culminating in love as the ultimate gift and calling. The love revealed in Jesus—agape—is not sentimental but actionable, grounded in generous, undiscriminating gift-giving and a radical openness to others. The BibleProject team urges listeners to see love not as a human achievement, but as God’s divine gift, which we are called to receive and share, especially with those hardest to love. The Advent season is thus framed as an invitation to both receive and embody this transformative love.