I quoted Jesus in my last post saying, if we’re to follow him we must take up our cross daily and follow him. That daily part tells us loving others is an ever-present challenge that requires a continual dying to ourselves. As I shared in the first post, I learned a phrase when I was introduced to Reformed theology in my mid-20s that “love is efficacious.” That, to me, is the essence of love being omnipotent: it works, and it can’t help but working with everything it encounters. It accomplishes something, and something that is beautiful and beneficial to both the lover and the loved. That is also why it is the hardest thing in the Christian life to do because it goes so against the grain of incurvatus in se, of who we are as sinners; we are beings who are curved in on ourselves. The self-obsession is who we are by sinful nature. The paradox is that the cross is the greatest enemy of the self, but also its liberator. When the self is the driving force of our lives, it is the means to the death of the true self, us as we were meant to be as God’s most magnificent creation. When we understand the sin principle in our life, that which seeks our fulfillment above all things, we will understand why it must be committed to the cross.
These are all nice sounding words, but somewhat abstract. What exactly does it mean in practice? First, I will establish that there is nothing more important than love in the Christian life. Jesus, when he was asked by an expert in the law (Matt. 22), “which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” he answered with these words:
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
The profundity of these words could not be overestimated. Jesus is saying love is the whole deal; it’s all about love! We can boil the entirety of God’s revelation in Scripture to these words, love God with everything that you are, and your neighbor as yourself. The last time I read through the New Testament epistles, I was struck by just this, that love is the essence of the Christian ethic. This is, of course, impossible, but as Jesus also said, with God all things are possible. The reason it is possible, that it is doable to love God, ourselves, and our neighbors, is because God first loved us in Christ. He didn’t demand of us, or command of us, something he wasn’t willing and in fact did himself do for us. Jesus said love your enemies, and even while we were his enemies, he loved us!
Love in practice is revealed to us all throughout Scripture if we know how to look, but God in condescending to us as he always does, boiled love down for us through the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 13. Paul tells us we can do all kinds of amazing things, good things, religious things, spiritual things, but if we don’t have love, we’re just noise. Then he goes into the impossible possible description of what love is:
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
And to top off the apparently impossible, he ends with a statement that perfectly captures the omnipotence of love: “Love never fails.” Never. But we might reasonably reply that we’ve tried to love others, and it most definitely failed. Did we really? Are we sure of it? If we read these few verses of Paul, did we really love with this kind of other worldly love? It’s almost an impossible question to answer because doing these things is humanly speaking absolutely impossible. Keep no record of wrongs? Seriously? How exactly does that work? Do we lose our memory? No, but it is possible because God keeps no record of our wrongs, so we are compelled to keep no record of the wrongs done to us. This doesn’t mean we are stupid toward others who do wrong to us. True love is not naïve or gullible, nor is it easily taken advantage of. This requires a common biblical theme, wisdom. The Greek word for wisdom means clarity, the ability to see things as they are. The beautiful thing about Christianity is that there is no rule book, just do x and y will result. It’s much harder than that, and requires faith, which means trust in the God of love to help teach us how to love others.
I could write many more posts on the most important topic of living the Christian life, but next time you read through the letters of the New Testament, notice how the exhortation to love is everywhere. In all of the New Testament, the word love and its variations is used 261 times. That’s a lot of love! I’ll end with a verse that says it all, I Peter 4:8: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” God loved us so much he gave his life for us in Christ, covering over the multitude of our sins, so we can realistically love others.
Recent Comments