Chapter Seventeen: Love
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Love
Over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
COLOSSIANS 3:14
When Paul lists those godly traits he calls the fruit of the Spirit, he puts love first —very likely to emphasize its importance. Love is the overall grace from which all the others grow; I have reserved it for last in these studies because, as Paul indicates in Colossians 3:14, love binds all the other virtues together in perfect unity.
Devotion to God is the only motivation acceptable to God for the development and exercise of Christian character (see chapter 5). But devotion to God finds its outward expression in loving one another. Or, to state it another way, our devotion to God is validated by our love for other people. As the apostle John puts it, “Anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:20-21).
We cannot truly love God without loving one another.
To recognize that there is someone I do not love is to say to God, “I do not love you enough to love that person.” This is not to deny the reality of spiritual struggle in loving a particular person, because it often exists. I am referring to the attitude of not even wanting to love the person, of being content to allow a lack of love for someone to reside in my heart unchecked and unchallenged.
Jesus linked loving God to loving man in Matthew 22:37-40, when He was asked about the greatest commandment in the Law. George Bethune observes of this passage, “The command to man to ‘love God with all his heart, and with all his mind, and with all his strength,’ is followed by a command to ‘love his neighbor as himself,’ which could not be, unless love to our neighbor is included in love to God; for how else can we give all our heart to God, and love ourselves and our neighbor too?”[49]
Devotion to God is the ultimate motivation for Christian character, but it is also true that love for our brother is the more proximate motivation for the exercise of Christian graces among one another. If we rephrased the virtues of love in 1 Corinthians 13 in terms of motivational statements, they might sound something like this:
Expressing love in this manner, as a motivational factor, helps us see what Paul had in mind when he said that love binds together all the virtues of Christian character. Love is not so much a character trait as the inner disposition of the soul that produces them all. Bethune says love is “a holy, abiding and vigorous spirit, which rules the whole man, ever directing him to the humble and loving fulfillment of all his duties to God and man.”[50] But although love may be more a motivational force than an actual display of Christian virtue, it always results in actions on our part. Love inclines us and directs us to be kind, to forgive, to give of ourselves to one another. Therefore, Peter says to us, “Above all, love each other deeply” (1 Peter 4:8).
GOD IS LOVE
We have already noted in chapter 10 that the apostle John makes two statements concerning the essential nature of God: “God is light” and “God is love.” Love is not defined here as an action, nor even as a character trait, but as an essential part of God’s nature. As Bethune notes, “God was love long before he had made any creatures to be the objects of his love, even from all eternity.”[51]
God is infinitely glorious in all His attributes, but the Bible seems to give preeminence to His holiness and to His goodness or love. In Exodus 33 there is an instructive relationship between God’s goodness and God’s glory. In response to Moses’ request, “Now show me your glory,” God replies, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence” (verses 18-19). Yet in verse 22 God says, “When my glory passes by . . .” It appears from the correlation of verses 18 and 22 that God equates His glory with His goodness. And how does God describe His goodness? Exodus 34:6-7 says, “He passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.’”
The children of Israel seemed to recognize God’s goodness as the expression of His glory. At the dedication of Solomon’s temple, according to 2 Chronicles 7:2, the glory of the Lord so filled the temple that the priests could not enter. Then verse 3 tells us,
When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the LORD above the temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, “He is good; his love endures forever.”
Notice the Israelites’ response when they saw God’s glory: “He is good.” God’s goodness is the preeminent expression of His glory. Therefore, if we desire to be Godlike and to glorify God in our lives, we must make the cultivation and exercise of love in our hearts an urgent priority. There are three overall prayer requests I make for myself and for others for whom I pray: that I and they would grow in holiness, humility, and love. Of these three, however, love has priority, for if I love God I will seek to be holy, and if I love other people I will seek to be humble, putting their interests ahead of mine.
If love to God and to our neighbor should be our highest priority, then it is important for us to know how love expresses itself. First Corinthians 13 is, of course, the most familiar description of love. The list of qualities covered in that passage have, for the most part, already been addressed in previous chapters of this book. However, there are two other Scripture passages that seem to sum up the essence of love into two overall traits that will be easily remembered. These passages are 1 John 3:16-18 and 4:7-11.
LOVE GIVES, WHATEVER THE COST
In 1 John 3:16, John says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” The key idea here is that love gives, even at great cost to itself. Jesus gave His life for us. John 3:16 tells us that the Father so loved that He gave His only Son to die for us. In Jesus’ incarnation and death, both the Father and the Son gave in response to our desperate plight. Nothing but the Savior’s incarnation and death would suffice to rescue us. The cost was infinite, but God the Father and God the Son loved us so much they did not hesitate to pay the cost to meet our need.
John says in his epistle that we too should give even at great cost to ourselves —we should “lay down our lives for our brothers.” In the context of Jesus’ sacrifice, John’s challenge to us seems overwhelming and impossible —the ultimate act of love. But John’s application is very practical and down-to-earth: He asks that we share with our brother in need. We are to do this out of pity and compassion, however, not duty. We are to put our love into practice by meeting our brother’s need, even at great cost to us.
