Agape is the highest of the four Greek words for love in the classical Greek world: eros (romantic/passionate love), phileo (affectionate/friendship love), storge (familial love), and agape (the deliberate, chosen love that seeks the good of the other regardless of emotion). Before the New Testament, agape was the least used of the four — it was almost a theological blank slate. The New Testament writers filled that slate with a specifically Christian content: agape is the love God has for sinners (John 3:16, Romans 5:8), the love Christ has for the church (Ephesians 5:25), the love the Spirit produces in believers (Galatians 5:22), and the love Christians are commanded to have for one another (John 13:34), for neighbors (Matthew 22:39), and even for enemies (Matthew 5:44). The greatest chapter on agape is 1 Corinthians 13: "Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." Note what is not said: love never "feels" anything. Agape is the love of the cross — it acts whether or not the heart is warm toward the one being loved. Christ died for us "while we were still sinners" (Romans 5:8). God's agape was not a response to our loveliness; it was the cause of it. Every Christian is called to love with this same love, because "love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love" (1 John 4:7-8).