Our Love is Distorted
Our American society has distorted God’s view of love and have turned love into “making much of me” when God says it is about “making much of Him and our neighbors”. We live our lives searching and yearning for people to love us and give us attention.
The romance culture has fueled these desires so much so that marriage, dating, and romance have become the new American idols and the church is not doing a good job of defending itself against these faith-destroying mentalities. Understanding love as us making much of him and our neighbors is at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. Jesus said this in Matthew 22:34-40 when he was talking to the Pharisees who were trying to trick him into answering a question wrong so that they could discredit him. One of them who was a lawyer asked him what he thought was the greatest commandment, to which Jesus responded,
"‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
There are a couple of important observations we need to make about this passage.
What Kind of Love?
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, love is everywhere. You cannot avoid it in the stores, and you certainly cannot avoid it on television. The kind of love Jesus is speaking about here is not the kind that is typically associated with Valentine’s Day. Jesus is talking about agape love. Agape love is very different from the type of love associated with Valentine’s which is erotic love (eros).
Agape love is other-focused. In other words, it is a love that is focused on others whereas erotic love essentially is all about self. Agape love is self-sacrificing while erotic love is self-pleasing. Agape love is the love that God has for us and is the kind of love God expects us to first and foremost have for our neighbor.
Before we can have any other type of love for our neighbor, in particular a romantic interest, Jesus says we need to have agape love. Agape love is the foundation upon which erotic love is built. That may sound like a quaint little statement, but we will soon find out, it is not that easy to live out.
The Order
The second observation about this statement from Jesus we need to take special notice of is the order in which the command is structured. I remember when CD players first came out. My mother would buy CD’s and we never owned a player! It wasn’t until a few years later that she finally bought a CD player! Order is important in life.
Notice who Jesus says we are to love first: God. Before we can love anyone else in the way God intended for them to be loved, we need to love him. Our example of agape love is God himself and he is to be loved with the totality of our being (heart, mind, and soul).
Something is Missing
The third observation has to do with what Jesus does not say. He does not say that you have to love yourself first. For some reason a lot of people have the idea that you have to love yourself in order to love others. Maybe you think that. However, I am not sure that is necessarily the case. If it was so important that we love ourselves before love others, wouldn’t Jesus have mentioned that?
He doesn’t. And I think it is because loving ourselves is not as important or is not a prerequisite to following his command to be focused on the two most important people in our lives: God and our neighbor. Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that it is important to love the person God created us to be. But not at the expense of obeying Jesus’ command here. And this is precisely why I think the statement does not appear.
Due to sin, we are spring loaded to love ourselves. We make sure we have clothing, food and a roof over our heads. We also make sure we have love in our life. We do a lot to ensure our safety, and comfort. We even go to extreme measures like going into debt. Whatever it takes to make sure our basic needs and wants are met, we do it, which brings me to my final observation.
AS
Had Jesus simply told the Pharisees to love God and love their neighbor, everything would have been fine. But he didn’t. He went further and said that they need to love their neighbor as themselves. The word “as” is critical. In saying this word, he cuts to heart of their problem. They are more concerned with themselves than they are with their neighbor.
What Jesus is telling them to do is this: in the same way and to the same degree that they are about making sure their own needs are met, they should be about making sure the needs of their neighbor is met. Ouch. Think about that.
To the same degree that I am about making sure that I have food in my stomach I need to make sure my neighbor has food.
The Question on the Table
So the question on the table is this: Do you love your neighbor? Do you love your neighbor in the same way that you love yourself? The implications of this question are staggering when considered in the context of romantic relationships. So here are some points for you to ponder as you think through the implications of this question. Some of the questions below are repeated and asked differently on purpose.
- Do you love your neighbor enough to fold his/her laundry even though you have had a hard day yourself and you are ready for rest instead of dumping their stuff on the bed and putting your own clothes in the dryer?
- Do you love your neighbor enough to remember that they are going through a tough time and to give them a little extra attention and love and comfort?
- Do you love your neighbor enough to confront them about their sin even if it means you will lose your friendship/relationship with them?
- Do you love your neighbor enough to be the first one to say, “I’m sorry?”
- Do you love your neighbor enough to break up with them because they need to work through some life issues (sexual sin, growing up, addictions, etc.)? Loving your neighbor with regard to relationships means that sometimes you have to break things off if that person has baggage that requires some extra counseling and you know deep down inside you should not be romantically involved with them. Even if it means you suffer in the end you have to ask yourself whether or not you love that person enough to let God heal them without you distracting them because you want to hold on to a the relationship.
- Do you love your neighbor enough to be up front and honest with them about your personal struggles? If you are a man, do you love your sister in Christ enough to break things off because of your struggle with sexual sin? Do you love your sister in Christ enough to tell her the truth about your struggle with sin even if it means that you will lose her? If you don’t check your heart. You may be holding on to something you have no right to hold on to.
- Do you love your neighbor enough to not even think about getting involved with someone because you know you yourself are not right with God?
- Do you love your neighbor enough to not even think about getting involved with someone because you know you have not grown into manhood/womanhood?
- Do you love God enough to forego dating relationships for a season until you get your life together? Until you cultivate the land and get your land ready for harvest?
- Do you love your neighbor enough to set boundaries in that relationship to protect your purity? Do you love your neighbor enough to not provoke him/her to go against their boundaries?
- Do you love your neighbor enough to not hold so tightly to a relationship that they cannot get healing from their sins?
- Do you love your neighbor enough to not defraud them into thinking you are something you really are not?
- Do you love your neighbor as yourself?
I hope these questions really help you to think about how your Christian character plays out in romantic relationships. Our lives as Christians are first about extending agape love towards God and then our neighbor. Agape love is not easy. It’s hard. Perhaps it’s time we start practicing doing the hard things instead of taking the easy way out.
God bless you.
Robert
I love theology and the challenge of making deep teachings non-boring. Let's face it, most of the time we hear theological teaching, it really is boring. Does it really have to be that way? Nope.
