"Love" is a used and abused word. In English, Latin, and in quite a few other languages, there is one word for love. Hence, this one word does a lot of heavy lifting.
In Greek, the language in which the New Testament was written, there are four words for love, each referring to a different kind of love. In Jesus' new commandment- that His disciples love one other as He has loved them- the word is agape. Agape is self-giving, self-sacrificing love. Jesus sets His love for us (collectively and individually) as the standard by which His disciples can be known. Hence, it is a love that requires us to transcend our own limitations.
Elsewhere in the Johaninne corpus this is laid out:
The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him? Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth (1 John 3:16-18)To love like Christ loves is what it means to be holy, nothing else. Literally, holiness means nothing else than loving like Christ loves me (and you, thus us). Yet, it is hard, really hard, to love like Christ loves. It is so hard that to love like Christ loves requires God's grace. Grace is the means by which I am able to overcome my limitations.
"In this is love", pay attention- "not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another (1 John 4:10-11).
Adherence to the Lord's new commandment, which can never amount to stringent rule-keeping but is always a matter of the heart, of what we might call the proper interior disposition, is how the One who sits on the throne makes all things new.
La Jérusalem céleste, extraite de la Tapisserie de l'Apocalypse du Château d'Angers, France.
Salvation history begins in a garden. It culminates, however, in a city, "the holy city, a new Jerusalem" (Revelation 21:2). A city is where people live together. Like a lot of people my age perhaps, when I think of a harmonius city or town, my mind goes to Richard Scary's Busytown. Granted, this is highly sentimental but it gives me a toehold. Perhaps a better and certainly a more theological starting point is Jacques Ellul's The Meaning of the City.
Loving like Christ loves or, stated another way, living out of Christ's for me, is how I am made new. As Saint Paul observed: "So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). This requires me to experience Christ's love, His tender gaze, His unfailing patience, His limitless mercy. Like most people, I respond to tenderness better than I respond to confrontation.
As it turns out, in the end, The Beatles were right, "All you need is love." It bears asking, à la Howard Jones, "What Is Love?" According to the Lord, the kind of love you need requires your all, requires all of you.
Newness brought about by love, by agape, is a rich vein that runs throughout our uniquely Christian scriptures. It is also why, in the words of Paul and Barnabas taken from Acts, "It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22). To love the way Christ loves is suffer like Christ suffers. At the end of the day, this and only this is the cost of discipleship.
I will be the first to admit, I have a long way to go. Frankly, I suck at loving others the way Christ loves me. It's so much that I fail as it is that I often outright refuse to love. I don't only do this frequently but daily, even several times a day.
Do you believe some people are just un-lovable? Influenced by the devil perhaps to do his will on earth?
ReplyDeleteCan we really love as Jesus loved/s us? He was/is Divine. We are not.
God bless.
I believe very strongly that God loves everyone, no exceptions. This is never the question. The question for each of us, Do I love God? If I say I love God and yet hate my neighbor, as scripture teaches, I am a liar (1 John 1:20). Christ’s love is the standard. The Lord’s standard clearly exceeds my ability. Hence, I must recognize my need for help to love others as Christ loves me. The help God gives me to love beyond my own capacity is grace.
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