Read John 13:31-35 with your family.

Jesus talked a lot about love. When we think about love it is usually love for our family and romantic love, but in Jesus’ world, there were a lot of different words for love.

In Greek, the language of the Christian Scriptures, there were seven different words for love. So when Jesus was talking about love, he had a lot of words to choose that all meant different things.

The word Jesus used for love in this story was “agape” (a-gap-ah), that meant love for all the people in the world. It meant he wanted them to have a good life with everything they needed like food, water, and a safe place to live. You do not need to know everyone in the world to feel this kind of love.

This is what Jesus told us to do, to love as agape. And love is an action word, so this kind of love means doing all the things to make it possible for everyone to have a good life.