What are we doing?

Or rather - what are we supposed to be doing?

The Beatles famously sang “all you need is love,” in the context of romantic human relationships. And they were wrong. But in the context of walking as Jesus’ disciple – well, they were pretty spot on.

Stop in the name of the Law

There is a lot of instruction in the Bible. More than 600 commandments, in fact, just in the Old Testament. This may be at least in part why a Pharisee once tried to test Jesus with a question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. And the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22:37-40

In the New Testament, both Paul and James tackled the same issue:

Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does not work evil against a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law.

Romans 13:8-10

Paul is saying that love – love of others, love of neighbor – fulfills the Law.

If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well.

James 2:8

James tell us that the “royal law” turns out to be loving your neighbor as yourself.

I always thought it odd that neither of these passages explicitly mention “Love the Lord your God” as the most important commandment, until I heard Dr. Del Tackett point out that it is by loving our neighbor that we love God, as Jesus Himself said in John 14:15 (“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments”). We show our love for Him – we show that we indeed belong to Him – by only one behavior: obedience. And most everything we are to do in obedience involves love of other.

This is a very specific love – in the Greek, agape. We do not have an English word that corresponds. Agape love is unconditional, self-sacrificial love such as Christ demonstrated on the cross. It grows out of the unmerited grace we are given when we become His.

Understanding all this, then, allows us to see how “love your neighbor as yourself” becomes the one law we must always fulfill, because only by loving Him can we receive the power and grace to love others this way. Dr. Tackett also notes that the Hebrew word for love, chesed, can be defined as “never stops seeking the good of enemies.” Which leaves us with this excellent definition of what we should seek in all of our relationships and interactions with other humans: a steadfast, sacrificial love that always seeks the good of others, seeking also to see the good in, of, and for them.

A definition which, by the way, also perfectly describes the love that characterizes our God. He loves us with a steadfast, sacrificial love (agape/chesed) that always seeks our good, too.

Loving our brethren

We didn’t hear yet from the Apostle John, but he had plenty to add on this topic.

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. The one who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we have known love, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.

1 John 3:14-18

This passage is one of several in which John argues that this sacrificial love should characterize the relationships between disciples of Jesus. See 1 John 4:7-21 for a masterful example. This love is an example to the world.

Loving our neighbor

So the overarching commandments are to love God, through whom we can love one another, and love our neighbor. “Love one another” does generally refer to our fellow disciples. But who is our neighbor, exactly?

In fact, this was another question Jesus was asked after discussing the greatest commandment. And our Lord responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan. You can read this in Luke 10:25-37. He was telling us that we don’t need to ask “who is our neighbor” so much as we need to ask “how can I become a good neighbor”? And the Good Samaritan story clearly teaches that we are to become a good neighbor to everyone we encounter. Each human being in our sphere – wherever and however we encounter them – that individual is a unique image-bearer of our holy God. As such, we are to love them as Christ loved us.

It is not enough to say, “Well, I love everyone.” Because first of all, you don’t. Love is an act of the will, not a warm feeling. And you’re not actively loving everyone, no matter how you feel:

It is easier easier to be enthusiastic about Humanity with a capital “H” than it is to love individual men and women, especially those who are uninteresting, exasperating, depraved, or otherwise unattractive. Loving everybody, in general, may be an excuse for loving nobody in particular.

C.S. Lewis

Yes. We are even called to love those people who are supremely difficult to love. The hostile, the rude, the offensive, the hurtful, the thoughtless. Those behaviors don’t negate our responsibility to embody love and grace toward those individuals. This, obviously requires a deep dependence on the Holy Spirit.

Let’s get personal

Love in action – fulfilling that royal law – involves personal, one-on-one relationships. Relationships where we seek the Holy Spirit’s power to love that neighbor the way He loves us. In fact, building personal relationships with those whom God has placed in our sphere, and seeking to lovingly meet their needs, is precisely how we can fulfill the royal command to love our neighbor.

And along with building relationships in our normal everyday sphere, we may need to expand that sphere to seek out those we might not encounter in our day-to-day existence. Building relationships with those in need is the only way to love them as our neighbor, as well.

In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus explained how the sheep and goats would be divided at the Judgment, and it all has to do with how we treat the “least of these.” This passage, and quite a few more, speak of categories of needy people – the poor (hungry, thirsty, naked); the captive (prisoner, oppressed); the sick (blind, lepers, wretched); the stranger we are to invite in; the widow; the orphan.

We do well when we actively seek to minister specifically to these categories in our culture: the poor, the homeless, the prisoner, the hospitalized, the invalid at home, the newcomer in your neighborhood or workplace; the abandoned wife or widow, the child in the foster system. All of these fall under the banner of “neighbor” – and we are to build relationships and love them, too.

Church, how are we doing on that?

Loving our neighbor – such a simple yet challenging concept. But the Holy Spirit stands ready in each of us to help us put that concept into action.

For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Galatians 5:14

More on this topic more in coming posts.