No Getting Around Love

Anyone who's spent an hour in the New Testament knows that love is a big deal. You're only a few pages in when Jesus starts talking about love. Funny thing is, the first time Matthew quotes Jesus talking about love, it's about loving your enemies. Right off the bat, we can tell this love thing isn't going to be easy.

Three of Jesus's biographers quote what's come to be known as the Great Commandment: Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength--and if that's not challenging enough, love your neighbor as yourself. We've heard it so often we can quote it in our sleep. But do you ever pause and think about what it really means? Jesus is telling us to love Joe next door with his loud music and barky dogs, Mrs. Smith holding up the carpool line as she chats on her cell phone, and the 16-year-old girl in youth group who rolls her eyes at us with tangible disdain. To love your snoopy mother-in-law and the soccer coach who won't stop screaming at your kid. These are our neighbors. The ones we're supposed to love as we love ourselves. Oh, my.

And then there's the Apostle John, who lets us know that if we don't love our brothers and sisters, we don't love God. We don't even know God. And worse yet, if we say we love God but hate someone else, we're liars. I like to give myself a pass on this one. There's no one I actually hate. But would someone know that by the way I complain against Joe? The way I'm so easily irritated by Mrs. Smith? By the way I judge the hard-to-love girl I'm supposed to be discipling? Hate doesn't mean I'm cussing people out and slashing their tires. Hate can also look like judging, ignoring, grumbling, and slandering.

I've spent a lot more than an hour in the New Testament, and I've read all about the importance of loving other people. But until recently, I didn't quite get that this is what it's all about. Two books have redirected my attention to these commands on love. Commands. That's what they are. Not suggestions. Not "it would sure be nice" recommendations. Commands from God Himself.

In Letters to the Church, Francis Chan proposes that the greatest missionary strategy of all time and the only one necessary is for Christians to love one another. If we were to follow Christ's command to love one another and live in unity within the church, the world would: a) be dumbstruck, and b)see that Jesus was who He said He was.

The second book has stirred up plenty of controversy. Last year Andy Stanley created a firestorm by suggesting that believers "unhitch" their faith from the Old Testament. In Irresistible, he explains what he meant. While I resist his general premise and shock-and-awe strategy for getting his point across, what I got most from his book was vision for the priority and urgency of love. His unpacking of 1 John leaves no loopholes or work-arounds. God is love. We know God, grow in relationship with God, and love God by loving the people around us. I would so prefer to love God by sitting on my quiet deck reading a book about Him. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's also no biblical precedent for sequestering myself at home with the latest, greatest theology book. The precedent is washing my neighbor's stinky feet. Or at least enduring his barky dog with grace and patience.

As I read both of these books, the thought kept occurring to me that they're not talking about loving devil worshipers, bullying atheists, or ISIS recruiters. They're talking about loving other Christians, our brothers and sisters in the faith. It shouldn't be so hard.

It also occurred to me, repeatedly, that I don't have to pound the pavement looking for people to love. The people who need me to love them the most, and the ones who are sometimes the most challenging, live right inside my house.

I can't seem to get around the fact that love is what it's all about. And my excuses--"I'm just not good at love, I'm not wired for it the way others are"--aren't cutting it. When it comes to loving others, I may be a kindergartner, but I can't stay there. I've got so far to go. In His goodness, God has put people in my life who are love grad students. They give me a picture of what I'm shooting for. They give me hope that I can get out of kindergarten, that I can get serious about following the Great Commandment, that my hard heart can become soft and gooey.

When we love others, we pass from death to life (1 John 3:14). Anyone who does not love remains not only in kindergarten, but in death. That's motivating. Even more motivating is this example from Stanley's book: Is there anything that brings parents more joy than watching their children love, enjoy, and care for each other? I can't think of anything. What if that's just a hint of how God feels when we're loving His other children well?