Loving God and Others
This last week, we finished our series on Love for the month for February by talking about what it means to love family. Scripture has an interesting stance toward love of family, inviting us simultaneously to honor our parents in order to receive long life (Ex 20:12; Eph 6:1-4) while also warning us that following Jesus is so costly it may create division and strife between family members (Matt. 10:16-42; 12:46-50). So what does it look like for us to faithfully live out God’s two greatest commands – (1) to love God and (2) to love others – in the event that these two commands clash?
A Helpful Framework
First, let’s take a look at the first command: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and all your strength” (Luke 10:27). We often gloss over the 2nd half of this command without really parsing out its implications. We get it. We are supposed to love God a whole heck of a lot. But take a moment to consider how each of these areas play out in your life.
Loving God with all your heart involves directing and submitting to God all your emotions, your relational energy, even your very life-blood. Loving God with all your soul involves giving to God your consciousness, your will, your very being. Loving God with your entire mind means lending in devotion to God all your reason, your imagination, and your mental faculties to know God more. Loving God with all your strength means giving to God all your skills, all your resources, and all your work so that God’s name is glorified through your existence.
This first and greatest command is about orienting your entire self into a loving relationship with the Creator of the Universe. It is drastically important that we understand this first commandment because it provides the lens through which we understand the second. Loving God and loving others are not two competing commands, nor are they two completely complimentary commands. Rather our love of others is completely and inseparably bound up in our love of God. The way we love others is indicative of the way that we love God. The way we love God shapes and defines our response to others.
Not Peace but a Sword
This is vitally important for us when confronted with Jesus’ difficult saying:
Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And anyone who does not pick up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:34-38, NIV).
In Luke, Jesus amps up the language, “Anyone who comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes, even their own life – such a person cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26). These verses are hard to swallow for anyone who takes seriously Jesus’ commands to love others. Shouldn’t love bring peace? If we follow Jesus’ pattern of love, then why would Jesus bring division and enmity between those people who are suppose to be our closest loved ones?
Some have tried to tackle the problem in Luke by saying that Jesus only meant that we ought to seem to hate our family in comparison to our great love for Jesus. However, that neglects the strong sense in Matthew that allegiance with Jesus’ cause seems to involve some conflict between family members. Jesus really seems to mean that loving and following him means, at least at times, some radical departure from the idea of peaceful, unchallenged loving relationship with family.
A Redefinition
In order to understand Jesus’ teaching rightly, we may need to redefine our terms a bit. We often confuse love for feelings of fond affection toward another. By this definition, Luke is read so that we are supposed to have such a desire and fondness for Jesus that everything else seems trivial in comparison. Yet, while scripture talks about such fondness and desire at times, the primary way that it talks about love is a conscious choice to choose the welfare of another before your own. How else could we be expected to understand Jesus’ command to love our enemies? It would be absurd for Jesus to command us to have fond feelings for someone who has severely wounded us! Jesus instead commands us to choose good for those who have wronged us – to pray for them and seek their restoration into the kingdom of God. This does not require us to immediately desire long road trips and tandem bicycle rides with our enemies. It does require us to forgive as we have been forgiven and seek good for the other.
So if love means choosing good for the other, what does hate mean? It does not mean choosing evil for others, as such, but it does mean choosing something or someone above the other. This is what it means that God loved Jacob but hated Esau (Romans 9:8-16). God blessed Jacob and chose him for the inheritance of Israel. God did not choose Esau. He was spurned in favor of Israel.
Does loving one mean we must always forsake another? Yes…and no. Loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength means choosing allegiance to Jesus above all others. Yet allegiance to Jesus means allegiance to the one God of the universe who in humility entered into humanity with grace and vulnerability for the sake of hope and restoration of all into God’s presence.
Loving God and Others
So what does this mean for us practically? What does this mean when responding to our parents? Our siblings? Our friends and significant others? We do well to treat all others with honor, respect, compassion and patience just as God has done for us. Yet our tendency to desire the safety of those we love may sometimes results in our anger of their choices that lead into danger. God is good, but God is not always safe by our standards. Choosing to follow Christ sometimes means giving up cultural norms of security and success, and this can be troubling for us and our families. It brings division and bitterness.
The reality is that following God sometimes reveals the true difficulty in loving others. Orienting ourselves toward God’s will invites us to show charity and patience for our enemies AND in some ways to spurn the will of our friends when it conflicts with God’s will. Our family is thus turned into both friend and enemy and we are invited to love them as both. Living out these two greatest commands show us the fullness of God’s law – a love that encompasses friend and enemy alike in the pursuit of God’s kingdom on earth.
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