There are tremendous needs in the world today, and we Christians ought to be involved in meeting those needs. John is very clear on this point: “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” (1 John 3:17). Paul tells us the Macedonian Christians exhibited this kind of love: “Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability” (2 Corinthians 8:2-3). They gave out of love and at great cost to themselves to meet the material needs of Christian brothers in Jerusalem, whom they had never even met. We should give to our church and to the work of missions, but we should not overlook the fact that the most well-known passage in the Bible on giving, 2 Corinthians 8–9, has to do with giving to the poor.
But material needs are not the only ones our brother has; often he needs a listening ear, a word of encouragement, or a helping hand. But to meet those needs requires us to give of ourselves —our time, our attention, and often our heart. This can be more difficult than giving money. Paul said of Timothy, “I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare” (Philippians 2:20). As he compliments Timothy, Paul adds a striking indictment of others: “Everyone looks out for his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ” (verse 21).
To meet the nonmaterial needs of others costs getting out of ourselves, our concerns, and our interests. We cannot take a genuine interest in the welfare of others, as did Timothy, unless we are willing to become involved in their interests and their concerns. And we cannot do this unless we are willing to forego our own interests. But love willingly pays the price.
LOVE SACRIFICES TO FORGIVE
The second passage in which John instructs us in the meaning of love is 1 John 4:7-11. Immediately following his declaration that “God is love,” John says,
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Once again John points us to God’s sacrifice in sending His Son into the world that we might live through Him. But the central thought is that God gave in order that He might forgive. He sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. The concept of atonement is best expressed by the marginal reading of the New International Version: “the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away” our sins. God gave His Son, who took away our sins by bearing in His own body God’s wrath, thus turning away that wrath from us. God’s justice required that our sin be punished, and forgiveness was impossible as long as justice was unsatisfied. So God gave His Son in order that He might forgive us. He forgave at great cost to Himself.
Now John once again applies God’s love to our relationships with one another. He says that because God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Do we love one another enough to forgive each other, with or without apologies for wrongs done to us? So often we want to exact the last ounce of remorse and repentance from our erring brother before we will even consider forgiving him. But God did not do this. When we were still sinners, still His enemies, He sent His Son to die for us so that He might forgive us. And John urges us to do likewise.
Forgiveness cost God His Son on the cross, but what does it cost us to forgive one another? Forgiving costs us our sense of justice. We all have this innate sense deep within our souls, but it has been perverted by our selfish sinful natures. We want to see “justice” done, but the justice we envision satisfies our own interests. We must realize that justice has been done. God is the only rightful administrator of justice in all of creation, and His justice has been satisfied. In order to forgive our brother, we must be satisfied with God’s justice and forego the satisfaction of our own.
I recall a personal struggle a number of years ago to love one of my brothers in Christ. One evening the Holy Spirit addressed to my mind the rather startling question, “Do you believe I love him just as he is?” I hadn’t thought of that before, but I did concede that surely God must love him just as he was, faults and all. And then God pressed this question to my mind, “If I can love him, can you?” God was teaching me to love as He loves, to forgive as He forgives. And love forgives at great cost to itself; it does not demand justice or even changed behavior from its brother.
This forgiving aspect of love enables us to be patient with one another and to live at peace with one another. It enables us to deal gently with our brother, even when he sins against us. If we are to grow in the grace of love, we must be ready to forgive, even at great cost to ourselves.
LOVE REACHES OUT
Often in our teaching on love, we stress —and rightly so —that biblical love is not emotions or feelings but attitudes and actions that seek the best interests of the other person, regardless of how we feel toward him. W. E. Vine says, for example, “Christian love . . . is not an impulse from the feelings, it does not always run with the natural inclinations, nor does it spend itself only upon those for whom some affinity is discovered.”[52] An illustration from The Pursuit of Holiness provides an example of this kind of love:
Suppose you were meditating on 1 Corinthians 13, the great love chapter. As you think about the chapter, you realize the importance of love and you also see the practical outworkings of love: Love is patient and kind and does not envy. You ask yourself, “Am I impatient or unkind or envious toward anyone?” As you think about this, you realize you are envious toward Joe at work who seems to be getting all the breaks. You confess this sin to God, being very specific to name Joe and your sinful reaction to his good fortune. You ask God to bless him even more and to give you a spirit of contentment so that you will not continue to envy Joe, but will instead love him. You might memorize 1 Corinthians 13:4 and think about it as you see Joe at work. You even look for ways to help him. Then you do the same thing tomorrow and the next day and the next till finally you see God working a spirit of love in your heart toward Joe.[53]
So love is very much a matter of actions rather than emotions. However, although this emphasis on acts of love is certainly necessary, we can sometimes give the impression that love doesn’t involve any emotion —that it is entirely an act of the will, of one’s duty, regardless of how one feels. We can even promote the “I can love him but I can’t like him” type of attitude. The Bible does not support such an unbalanced concept of love.
