Agape: the love the Gospels mean

Ancient Greek had several words for love. The one the New Testament chooses for Christian love is agape — unconditional, self-giving love, given whether or not it is deserved and whether or not it is returned. It is not a feeling. It is a decision, and it can be commanded.

Paul’s famous description makes this concrete: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud… It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:4–7). Every word there is about behaviour, not emotion.

Jesus makes it the identifying mark of his followers: “A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples” (John 13:34–35).

The exam angle: if a question asks why Christians run food banks, do not answer “because they are kind”. Answer “because agape — the unconditional love Jesus commanded and demonstrated — is owed to everyone, including strangers and enemies, and is shown in action rather than feeling.” That is the difference between a level 1 and a level 3 answer.

What is agape?

The Two Greatest Commandments

Asked which commandment is the most important, Jesus gives two, and refuses to separate them (Mark 12:29–31; also Matthew 22:37–39):

The two hold together. Love of God that never reaches a neighbour is hollow; love of neighbour, for a Christian, is how love of God is expressed. This is the single most important idea in C6 — every charity, food bank and mission below is an application of it.

Who counts as a neighbour? Jesus is asked exactly that, and answers with the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). A man is beaten and left half dead. A priest and a Levite — the religious professionals — pass by on the other side. A Samaritan, from a despised group with whom Jews had no dealings, stops, treats his wounds, carries him to an inn and pays for his care. Jesus turns the question inside out: do not ask who qualifies as your neighbour, ask whom you can be a neighbour to. The answer is: anyone in need, including the person your community has taught you to look down on.

Why a Samaritan?

Service of others: time, work and money

The syllabus names three things Christians give: time, work and money. Learn examples of each.

• Time — visiting the housebound and the imprisoned; volunteering at a night shelter or food bank; running youth groups; sitting with the dying.
• Work — skills given freely: a doctor volunteering at a clinic, a lawyer advising asylum seekers, a builder on a rebuilding project after a disaster.
• Money — regular giving to the church and to charity; collections; sponsored fasts; leaving a legacy.

The teaching behind it. In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31–46), the King welcomes those who fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick and visited the prisoner — and tells them: “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Christians take this with enormous seriousness: to serve the poor is to serve Christ himself, and the failure to do so is treated as a failure to love God. Paul recalls Jesus’ words that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

Give quietly. Jesus warns against giving “to be honoured by others” and says: do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing (Matthew 6:1–4). Christian giving is meant to be unshowy — a useful counterweight if a question suggests charity is done for reputation.

Which strand of C6?

Tap a card, then tap the part of C6 it belongs to.

Stewardship of the environment

A steward is someone who looks after property that belongs to someone else, and must give an account of how they managed it. That is exactly how Christians understand the human relationship to the Earth.

• God created everything. “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1). It is not ours. We are tenants, not owners — and that single sentence changes everything about how it may be used.
• Humanity has a responsibility to care for it. In Genesis 2:15 God puts the man in the garden “to work it and take care of it”. Christians take this as the founding job description of the human race.
• Dominion or stewardship? Genesis 1:28 tells humanity to “fill the earth and subdue it” and to “rule over” the creatures. Critics have argued that this text licensed centuries of exploitation. Most Christian theologians reply that the “rule” intended is the rule of a good king who protects his subjects, not a tyrant who plunders them — and that Genesis 2:15 tells us what kind of rule was meant.

In practice: Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015) called the whole Church to care for “our common home” and framed environmental damage as a moral and spiritual failure that falls hardest on the poor. Churches run eco-congregation schemes, cut their carbon use, and campaign on climate justice, arguing that those least responsible for climate change suffer most from it — which makes it a justice issue, not just a green one.

Different views: most Christians treat environmental care as a serious duty. A minority argue that the world is passing away and that evangelism should take priority. Others accept the duty but disagree sharply about the means — personal lifestyle change, political campaigning, or technological solutions.

