Biblical words for ‘love’
In an article in the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, D.A. Carson warns against ‘word-based reductionism’:-
When Amnon incestuously rapes his half-sister Tamar (2 Sam. 13, LXX), twice we are told that he ‘loved’ her, once with agapaō and once with phileō. It is hard to see how this love differs from erōs, acquisitive and sexual love (though the word erōs is never found in the Bible). Twice John tells us that the Father ‘loves’ the Son, once using agapaō (John 3:35), once using phileō (John 5:20), and it is difficult to detect any difference in meaning. When Paul tells Timothy that Demas has forsaken him because he ‘loved’ this present, evil world (2 Tim. 4:10), the verb is agapaō; this love is scarcely a willed commitment to the good of the other. Most striking, perhaps, is the so-called love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13. There Paul tells his readers that if he were to give away all he possesses to the poor, and even submit his body to the torture of the flames (both willed acts for the good of others), it would be possible to do so without love (agapē). This surely demonstrates that the love he has in mind is more sweeping than mere altruism, than mere commitment to the good of the other, however self-denying.