First and last word in Christian theology and ethics. It is therefore important to understand clearly this exceedingly ambiguous term.
In the Old Testament. Sexual love is frankly recognized in stories of Adam and Eve, Jacob and Rachel, and in the Song of Songs. The Hebrew word can also mean tormenting lust (2 Sm 13:1–15), parental love (Gn 37:4), and both sexual and divine love in one context (Hos 3:1). It is used too of the love of friends (1 Sm 20:17), David’s love having some ground in gratitude, Jonathan’s in admiration, but with an element of altruistic self-renunciation as the crown prince stepped down for David’s sake. For this strong, unselfish love the OT usually employed another word, almost untranslatable, hesed, rendered sometimes “loyalty” (2 Sm 22:26 RSV), more often “steadfast love” (Gn 39:21) or “kindness.”
The connotation of this significant word is clear in Hosea 2:19, 20: “I will betroth you for ever … in righteousness … justice … steadfast love … faithfulness”; in Job 6:14, 15, where kindness is compared with treachery; and in 1 Samuel 20:8, which speaks of covenanted kindness. This unshakable, steadfast love of God is contrasted with the unpredictable, capricious moods of heathen deities. Hesed is not an emotional response to beauty, merit, or kindness, but a moral attitude dedicated to another’s good, whether or not that other is lovable, worthy, or responsive (see Dt 7:7–9).
This enduring loyalty, rooted in an unswerving purpose of good, could be stern, determined to discipline a wayward people, as several prophets warned. But God’s love does not change. Through exile and failure it persisted with infinite patience, neither condoning evil nor abandoning the evildoers. It has within it kindness, tenderness, and compassion (Pss 86:15; 103:1–18; 136; Hos 11:1–4), but its chief characteristic is an accepted moral obligation for another’s welfare, which no ill-desert or want of gratitude will quench.
Nevertheless response was expected. The Law enjoined wholehearted love and gratitude for God’s choosing and redeeming Israel (Dt 6:20–25). This was to be shown in worship, and especially in humane treatment of the poor, the defenseless, the resident alien, slaves, widows, and all suffering oppression and cruelty. Hosea similarly expects steadfast love among men to result from the steadfast love of God toward men (6:6; 7:1–7; 10:12, 13).
Love for God, and for “your neighbor as yourself” (Lv 19:18) are thus linked in Israel’s law and prophecy. While much love of another kind lies within the OT, these are the major points: God’s loving initiative, the moral quality of love, and the close relation of love for God with love among men.
In the New Testament. Christianity inherited this strongly moral connotation of love, not always remembered by those who sentimentalize the love ethic.
Agapē. Of Greek words available, eros (sexual love) does not occur in the NT; phileō, spontaneous natural affection, with more feeling than reason, occurs some 25 times, with philadelphia (brotherly love) 5 times, and philia (friendship) only in James 4:4; storgē, natural affection between kinfolk, appears occasionally in compounds. By far the most frequent word is agapē, generally assumed to mean moral goodwill which proceeds from esteem, principle, or duty, rather than attraction or charm. Agapē means to love the undeserving, despite disappointment and rejection; the difference between agapaō and phileō is difficult to sustain in all passages. Agapē is especially appropriate for religious love. Agapē was long believed to be a Christian coinage, but pagan occurrences have recently been claimed. The verb agapaō was frequent in the Greek OT. Though agapē has more to do with moral principle than with inclination or liking, it never means the cold religious kindness shown from duty alone, as scriptural examples abundantly prove.
The Synoptic Gospels. Jesus embodied the concept of hesed in the all-caring, all-inclusive fatherhood of God, shown toward just and unjust, far exceeding the divine concern for ephemeral grass, falling sparrow, or untoiling lilies of the field. God’s sons are freed, by their confidence in the Father’s love, from fretful care about material provision and personal safety to seek first God’s will and kingdom. This is the Father’s world; the Father knows; the Father loves. For the children of a loving Father, life is no struggle for existence but a serenity born of trust in a basically friendly universe.
In a sinful and suffering world divine love will show itself supremely in compassion and healing for the distressed and in redemptive concern for the alienated and the self-despairing. Hence the kingdom Christ proclaimed offered good news to the poor, to captives, the blind, the oppressed (Mt 11:2–5; Lk 4:18); while the attitude of Jesus toward those ostracized, despised, or grieving over sin in some far country of the soul assured them of forgiveness and a welcome return to the Father’s house (Lk 15). Such forgiveness was free, its only precondition being readiness to receive it in repentance and faith. Even here, however, the moral clarity of divine love is not obscured. For the obdurate, the unforgiving, the self-righteous, Jesus has only warning of the consequences of sin and the judgment of God (Lk 13:1–5); for the wavering or impulsive, stern discipline and unrelenting standards (Mt 10:34–39; Mk 10:17–22; Lk 9:23–26, 57–62).
