The Process of Love (Part One)

 The Process of Love (Part One) Sometime back, a little blurb from an email newsletter caught my attention. It was just a small section of the overall email, but it illustrates a predominant sentiment of our time. The blurb was about the 400th anniversary of thepublication of the King James Bible and some of the religious and political controversies involving it and other Bible versions. But after writing about the religious confusion of the past, the author wrote this: If there's a god, I don't think he/she/it would care what [holy] book or which version (or any book) you read, or what name you addressed him/her/it with, or how many times in a day you bowed, or what direction you faced, or how many rituals you observed, or which animalwas clean and which wasn't, or what day of the week you did what, or how many people you "saved". Any entity worthy of being called a god would be above it all, and would probably care more about how kind you were to others, and whether you left the world just a little bit better. (Author's emphasis.) In other words, once God and His righteous requirements are out of the picture, what is left is the vague and airy ideal to "just be a good person." Modern-day Protestantism fares better regarding principles to live by because it at least acknowledges the Bible and believes some of it. Yet Protestantism has its own form of "just be a good person." Try bringing God's law into the conversation,and many Protestants will retreat behind Romans 13:10, which says, "Lovedoes no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." From this proof-text, Protestantism hastily concludes that as long as a person has love, he has fulfilled the law, so there is no need to worry about any specifics, just as in the blurb. Indeed, love stands at the very core of true Christianity. The apostle Paul says in I Corinthians 13:13 that faith, hope, and love are the three great virtues that "abide" or continue, and "the greatest of these is love." But this greatest of virtues is also easily misunderstood because the source and origin of godly love is God. Thus, an individual's understandingof God's love wholly depends on his understanding of God. Because God is—and has been—a mystery to nearly every human being throughout history, His love is likewise shrouded in mystery. Those to whom God has revealed Himself and given His Spirit are the only ones who can make this love part of theircharacter. In addition, godly love is not something we "work up" within ourselves; instead, it is a fruit that is produced. Further, it must grow in the right conditions and takes time to ripen. We cannot begin with the technical meaning of the Greek word agape because the secular definition is quite different from its biblical usage. In general terms, however, this divine love can be described as "doing what is best for another person." Some have summed it up as "outgoing concern for one's fellow man."It is, in short, relating to God and His creation in the same way that the Father and the Son relate to each other and to the creation. There are some litmus tests we can use to evaluate whether something is an act of godly love. An obvious one is whether the act is in accordance with the law of God (IJohn 5:3). Godly love will always be done within the bounds of His law. A second test for determining whether what we say or do truly demonstrates godly love is the intent or motivation behind the word or deed. Two people can say the same thing or perform the same work, and it can be godly love for the one but notfor the other. The determining factor is why the words are said or the work is done. Paul gives examples of this in the opening verses of I Corinthians 13. In verse 1, Paul uses the example of the ability to speak in other languages. Where believers of different nationalities fellowship, that spiritual gift can be used to edifythe Body of Christ, which would be an act of love. Yet, if a possessor of that spiritual gift exercises it for selfish reasons, as it appears some did in Corinth, God is not glorified. In His ears, the sound jangles in discord because the speaker's self-centerednesswould detract from what satisfaction God might have received had the speaker spoken the truth. In I Corinthians 13:2, Paul mentions inspired speaking, perfect spiritual understanding and knowledge, and the dramatic exercising of faith. Like the gift of speaking other languages, these are also gifts of God. Christians can use them to honor and glorifyGod and to strengthen the Body, or they can use them to draw attention to themselves, which is self-love rather than godly love. Paul writes that if he used these gifts but was not motivated by love, he would be nothing. He would be utterly devoid of substance. In verse 3, he uses examples that everybody would agree are great acts of service and sacrifice: donating every earthly possession to feed the poor and physically sacrificing his body. Yet even these rare and tremendous works can be done forthe wrong reasons, in which case, Paul says, the person derives no benefit at all. In these three verses, the apostle uses examples of works that most people would consider indicators of great spirituality. However, he says, all of them are essentially meaningless unless the intent of the doer's heart is one of outgoing concernand focused on emulating the Father and the Son. All these gifts and acts could be used to serve the Body and glorify God if godly love is motivating the person. Conversely, they could be done with pride, vanity, and self-aggrandizement. A person could do them for the sake of appearances or because of a need for attention or approval. Such works can be used to serve othersor serve the self, depending on the heart's intent. It is here we begin to see the difficulty involved in the process of godly love. The intent of our heart must be correct for a thing to actually be godly love, yet Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us that our heart is "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Then God asks rhetorically, "Who can understand it?" It implies that none of us can—only God truly knows, as the next verse shows. Thus, it is possible to be doing good works and believe we are doing them for the right reason yet be deceiving ourselves. We might become righteously indignant and chew somebody out for something, reasoning within ourselves that we did it forhis or her good. That could be true. But it is also true that we tend to hide our true motivations from ourselves. In Part Two, we will consider how we can get an honest answer from our own heart about our motivations. - David C. Grabbe