Advent Season—Week Four: ‘Love’

This is the last of our reflections for the four-week season of Advent, and if there’s one that seems self-evident among them, it’s surely this one. What is there to say about something so obvious as ‘love’? Stay tuned, and let’s see!

For Christians, our framing of ‘love’ begins from the recognition that “God is love” (1 John 4:8; 16) and then reflecting on its implications for us, as his people, who want to be like him and to do as he would do. It’s one of the very few New Testament statements about God that directly reference who he is (or, the ‘essence’ of his being); the others being principally ‘spirit’ and ‘light’.

Who God is, in that sense, is to be distinguished from things he does. God does not just ‘act’ lovingly (he doesn’t just do loving things, or have loving feelings), he is love. The distinction might sound like a technicality or just theological semantics, but it’s important. There is no distinction between God’s nature and God’s actions (they flow seamlessly). His actions will never be incompatible with that essence of his being.

If ever we wonder what God may think and feel on some subject—how he would answer a question, especially those that the biblical writers never encountered—it’s legitimate to use “God is love” as a litmus test to guide us to an answer. God’s ‘opinions’ on subjects (if I can call them that) will never contradict his nature; they will always flow from his nature and be consistent with his nature.

“God is love” explains why Jesus said the most important commandment is to love. Its more fulsome expression is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength” and to “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:30 and parallels). That sounds like two commands, but it’s really one, because from God’s perspective, they can’t be separated—we are not fulfilling the first one if we’re not doing the second one. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to suggest that from God’s perspective, the second is the outworking in practice of the first. Otherwise, loving God is reduced to a warm and affectionate feeling towards him. Love is a ‘doing’ word, not a ‘having’ word or a ‘feeling’ word (or at least, it’s never only those things).  

What we call the ‘Great Commandment’ (“love God, love people”) was originally answering a question asked of Jesus in the context of the Jewish Old Testament Torah. His answer remains valid for Christians, but Jesus took the second element to a new level. Love your neighbour as yourself places a boundary on that loving—the point at which loving a neighbour would cease to be loving towards us as well. For example, if we have two coats and our neighbour has none, then to give one away (so that we have one each) is loving both of us the same (we’re loving our neighbour as ourselves). But Jesus took that a step beyond. No longer is it just “love your neighbour as yourself” but “love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34–35). Jesus’ self-sacrificial model of love means giving our only coat! The boundary for loving others provided by the ‘as yourself’ qualification has gone.     

“God is love”, but we are not. We may ‘do’ love, but our essence is not love—we’re not defined by love, as God is. However, that is not tantamount to affirming the exaggerated Calvinist doctrine of the ‘total depravity’ of humanity. Humanity was made in the image of God, as the pinnacle of God’s ‘very good’ creation (Genesis 1:27; 31), and however much that image may have become sullied and damaged by sin, and even if at times it may almost be unrecognisable, the embers remain. There is something there in humanity that is redeemable—a disposition towards love that can often still be seen, and that we should honour wherever we do see it.   

A key goal for the Holy Spirit through his abiding presence within us is to bring more of that ‘imaging’ of God into our lives—more redemption, more transformation, more of the divine image. It’s no coincidence that the first-listed aspect of the ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ in the believer’s life in Galatians 5:22–23 is ‘love’.     

Donna Summer's “I Feel Love” (in the late 1970s) is widely regarded as one of the most groundbreaking songs of the disco era, with its (at the time) revolutionary use of electronics and synthesisers. However, the lyrical quality seems to have taken something of a back seat to the production values: “It's so good, it's so good, it's so good … heaven knows, heaven knows, heaven knows … I feel love, I feel love, I feel love …”

It’s harsh to criticise the ‘theology’ of a secular song (and even a worship song—though if we started on that, we’d have a field day!), but what ‘heaven knows’ is that love is not a feeling. Or rather, love that is only something we feel does not meet the definition. Love only becomes love when the ‘feeling’ is actioned in some way. Love must become a verb—something that we ‘do’—not just something that we ‘have’ or we ‘feel’.    

John 1:14 famously tells us that “the Word [Jesus] became flesh and lived among us”. As The Message puts it, so nicely, in Jesus, God “moved into the neighbourhood”. Recalling the tabernacle in the wilderness (the ‘portable temple’, in which God was understood to dwell with his people), he “tabernacled among us” (TLV).    

The incarnation at Christmas time reflects another well-known verse: John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” God did not just ‘have’ love for the world or ‘feel’ love for the world; he did something because of that love. Love compelled him. Why? As the verse continues, “… so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Eternal life is not simply a quantity of life, for the future, when this one ends, it’s also a quality of life—a divine quality of life—into which we may enter now. As with the kingdom of God more generally, we experience it in the present only in a “now, but also not yet” kind of way. In this present life, we continue to experience troubles (John 16:33) even though Jesus has “overcome the world”. The “old order of things” under which we are presently living means we still experience “death, mourning, crying, and pain” (Revelation 21:4).

Although Jesus came to bring “life in abundance” (John 10:10), there is also a ‘thief’ right now, whose mission is to “steal, kill, and destroy” life in people. Both aspects of a “now, but also not yet” Christian experience are evident in this verse. Why is that so? And for how long will it be so? These are age-old questions. The challenge to us, in our present circumstances, is to place our trust in God. Not so much trusting in certain verses, or even in certain promises (though those are comforting and encouraging), but ultimately in the faithfulness of God—in the nature and character of God—which is summed up in “God is love”.