By The Way: On love

By Roland Weisbrot on February 12, 2022.

Jesus said in John 13:34, ‘”a new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another”‘ (NIV). Each day we choose whether we are going to treat others as we desire to be treated, or if we are going to act selfishly and hurt others with cruel words and actions.

As Jesus makes abundantly clear, however, love is not something optional for the Christian since to love is to know God, “because God is love” (1 John 4:8, NIV).

Indeed, love is at the heart of a faithful life. Jesus summarizes the Ten Commandments in Matthew 22:37-40 by saying that what God asks of us is to love Him and to love our neighbours as ourselves. Therefore, at the core of every human being is both the capacity and proclivity to love.

The problem is there are a great number of people and things competing for our love, and some of those things are not particularly good for us. This is why St. Augustine warns us in his Second Discourse on Psalm 31, “love, but take care what it is you love.”

What the great Saint is getting at is two-fold: first, we are shaped by what we love and so we ought to be careful where our love is placed; and second, since love manifests itself in orders of magnitude, we must ensure that what we love is rightly ordered. For example, if we love anyone or anything above God, we are guilty of breaking the First Commandment and have become idolators. This does not mean we must love other people or things less, just that our love for God must always be greater. In summary, love, and love deeply as people called by Jesus, for “no one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:12, NIV).

Pastor Roland Weisbrot is the associate pastor at Victory Lutheran Church

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