The Love Commands of Christ
I close this series on the commands of Christ with the most important and comprehensive: the Love Commands. I count these commands seven times in the gospels (Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 6:27; Matthew 5:44; 19:19; John 13:34) and four times echoed in the epistles (Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8; I John 4:7). As Paul put it: “The greatest of these is love(I Corinthians 13:13).” There are three main love commands: 1) Love God and neighbor; 2) Love your enemies; 3) Love one another.
When Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment he joined two Old Testament commands: Love God with all your heart mind, soul and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5) and love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18).
There were 613 commandments in the Jewish faith. Neither saint of C.P.A. could keep count. The prophet Micah had the great Old Testament summary. He reduced the 613 to three: “What does the Lord require of thee but to do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).” Jesus reduced the 613 to two: Love of God with all you are and love your neighbor as yourself.
Here is the great purpose of the church: The increase in the love of God and neighbor. It should be in every church’s mission statement. St. Augustine had a rule for Biblical interpretation. How do we know our interpretation of scripture is on the right track? Answer: does it increase the love of God and neighbor?
I
The great Hebrew affirmation of faith is the Shema: “Hear, O Israel. The Lord is our God. The Lord is One”—which can be summarized: God is One.
The great Islamic affirmation of faith is the Shahada: “There is no God but God; and Muhammed is His messenger”—which can be summarized: God is God.
The great Christian affirmation of faith is a story, summarized in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”—which can be summarized: “God is Love”.
John Wesley and his brother Charles were searching for how to be more holy and Christ-like. They worked strenuously for a kind of Christian perfection, but joy and peace eluded them. They traveled across England to visit William Law, a famous spiritual writer and guide, and told him of their frustration. Law said they were making something complicated and burdensome out of Christianity. “Religion”, he said, “is the plainest and simplest thing in the world. It is just this: ‘We love because he first loved us.’” 1
Our love of God begins here: in God’s love of us. Many have grown up with a fear of God: God as judge, as harsh task master. But Jesus is, as one has quipped, the answer to God’s bad reputation.
So let’s begin with our love of God, with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. We often jump to the second part of the greatest commandment, the love of neighbor, but let’s dwell a little on our love of God.
We do so with our hearts—that is with our emotions. Song is one of the best ways we love God with our hearts.
And with our minds. We don’t check our minds at the door when we enter church. Theology at its best is the love and praise of God with our minds.
And with our souls—as God dwells in us and we in God.
And with our strength—with our action. For some people the heart path is their primary way to love God. They hit the world heart first. For other people the mind path is their primary way to love God. They hit the world brain first. For others the action path is their primary way to love God. They hit the world action first. But all are important dimensions in the love of God.
II
That’s half of the command. The other half is the love of neighbor. The two are always connected. The desert Father, Dorothes of Gaza taught his disciples to draw a circle with a compass. God is the center point, and we are on the circumference of the center. Then he drew lines from the circumference to the center. These lines are ourselves on our journey toward God. As our lines draw closer to God they also draw closer to the other lines. The closer we get to God, the closer we get to others. 2
In Luke’s telling of the greatest commandment a lawyer comes to Jesus and asks “who then is my neighbor?” Which was another way of asking, whom am I commanded to love and whom do I not have to love?
And Jesus answered with a story—as he often did. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves who robbed him and beat him and left him half-dead.
A priest passed by, saw him, but passed on by, probably on his way to an evangelism conference at the Temple. A Levite passed by and saw him. A Levite was like a director of music and liturgy at the Temple. He passed on by on his way to a conference on music and worship at the Temple.
But then a despised Samaritan passed by the man and stopped. Samaritans were considered unclean, racially, theologically and morally. He saw the man and “had compassion” on him. He dressed the man’s wounds with oil and wine, put him on his donkey and carried him to an inn where he nursed him through the night. The next day he paid the bill and told the inn-keeper to take good care of him and that he’d come back and pay the bill in full.
Then Jesus said, “Who acted like a neighbor?” The Samaritan of course. Then he said to the lawyer: “Go thou and do likewise.”
With this story Jesus expands the definition of neighbor to anyone who in that moment needs your love. Such a love transcends the categories of nation, race, class, religion or, dare I say it, political party.
