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Great Thinkers in the History of the Church (no. 10)
The mighty thought underlying the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, that we come to know God and belong to Him through love, Jesus introduces into the late-Jewish, Messianic expectation, without being in any way concerned to spiritualize those realistic ideas of the Kingdom of God and of blessedness. But the spirituality which lies in this religion of love must gradually, like a refiner’s fire, seize upon all ideas which come into communication with it. Thus it is the destiny of Christianity to develop through a constant process of spiritualization….
The subject of all His preaching is love and, more generally, the preparation of the heart for the Kingdom.
—Albert Schweitzer, 1875-1965, My Life and Thought
Article
The Christian faith brought to the world a fresh expression of Love. Generally, the faith of surrounding peoples had derived from fear of the gods or an impersonal philosophy with distant gods and goddesses. This does not mean there are not messages of Love in other faiths prior to the Incarnation of Christ. Rather, there appears to be a focus on Love within a context of monotheism that had not existed prior to Christ and the early Church. The fact that the Church has struggled mightily to live that Love does not negate the message of the Love as essential to Christian teaching. It appears that Christ brought a new emphasis to Love: God is, essentially, Love, and the basis of freedom and truth is Love, not appeasing a god or the gods, not spiritual enlightenment, … but Love. And, this Love is Grace: that is, the source of all effort in spiritual formation, so that maturity spiritually and acts of goodwill are rooted and justified as godly by being motivated by Love, or Grace.
Love, or Agape, is central to Christian living. Love is the ultimate Ethic. This is true to the extent that the early churches would read from the Scriptures:
8Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. (I John, ESV)
Here, “know God” refers to an intimate, experiential relationship with God. The text does not read as follows: “does not know about God.” Love of other persons is the supreme witness that we enjoy intimacy with Christ.
The writer of I Corinthians 13 refers to three virtues that will endure. Among them he lists Love, marking love as the greatest of the three:
13There are three things that will endure--faith, hope, and love--and the greatest of these is love. (NLT)
Galatians 5.14 specifies the one charge that can sum up the entire Jewish Law:
For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (NLT)
Ephesians 5.2 provides the example of Jesus as motivation to Love.
Live a life filled with love for others, following the example of Christ, who loved you and gave himself as a sacrifice to take away your sins. And God was pleased, because that sacrifice was like sweet perfume to him. (NLT)
A wonderful exposition on Love is found in I John 4. It is worthy of our time and attention, prayer and contemplation:
7Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8But anyone who does not love does not know God--for God is love.
9God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
11Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 12No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love has been brought to full expression through us.
13And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. 14Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15All who proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. 16We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in him.
God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. 17And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we are like Christ here in this world.
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18Such love has no fear because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of judgment, and this shows that his love has not been perfected in us. 19We love each other [lit. we love] as a result of his loving us first.
20If someone says, "I love God," but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don't love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we have not seen? 21And God himself has commanded that we must love not only him but our Christian brothers and sisters, too.(NLT)
This Agape, or Love, is not sentimentality. Agape is not the romantic notion of eros or the friendly and familial love of philia. However, such erotic love and friendly love find their fulfillment in Agape. Otherwise, such expressions of love will be at the service of the self, not the higher Self: spirit. To enter into romance or friendship to mature spiritually and transcend relating to the other as an object, both must be servant to Agape. “Agape arguably draws on elements from both eros and philia in that it seeks a perfect kind of love that is at once a fondness, a transcending of the particular, and a passion without the necessity of reciprocity,” writes Alexander Moseley (The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: www.iep.utm.edu/).
An indicator of the live reality of Agape, or Love, appears in churches that practice a love feast, or Agape Feast. This follows the example of meals shared by early Christians. At these meals the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, will be celebrated in addition to the common meal—apparently, again, following the precise practice of the early Church. This teaches us an important lesson. Love among us is an expression of a unity found only in the form of Agape that led to Jesus offering his life to express the Love of God for us. This means the Church is a Eucharistic communion, for it is a oneness in Love.
The unity of the Church, indeed, the world, only finds peaceful and harmonious expression through self-sacrificial Love. Agape transcends Christianity and, so, validates the Christian message of Incarnation; Agape makes the Christian faith possible as a living and growing reality for the reconciliation of persons with God. Agape is the very source of all self-sacrifice from loving motive. Christianity is validated in experience to the extent it practices Agape, or at least is faithful to growing toward a perfect expression of Love.
This reality of the Church, as noted by John D. Zizioulas, in Being as Communion, finds expression in the difference between the Church as instituted by Christ and the Church being constituted by the Spirit. Jesus Christ founded the Church, beginning in the twelve disciples, the first apostles. The Church, then, is grounded in Love. We receive the Church as a fact. This fact provokes us to act as a communion of Love, to transcend our individuality in Communion. The Church is not only founded, it is being constituted as an ongoing participation with Christ and as the Body of Christ, founded on the instituted aspect of the Church. The Church is something we accept freely and by taking part in its emergence.
This taking part is the self-sacrifice of each member of the Body of Christ, modeled on the kenotic act of Christ (Philippians 2.1ff): the emptying, or self-sacrifice, of the Word divesting itself in divine transcendence to dwell among us in human flesh and nature. Therefore, the Love of a Christian communion and Christian is a continual act of choosing to enter the kenosis of Christ, through repeated attitudes and actions that require a transcendence or transformation of a life centered on anything other than Agape. Therefore, this self-emptying is itself an act of Love, continuing that historical act of Incarnation, and continues cooperation with the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit constitutes the Church through and as the Body of Christ.
Reflection
What did you learn from the above writing?
What did you agree with?
What did you disagree with?
Spiritual Exercise
Make sure you have a sacred space in your home for time alone in prayer and spiritual reading.
Make sure you are in a covenant group. For more information on covenant groups, write me at the address below.
Consider, if you are not already, sponsoring a child through Compassion International. You can find out more about Compassion International by going to www.compassion.net to read about sponsoring, in the name of Jesus, children living in poverty. Thanks! Brian K. Wilcox
Brian’s book An Ache For Union can be purchased at major book dealers.
To contact Brian, write briankwilcox@comcast.net .
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