LOVE - (Greek) four types: Storge: empathy bond; Philia: friend bond; Eros: romantic love; Agape: unconditional “God” love.

(Hebrew): LOVE stands for more than just romantic attraction or strong feelings towards those close to you; it also stands for the truth, respect and obedience Christians hold for God.

God is Love (1 John 4:7-16)

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.

10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

12 No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.

13 By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.

14 And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

15 Whoever confesses the Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.

16 And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Greek PALE (pawlay)—primary meaning is “to wrestle” or “struggle”. The word “wrestle” is a very good translation, even in this context of a soldier’s armor.

Recommended Reading: Rick Renner’s teaching called Spiritual Warfare is Real.

Ephesians 6:12 wrestle = the most vicious, brutal of all the sports. Everyone in the first century knew about this sport. Wrestling was a PALE CULTURE, SUCH AS FOOTBALL IS A CURRENT “PALE” CULTURE.

There was a palace of combat sports. Only 3 kinds of sports: boxers, wrestlers, pankration. Not like what we have until today. You fought until one lived and one died. Boxers took hides 16’ long hides and wrapped it on themselves from elbow down and down their arms to their knuckles. Then attached/wrapped serrated nails, sharp like hunting knives to their knuckles. That is how they boxed.

Wrestling was in the nude and there were no rules. A tactic was to grab the opponent’s hand and break his fingers. Another tactic was to take the thumb and gouge the opponent’s eye out. So he could no longer see to wrestle. And to finish the opponent off was to get behind him, wrap his arms around his waist and throw him up on the air and throw him down to the ground and snap his back. Leaving the opponent paralyzed.

If you survived the boxing match and the wrestling match then you were invited into the Pankration. Pan means ALL and kration means POWER. It meant a Pankration had more power than anybody else. They were the men that had won the boxing and wrestling match. They had more power than anybody else. They entered the ring and fought each other as boxers, wrestlers, and with spiked clubs until one died and one lived. All of that is inside the one word “wrestle”.

Paul was describing a major warfare: no rules. Satan doesn’t play fair. And no one is exempt. Jesus has given us POWER OVER ALL THE POWER OF ENEMY. WE ALWAYS WIN!

SACRIFICE: 1. An act of offering to a deity something precious, especially the killing of a victim on an altar; 2. Something OFFERED in sacrifice; 3. Destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else; 4. Something given up or lost the sacrifices made by parent(s)