In describing the Christian’s love toward his brother, the New International Version uses such expressions as “Love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22) and “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love” (Romans 12:10). Other translations choose such words as fervently, fondly, and affectionately in the same passages to describe the love Christians ought to have for one another. Three different writers use the expression “brotherly love” or “love as brothers,” all indicating that Christian love is to be characterized by an affection that family members have —or ought to have —for one another (see Hebrews 13:1; 1 Peter 3:8).
All of these passages from the Bible indicate that our emotions are involved. We are to reach out and embrace our brother with a deep fervency of spirit, in our hearts if not in actuality. Obviously such a fervency of spirit cannot substitute for loving actions, but surely it should accompany them. We dare not settle for less.
From the contents of Paul’s epistles to the churches, we can safely say that the two churches that caused him the most grief were Corinth and Galatia. Yet listen to the emotion in Paul’s voice when he writes to the Corinthians, “I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you” (2 Corinthians 2:4). And to the Galatians he wrote, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!” (4:19-20). Distress, anguish, tears, and pains of childbirth are all terms calculated to express the deep emotion of Paul’s love toward these people. That their actions made them difficult to love only deepened the intensity of his love for them. And that love was not just an impersonal act of writing them letters of correction in their best interest; he reached out and embraced them even while he rebuked them.
One of the greatest moments of my Christian life occurred one day when I opened my arms and warmly embraced a brother in Christ whom I had somewhat disliked for several years. God had so dealt with me that I finally realized that to think about anyone, I will love him, but I can’t like him, was a great deal less than God’s standard of love and was therefore a sinful attitude on my part.
Love is more than a mere act of the will. Going back again to Bethune’s definition, love is a vigorous spirit that rules the whole man, ever directing him to the humble and loving fulfillment of his duties to God and man. We should do more than just decide to do acts of love, we should desire to do them. This is not to say we are to do acts of love only when we feel like doing them; it is to say we are not to content ourselves merely with acts of the will, good as those acts may be. We are to lay hold on God in prayer until He gives us that vigorous and loving spirit that delights to reach out and embrace our brother and to meet his need or forgive his sin, even if it is at great cost to ourselves.
GROWING IN LOVE
It is obvious that the love we have been considering can be produced in our hearts only by the Spirit of God. Paul wrote to the Thessalonian believers, “You yourselves have been taught by God to love each other” (1 Thessalonians 4:9), yet just a few words later Paul says, “We urge you, brothers, to [love] more and more” (verse 10). Once again, and especially as we draw to the close of these studies on godly character, we must review this principle: Godlike character is both the fruit of the Spirit as He works within us and the result of our personal efforts. We are both totally dependent upon His working within us and totally responsible for our own character development. This is an apparent contradiction to our either/or type of thinking, but it is a truth taught over and over in the Scriptures.
How then can we fulfill our responsibility to love “more and more”? Recognizing that love is an inner disposition of the soul produced only by the Holy Spirit, what can we do to fulfill our responsibility? First, as we have already seen, the Spirit of God uses His Word to transform us. Therefore, if we want to grow in love, we must saturate our minds with Scriptures that describe love and show its importance to us. First Corinthians 13:1-3, for example, tells us of the emptiness of all knowledge, abilities, and zeal apart from love. First Corinthians 13:4-7 describes love in terms of specific attitudes and actions. Romans 13:8-10 describes love in terms of fulfilling the law of God in our lives. We have already looked at the two passages in 1 John in terms of giving and forgiving. Do you truly want to grow in love? Then you must begin by meditating on some of these love passages.
The second thing we must do is pray for the Holy Spirit to apply His Word to our hearts and to our daily lives. Paul did not just exhort the Thessalonians to grow in love; he looked to the Lord to work in their hearts: “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you” (1 Thessalonians 3:12). As we see instances in our lives of failing to love, we should confess them to God, asking Him to help us grow in those specific areas and be more sensitive to such occasions in the future.
Finally, we must obey. We must do those things that love dictates. We must do no harm to our neighbor (see Romans 13:10); we must meet our neighbor’s needs and forgive our neighbor’s wrongs against us. We must put his interests before our own, and we must reach out and embrace our brother in Christ. But we must do all this in dependence upon the Holy Spirit, who works in us to will and to act according to His good purpose.
Does this all sound too methodical? Can we in fact structure love? No; nor can we structure the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. But we can structure our responsibilities in seeking to grow in love. We can decide to meditate on Scripture —and set aside a time to do it. We can decide to pray over our need to grow in love —and set aside time to do it. We can think of people who need our time, our interest, or our money, and plan to meet those needs. We can admit our failures to love in specific situations and bring those failures to God in confession and dependence upon Him for His help in the future.
All these things we can do, and we must do, if we are to grow in the grace of love. But we must do them all in the utter realization that only God can cause love to grow within our souls. And we know that it is His will that we grow in love.
As we do our part, we can count on God to perform His, not because our working obligates Him to work but because He is a gracious and loving God and He wants us to become gracious and loving children of His.