Agapeic love is not a sentimental whim or a physical attraction, both of which are doomed to fade away quickly, and anyway do not come at will. No. It is the awareness of God's love for another person. Only God can enable us to understand our neighbor according to the feeling, the intuition of the spirit. Then we perceive in him an irreducible personal existence beyond limitation and errors, Beyond even the disappointment we may have felt for a moment. The other is in the image of God, not of us.
When we begin to feel in its fullness the love of God, we begin also to love our neighbor in the experience of the spirit. That is the love of which the Scriptures speak. For friendship according to the flesh breaks down too easily on the slightest pretext. The reason is that it lacks the bond of the spirit. Therefore even if a certain irritation takes hold of the soul on which God is acting, that does not break the bond of love. For if it has been set ablaze again by the fire of divine love, it seeks with great joy to love its neighbor, even if in return it should have to undergo wrongs or insults. In fact, the bitterness of the quarrel is entirely consumed in the sweetness of God.
DIADOCHUS OF PHOTIKE Gnostic Chapters, 15 Sources Chrétiennes