Moreover, the good news of divine love does impose its own obligation: to love God and to love others as God does (Mt 5:44–48). The first and greatest commandment in God’s Law is, “You shall love the Lord your God.… And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (Mt 22:35–40, citing Lv 19:18; Dt 6:5).
The first commandment is not identical with, lost in, or only fulfilled through the second; it is separate and primary. What Jesus meant by loving God is indicated by his own habits of public worship, private prayer, absolute obedience; by the requirement “Him only shalt thou serve,” not dividing devotion with mammon, hallowing the divine name in daily business by avoiding empty oaths; by his zeal for the Scriptures, his defense of the sabbath, his unshaken trust and frequent thanksgiving (Mt 4:1–11; 5:33–37; 6:1–6, 9, 24; 7:21; 12:50; 23:16–22; Lk 4:16; 22:42).
Love for one’s neighbor is nowhere defined but everywhere illustrated. In the parable of the good Samaritan, “neighbor” is shown to mean anyone near enough to help, and love involves whatever service the neighbor’s situation demands. The parable of the sheep and goats shows love feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting with kindness the sick and the imprisoned. In the untiring example of Jesus love heals, teaches, adapts instruction to the hearers by parable and symbolic language, defends those criticized or despised, pronounces forgiveness, comforts the bereaved, befriends the lonely. We are to love others as he has loved us and as we love ourselves, which means “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them” (Mt 7:12). Such imaginative transfer of self-love does good without expecting return, never returns ill treatment, ensures unfailing courtesy even to the lowliest, sustains thoughtful understanding that tempers judgment.
Nevertheless love deals frankly with human weakness and wickedness. Jesus prays for Peter, but not that he shall be spared temptation; he rebukes disciples, warns Jerusalem and Judas, makes Peter painfully retract his denials, accepts that love may have to lay down its life. Christ’s love is no timid meekness, no sentimental mildness, inoffensive and ineffectual, helpless in face of the world’s evil. It is a strong determination to seek others’ highest good in all circumstances, at any cost. On that simple but demanding principle hang all moral obligation and divine law. To love is enough.
But it is also imperative. To Jesus the outstanding sin was lovelessness, the willful omission of any possible good, passing by on the other side while others suffer, ignoring the destitute at one’s gate, withholding forgiveness. Lovelessness was made worse by self-righteousness, censoriousness, the religious insensitivity that ignores another’s distress to preserve some petty ritual regulation. At the last, obedience to or neglect of the law of love will determine everyone’s eternal destiny (Mt 25:31–46).
Paul. The apostolic church quickly grasped the revolutionary principle that love is enough. Paul’s declaration that love fulfills the whole law is almost a quotation from Jesus. His exposition of various commandments against adultery, killing, stealing, and coveting is summarized in loving, because love can do no wrong to a neighbor (Rom 13:8–10). Ephesians 4:25–5:2, where all bitterness, anger, lying, stealing, slander, and malice are to be replaced by tenderness, forgiveness, kindness, among those who by love are made members one of another, makes the same point another way.
Love is, for Paul, “the law of Christ,” supreme and sufficient (Gal 5:14; 6:2), and Paul neatly defines what alone “avails” in Christianity as “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). He insists that the supreme manifestation of the Spirit which Christians should covet is “the more excellent way” of love (1 Cor 12:27–13:13; cf. Rom 5:5; Gal 5:22). Here too he contrasts love with five other expressions of religious zeal much prized at Corinth to show that each is profitless without love (1 Cor 13:1–3). He ends the chapter by comparing love with faith and hope, the other enduring elements of religious experience, and declares love to be the greatest.
Paul’s description of love in action includes liberality, acts of mercy, and hospitality; avoidance of revenge; sympathy that weeps; rejoicing with others; sharing of weakness, shame, or need; restoring, supporting, and upbuilding others, giving them all honor, kindness, forgiveness, encouragement; restraining criticism, even of the divisive, overscrupulous “weaker brother”—the list is almost endless. More generally, love is revealed as a quality of activity, of thinking, and of suffering (1 Cor 13:4–8). In brief, love does no harm and omits no good; and it is God’s Law.