Steward, not owner

Three Christian organisations that relieve poverty

The syllabus names three by name. Learn who they are, who runs them, and what they actually do.

• Tearfund — a British evangelical relief and development agency, founded in 1968. It works chiefly through local churches in the countries where it operates, on the principle that the local church is already present, trusted and permanent, and will still be there long after any foreign agency has left. Emergency relief, clean water, sanitation, and community development.
• Caritas — the Catholic confederation. Caritas Internationalis links national Catholic aid agencies (CAFOD in England and Wales, Trócaire in Ireland, Catholic Relief Services in the USA) into one worldwide network, present in most countries. Its work is rooted in Catholic Social Teaching, with its emphasis on human dignity, the common good and a “preferential option for the poor”.
• Christian Aid — founded in 1945 to help refugees in the ruins of post-war Europe, and now the official relief and development agency of many churches in Britain and Ireland. It is known for Christian Aid Week and for campaigning on the causes of poverty — unjust trade rules, debt and tax avoidance — as well as relieving its effects. It deliberately helps people of all faiths and none.

Also credit local work. The syllabus asks for “groups and organisations particular to any country” too. A parish food bank, a night shelter in a church hall, a soup run, a debt-advice centre, a refugee drop-in — use an example you actually know, and the examiner will reward it.

Who does what?

Tap an organisation or idea on the left, then the description that fits it on the right.

Spiritual as well as physical needs

Two subtle points the syllabus asks for, and most candidates miss.

• Christian groups care for the spiritual as well as the physical needs of those in poverty or hit by disaster. A person who has lost their home and family needs food and shelter — and also needs someone to sit with them, to listen, to pray with them if they wish, and to treat them as a human being made in the image of God rather than a statistic. Chaplains work alongside aid workers. Christian agencies talk about restoring dignity, not just delivering calories.
• Missionary activity and organised charity are motivated by religious teaching. Christians do this because of what they believe, not by coincidence: the Two Greatest Commandments (Mark 12:29–31); the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31–46); the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37); and the Great Commission, in which the risen Jesus sends the disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20).

A real controversy, handled fairly. Some critics accuse Christian charities of using aid to win converts — “rice Christians”. Major agencies have codes forbidding this: Christian Aid and Tearfund both help people regardless of faith and do not make assistance conditional on conversion. But Christians genuinely disagree about the relationship between proclaiming the gospel and practising it — some hold that the two are inseparable, others that any preaching to a hungry person is coercive. That disagreement is exactly what a part (c) question wants you to weigh.

Why campaign as well as give?

Charity, justice, and the limits of both

Christians agree that they must help the poor. They argue, sometimes fiercely, about how.

• Charity vs justice. Some Christians concentrate on direct relief — feeding the person in front of you now. Others insist that if you only ever pull people out of the river, you never go upstream to find out who is pushing them in; they campaign politically. Critics of the second approach reply that the Church should preach the gospel and not become a political party.
• Aid vs development. Emergency relief saves lives but can create dependency; long-term development (wells, training, microfinance, working through local churches, as Tearfund does) is slower but lasting. Most agencies now do both.
• Giving quietly vs campaigning loudly. Matthew 6:1–4 tells Christians to give in secret; Christian Aid Week is a very public street collection. Christians reconcile these by distinguishing personal giving, which should be humble, from public advocacy on behalf of others, which cannot be secret if it is to work.
• Is it the state’s job? Some argue that food banks let governments off the hook and that Christians should demand a welfare system instead. Others answer that the hungry cannot wait for a policy.

The motive that matters

Answering the 8-mark evaluation

Part (c) is worth 8 of the 20 marks and rewards evaluation, not description. Take this:

Top-level answers name real things. Tearfund working through local churches; Caritas and Catholic Social Teaching; Christian Aid Week; Laudato Si’; your own local food bank. Evidence turns an opinion into an evaluation.

The big ideas to know

That is the whole of C6. Press Finish to see your score.