If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1Corinthians 13: 1-3)

Without love - agape - our gifts are misused. Only if our gifts are motivated by and aimed at agape do they fulfill the intent of God.

Agape is used sparingly by Homer mostly to describe the emotion with which a loved one is welcomed.

Plato uses agape to describe the trusting and mutually dependent relationship of citizens of the same class. In the Republic Plato briefly discusses love of justice as a form of agape.

In ancient Greek literature agape is the least common form of love. Philia -what we might think of as friendship - is more often used. But philia is, perhaps, too commonplace for divinely motivated or divinely aimed love.

Eros is celebrated in Greek drama, poetry, and philosophy. Sexual attraction is often involved. But eros is more broadly a striving and struggle for an object or ideal.

Agape is received. Eros is achieved.

It may be, however, that Paul was less focused on linguistic precision than such comparisons and contrasts suggest. The Septuagint - the Greek translation of the Hebrew bible used by most of the diaspora - rather eccentrically chose agape to translate the Hebrew ahab and ahab'a which encompass sexual, friendly, and spiritual love.