In Moby Dick, Hermann Melville tells of an upright Presbyterian sailor who finds himself thrown into the same room and same bed as Queequeg, a fierce looking South Seas harpooner, a dark-skinned tattooed pagan who carried a dried human head in a bag, and who set up an altar in the hotel room with a wooden idol. Talk about multi-culturalism! And this was before diversity training classes.
But as Ishmael got to know the man, his terror and revulsion turned to respect and fondness. As Ishmael put it:
…how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them.
So Jesus comes to elasticize our prejudices and stretches the love of neighbor to mean anyone and everyone. Queequeg!
And why? Because this is the way God loves us. Who has come to us lying in the ditch on the side of the road, bleeding, half-dead? Who has bandaged our wounds and taken us to an inn and nursed us through the night and paid the bill? Jesus has, God has, sometimes in the disguise of a Samaritan.
III
And Jesus stretches us even further:
You’ve heard it said, “You shall love you neighbor and hate your enemy”. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for them who persecute you (Matthew 5:43-44)
Then he gave the theological reason: Because this is what God is like: “…for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45).” Here is the impartial goodness of God beyond all our moral categories. God’s blessing falls on all. God’s grace is given to all.
Our culture defines for us our enemy, and drills it into our heads and hearts.
Do you remember this song from South Pacific?
You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear
You’ve got to be taught from year to year
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late
Before you are six, or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
And here’ a new verse—with apologies to Rogers and Hammerstein:
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people with different DNA
And people not born in the U.S. of A.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
Prejudice, built on race, class, nation, religion, sexual orientation, to name a few categories. Jesus will have none of it.
The great 20th century theologian Karl Barth moves the definition of enemy into the most personal dimension possible: Your enemy is anyone who tempts you to return evil for evil.
That enemy can be as close as across the dinner table, at the next desk, across the political aisle.
Who tempts you to strike back. Love them instead. Pray for them
Martin Luther King, Jr. was asked how he could love even those who hated him and threatened violence. He said he could because he believed there was something of the best in the worst of us and something of the worst in the best of us. And he would say often: because this was the way of Jesus.
IV
So we’ve covered the greatest commandment, the love of God and neighbor, and the hardest commandment, the love of enemy, and now we have what Jesus called the New Commandment
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13: 34-5)
How is the church doing on this today? And I mean the church in general. Not too well. We are better known by those whom we exclude and oppose. And the young people of our nation and those we call the “nones”, those with no church affiliation, see right through us.
Barbara Brown Taylor says that the signs on churches, ALL ARE WELCOME, have the same truth in advertising value as the signs in grocery stores that say: Vine Ripe Tomatoes.
When I was pastor at Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, we were thrown out of the North Carolina Baptist Convention because we welcomed fully LGBT persons into our church. The day after our exclusion, the Charlotte Observer had as its front page headline: EXPELLED.
That day I went to my local Wachovia bank to do business. When I walked in the door everyone in the bank stood and cheered! A bank teller said to me with tears in her eyes: “Now we know you mean it when you say ‘God loves everybody’”. The church today needs to be bold and surprising in the way it loves.
Barbara Brown Taylor wrote:
…followers of Jesus are called to honor the bodies of our neighbors as we honor our own. In [Jesus’] expanded teaching by example, this included leper bodies, possessed bodies, widow and orphan bodies, as well as foreign bodies and hostile bodies… none of which he shied away from.
V
That’s the command, to love one another as Jesus loves. How do we pull this off? We aren’t Jesus, not most hours of the day. We love this way only as we let the living Christ live his life in us and love his love through us.
Only by the Spirit of God. Paul put it this way: God’s love “has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit … (Romans 5:5).”
What is the greatest commandment? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.” All else is commentary. Anything else is “tinkling brass and clanging cymbal (I Corinthians 13:1).”
Go learn what this means
Then
Go thou and do likewise.
- In Roberta Bondi, To Love as God Loves (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), p.25
- Albert Curry Winn, “The Plainest and Simplest Thing in the World”, To God Be The Glory, ed. Theodore Gill (New York: Abingdon, 1973), p.123