Love means different things to different people.
For some, love is conditional: you scratch my back, and I scratch yours too. It's very transactional. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with being transactional because, if we're being honest, almost all human relationships are transactional.
Then for others, more so in religious circles, love is unconditional. It's expressed through forgiveness, patience, tolerance, etc... But the irony is that it's in religious institutions that you find people who love to hold onto grudges.
I mean, what else, among many other reasons, would explain the staggering fragmentation within the Christian faith ALONE?
Fanatics from either group consider the other group to be of the devil.
Best illustrated in this meme:
(Try not to laugh... this is serious. Like seriously, lol.)
All this begs the question: what's love according to Jesus?
On Loving God
Jesus said to him, 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
- Matthew 22:37
When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus responds by saying that loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind is the principal command.
For context, he's directly quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5.
The law of Moses contains over 613 commandments, and Jesus is singling out this one command as the greatest of them.
What does it mean to love God?
Well, Jesus gives us a hint of what that means, and one part of it has to do with our thoughts.
Think about it, what's one thing the mind, heart, and soul have in common?
Our inner life.
Our thoughts are so important to God.
The Bible repeatedly asks us to pay attention to God's words and keep our minds on the things of God.
That means attention can be an expression of love. In today's language, we could almost call it a love language.
You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You.
- Isaiah 26:3
Part of loving God is keeping your mind stayed on Him. A tough thing, if you ask me.
Why?
Because we all have MONKEY MINDS.
They wander and jump from one thought to another.
The mind needs to be tamed.
And it costs conscious effort to always bring it back to the things of God. And it's boring.
Nothing about it is exciting. It's discipline. Choosing what and what not to pay attention to.
When we continually bring our thoughts back to God, that's one way we express our love for Him.
On Loving your Neighbor
Love your neighbor as yourself.
- Matthew 22:39
In the next two verses, Jesus proceeds to say that loving your neighbor as yourself is the second greatest commandment.
I've always found the words "as yourself" interesting.
We naturally understand what it means to seek our own good. We feed ourselves. We protect ourselves. We make room for our own weaknesses.
But what does it actually mean to love yourself?
Does it mean being kind to yourself?
Does loving yourself justify self-centeredness?
What about people who supposedly hate themselves?
All these are valid questions on the journey to interpreting this scripture.
I believe we can only give what we have. If we have no love in us, how else can we give love?
That means the burden is on our shoulders to create room for love in our hearts before we can give it to others.
Otherwise, we shall be pouring from an empty cup.
I mean, we can pretend to love. But true love is of the heart. And in a way, as we learn to accept ourselves, we naturally give more grace to other people.
Love one another
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
- John 13:34
Yet AGAIN, Jesus in John 13 emphasizes the same point of loving one another as He has loved us.
If we examine ourselves, we're not worthy of His love. There's nothing in us that makes us deserving of it. And yet He loved us.
This reminds me of the story of the woman accused of adultery in John 8. While her accusers were ready to stone her, Jesus said:
He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.
- John 8:7
He showed her grace before she had done anything to earn it.
We're all obliged to extend grace to others just as Jesus loved (and continues to love) us in our craziness.
His love for us makes it our duty to love others.
On Loving your Enemies
But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
- Matthew 5:44
This has got to be the most difficult one.
Oftentimes, we want to give our enemies a piece of our mind. We want to tell them to "go to hell," you know.
But Jesus says, LOVE YOUR ENEMIES.
Goshhhh, that's HARD!
And I'm of the view that it's impossible to do this without the aid of the Holy Spirit. It's not in human nature to love the people who seek our destruction.
Our ancestors survived for centuries by HATING their enemies.
Because the cost of loving your enemy could literally be getting yourself killed.
I believe Jesus is not encouraging naivety. We can love and pray for people and still not be oblivious to their depravity.
Love and Obedience
If you love Me, keep My commandments.
- John 14:15
Obedience can be forced, motivated by fear and the need to save your neck. But is that really the kind of obedience Jesus is talking about? I don't think so.
Would you still do the right thing if nobody was watching?
The obedience Jesus is talking about is obedience inspired by love.
When you love someone and are truly committed to them, in this case Christ, you'll want to obey willingly.
Professing love is so easy, but obedience is the actual evidence of that love.
The Greater love
Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.
- John 15:13
This is probably my favorite one.
The ultimate sacrifice one can make is to give his life for his friends.
We see this in war, were soldiers go and die, sometimes for the most silliest things ever, like The War of the Stray Dog of 1925, where over 50 people lost their lives because a dog crossed from Greece to Bulgaria.
Every human life matters because, as much as we're progressing technologically, we haven't figured out how to create life.
You can imagine what a soldier on the frontline feels like, dying over silly political arguments because he wants his life to matter. And more often than not, these soldiers come back and testify that they might not have believed in the mission of the war, but they were willing to die for the man beside them.
That's true friendship.
And this is what Jesus was trying to communicate. He laid down His life for us. He loved us before we knew Him.
Now, that's love.
Love that's selfless.
The God kind of love.
