In the twenty seven books of the New Testament, twenty six of them contain a form of the word love. Think of some of the famous passages of the Bible, from John 3:16 to 1 Corinthians 13, the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 to Jesus being questioned about which is the greatest commandment. The central theme of these four (and countless other passages) is love, and anyone who is trying to follow the Christian faith must understand something of love.

First I would like to look at where love fits in with our Christian lives. Christians take a good number of things seriously, and if they hear anything said against these things they tend to get upset. Whether they are a charismatic alive with spiritual gifts, a traditionalist valuing the heritage of the church, an evangelical quoting a thousand and one passages from the Bible, or indeed any Christian expounding their own theological and doctrinal views, we all have areas of our faith which are more important to us than other areas are to other people. However, I put it to you that no matter how important all of these things are, they must all be secondary to love. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 says:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Of all that you are in your Christian life, no matter how devout or holy in appearance, without love you are not even one step along the journey. Whatever else your life holds, the richest gift you can hold is the gift of love. That love is the greatest commandment to us is spelled out quite clearly in Matthew 22:34–40.

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself. All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

There we have it, directly from Jesus himself, that our greatest calling is to love. In the stories about some of his life which we have in the four gospels it can be clearly seen that Jesus not only talked about love, but also lived with love coursing through him. There are numerous accounts where his love comes out, even when there are great barriers for that love to overcome. Whether addressing Zaccheus the tax collector, healing a blind man with faith, forgiving Peter for deserting him, or meeting with people of all races, creeds, social classes and so on, Jesus time and again responds with love. Indeed, love was such a hallmark of his character that he chose to give up his own life for the sake of others, even though to do so meant a long, painful and undeserved execution. It is also important to remember that those people he reserved his greatest criticism for were the Sadducees and Pharisees who took their religion so seriously that they had lost sight of the love which they were supposed to have and be sharing.

Realising that the greatest aspect of our faith is to be love, what actually is love? The first letter of John states “But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him: whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” To love is to obey God, and this is lived out in acting as Jesus did in his time amongst us. It is to put the needs of others before your own, and to do so willingly and without concern for the sacrifices that may need to be made along the way. Jesus was prepared to empty himself of all he had rather than betray the love which he was filled with. As he was not prepared to put any limits on his love, we also should aim for perfect, limitless love for all people. Our love is to be pastoral, evangelistic, ecumenical and social, and to underrate or even ignore one of these aspects of divine love is to start drawing boundaries beyond which we can not bring ourselves to act as Jesus once did. We must have pastoral love in the sense that we must look to people around us and care for their emotional well being, realising that blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted, and blessed are those who are peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. As in our own times of difficulty we feel that we need people around us who will care for us and try to understand us, so we should always be available for those who need us (do as you would be done by!). Love should be evangelistic because we must care for the spiritual dimension in the life of others, and understand that love always seeks to encourage others to grow more fully into the likeness of Christ. As such our love must manifest itself in exhorting others towards a deeper understanding of life, and ultimately to a deeper relationship with God. Our love should be ecumenical as we should value Christian faith wherever we come across it, be it traditional or charismatic, conservative or liberal, Catholic or Protestant, English Methodist or African Kimbanguist. We should never forget Jesus’ prayer in John 17 for all believers, “that they May be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”, remembering that to look down upon or disregard the faith of another is to do violence to the Body of Christ. Finally our love must be social because we must care for justice and the physical conditions under which our fellow human beings live. God did not give us faith so that we could idly sit by and watch others with no shirt whilst we have two (or even a whole wardrobe full).

In short our love should be unlimited, for to care about a persons spiritual state and not their physical conditions, for example, is to claim that Jesus only cares about their spiritual state. It seems quite clear to me that these limits did not exist for Jesus, but that he was concerned for the whole of a persons existence, not just one aspect of it. I could continue by quoting passage after passage of how Jesus loved people, about how the early church believed people should act out their love, but there would not be space in a thousand issues of Christis to fully express the love we are to aspire to. Instead I ask that you pick up a Bible (and if you haven’t got one go out and buy one) and read it in search of this abounding love, and whenever you come across it pray that this love will become more and more present in all aspects of your life, opening up to God so that his love may be poured out through you and into the lives of all around you.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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 have 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. No-one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Nic Tall