But for motive Paul appeals beyond duty. To love we owe everything in salvation. God shows his love in that Christ died for us; out of his great love he made us alive in Christ; and in that love we live, by it we conquer, and from it nothing shall separate us (Rom 5:8; 8:32, 37–39; 2 Cor 13:14; 2 Thes 2:16; Eph 2:4; Ti 3:4, 5). God’s love is almost indistinguishable from Christ’s. “The love of Christ controls us” reveals the experiential heart of Paul’s thinking (Gal 2:20; 2 Cor 5:14; Eph 5:2, 25). Our love reflects the love first “poured into our hearts” (Rom 5:5), and is directed toward Christ (1 Cor 7; 16:22; Eph 6:24) and toward others, whom we love for his sake.
The love of God, experienced through Christ, returning in love for God, for Christ, and for his people—such is Christian love as Paul analyzed it.
John. What John later recalled, and reflected upon, forms the crown of biblical teaching about love. For John, love was the foundation of all that had happened—“God so loved the world …” (Jn 3:16; 16:27; 17:23). This is how we know love at all: Christ laid down his life for us (1 Jn 3:16). The mutual love of Father, Son, and disciples, must be the fundamental fact in Christianity, because God himself is love (1 Jn 4:8, 16).
We know this by the incarnation and by the cross (1 Jn 4:9, 10). Thus we know and believe the love God has for us, and that love itself is divine (“of God”). It follows that “he who loves is born of God.” “He who does not love does not know God,” nor “the message” of the gospel; “is in the darkness,” “is not of God,” and “remains in death.” No one has ever seen God; nevertheless “if we love, … God abides in us” and we in God.
God’s love is thus prior and original; if we love at all, it is “because he first loved us.” Our love is directed first toward God, and John is exceedingly searching in his tests of that Godward love. It demands that we “love not the world,” that we “keep his word, … his commandments,” and that we love our brother. This commandment we received from Christ, “that he who loves God should love his brother also,” for “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Twelve times John stresses the duty of mutual loyalty and love. Indeed, if one closes his heart against his brother, “how does God’s love abide in him?”
This emphasis upon the mutual love of Christians has been held a serious limitation of the love Jesus required. “Your brother” appears to have supplanted “your neighbor.” In this respect the commandment given in the upper room (Jn 13:34) is “new” compared with that in Matthew 22:39 (citing Lv 19:18), and the circumstances explain why. The night on which Jesus was betrayed was shadowed by the surrounding world’s hostility, the imminent crucifixion, and the defection of Judas. All the future depended upon the mutual loyalty of the 11 disciples, standing together under social pressure. By the time of John’s letter, new defections had rent the church. A perversion of the gospel called Gnosticism, essentially intellectualist, proud, “giving no heed to love” (Ignatius), had drawn away leaders and adherents (1 Jn 2:19, 26). Once again mutual loyalty was all-important, and John wrote expressly to consolidate and maintain the apostolic fellowship (1 Jn 1:3).
However, love for one’s brethren does not exclude, but instead leads on to, a wider love (cf. 2 Pt 1:7). John insists that God loved the whole world (Jn 3:16; 1 Jn 2:2; 4:14). Moreover, if love fails within the Christian fellowship, it certainly will not flourish beyond it, but evaporate in mere words (1 Jn 3:18).
In countering the loveless conceit of gnostic Christianity, John’s concern was with the basic commandment of love to God and man as at once the criterion and the consummation of true Christian life. He does not, therefore, detail the many-sided expressions of love. For description of love in action, his mind recalls Christ’s words about “keeping commandments” and “laying down life” in sacrifice (Jn 15:10, 13; 1 Jn 3:16), and he mentions especially love’s noticing a brother’s need, and so sharing this world’s goods (1 Jn 3:17). Terse as these expressions are, they contain the heart of Christian love. John’s forthright realism in testing all religious claims ensures that for him love could be no vague sentimentalism.
The Christian ideal can only be socially fulfilled within a disciple band, a divine kingdom, the Father’s family, the Christian fellowship. In Scripture love is no abstract idea, conceived to provide a self-explanatory, self-motivating “norm” to resolve the problem in every moral situation. It is rooted in the divine nature, expressed in the coming and death of Christ, experienced in salvation, and so kindled within the saved. Thus it is central, essential, and indispensable, to Christianity. For God is love.
R.E.O. WHITE
See GOD, BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF; GRACE; MERCY; WRATH OF GOD.
Bibliography. K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 1.2, 371–401; V.P. Furnish, The Love Command in the NT; C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves; J. Moffat, Love in the NT; L. Morris, Testaments of Love; A. Nygren, Agape and Eros; N. Snaith, The Distinctive Ideas of the OT; C. Spicq, Agape in the NT, 3 vols.
R.E.O. White, “Love,” Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 1357–1360.
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