Living By The Spirit - 11

11 - LOVE

Love is the basket into which all the other fruits may be gathered. Or it is like the preservative that keeps all the others fresh and usable in the ordinary person’s life. Without love, all the other eight would quickly rot away.

How many volumes have been written about this one word? It has been defined and illustrated in countless ways. "The Alpha and Omega of the Apostle’s thought.... This queen of graces .... prime fruit of the Holy Spirit ... minister of Faith ... ruling principle of Divine law, " gushed one Victorian Age scholar, Professor G.G. Findlay, of Headingly College, Leeds, England, in his 19th century commentary in The Expositor’s Bible Series (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1891).

Although we have studied the fruits of the Spirit in reverse order, Paul placed love at the head of his list. Our task now is to discover what the Greek word he used (agapé) may mean for us in the context of the 21st century.

In many respects, this is a uniquely Christian word. As scholars have frequently told us, the Greeks had four words for love. Only two of these appear in the New Testament, but one predominates: agapé. The others refer to different kinds of love - family affection (storgé), brotherly love (philia), sexual attraction (eros).

The word agapé is found in many New Testament letters, especially those of John, and in the four gospels. The noun and the associated verb agapan appear more than three hundred times throughout the New Testament.

Yet the word did not appear in the Greek language until relatively late. It was never used in classical Greek, although the verb, agapan, was fairly common. Yet it was not unfamiliar to those Jews who could read Greek texts. It appeared only fourteen times in the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures which appeared in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 3rd century BCE. Two books from the pre-Christian era, Wisdom (3rd century BCE) and the Letter of Aristeas (1st century BCE), used it to convey what they meant by the love of God or the love of wisdom. Philo, the Greek-speaking Jew of Alexandria, an older contemporary of Jesus, also used it in his philosophical writings.

The Scottish scholar, William Barclay, wrote that agapé is not a sudden emotion that overtakes us, but something we deliberately achieve by an act of will. It requires a constant attitude of mind to be motivated to behave in this manner in all our relationships. That, of course, is impossible for any human being. Yet that is the very point that Paul makes in his letters again and again. It comes not by human effort but only through the gracious gift of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that motivated Jesus throughout his ministry.

Sinless or Fully Human?

The doctrine that Jesus was both human and divine prevents many people from accepting any suggestion that at any time in his whole life Jesus lacked the gift of the Spirit. In one of the later books of the New Testament, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews makes this point by saying that he was "tested as we are, yet without sin." Recently, some scholars have begun to question that, to the distress of more conservative Christians. Traditional doctrines often prevent us from seeing how Jesus might have developed his loving, compassionate personality so vividly portrayed in the four gospels.

One particular scholar, Bruce Chilton, of Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, has written what he called "an intimate biography" of Jesus under the title of Rabbi Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 2000). Chilton goes so far as to suggest that Jesus was, in fact, regarded as an outcast in his home town of Nazareth because of his suspicious birth. The question asked by Jesus’ neighbours in Nazareth would have been, "Was he or was he not Joseph’s and Mary’s son?"

Chilton repeats what most biblical scholars have also said: Mary’s conception of Jesus by the action of the Holy Spirit is a late and rather limited New Testament idea. It only became prominent toward the end of the first century when the Christian fellowship was predominately gentile rather than Jewish. It appeared as a means to bridge the gap between Jewish and Greek concepts of sexuality and spirituality.

For Jews, spirit could only be expressed through the body. For the Greeks, spirit was totally separated from the body, especially sex. Matthew based his understanding of virgin birth on what many now see as a mistaken interpretation of Isaiah 7:14. That is a reference to the wife of King Ahaz bearing a child. The early church interpreted that as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus. Luke’s version of the virgin birth also had links to Old Testament prophecy, in particular the prophets’ concern for social justice and the hope for a messiah to deliver Israel from its enemies. This linkage is found most prominently in Mary’s response to the angelic message that she would bear a child, now known as The Magnificat (Luke 1:26-55).

No matter how he had been conceived, Jesus would have grown up in isolation as a member of the caste known as mamzer, a bastard in the earthy terms of the King James Version of Deuteronomy 23:2. According to Jewish law that was something akin to an untouchable in traditional Hindu custom. In Old Testament times the term was applicable to children born of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. The root of the Hebrew word mamzer is a verb that means "to alienate."

There is a tradition the that Joseph died while Jesus was still quite young. As a mamzer, he would not have been allowed to attend Joseph’s funeral. According to Chilton’s analysis, this would have had an enormous effect on his later development, contributing greatly to his sense of always being an outsider. It led him to become a disciple of John the Baptist. Under John’s guidance Jesus received a good deal of his training as a teacher. This formative process came to its crucial moment when he received the gift of the Spirit following immersion by John.

As a result of these early experiences during his so-called hidden years, Jesus felt real alienation and led a very lonely life. Love came to him as a gift from God, not as an innate part of his being. In the words of Luke 2:52, he underwent a normal developmental process in all aspects of his personality. He too experienced something of a conversion and learned to love in the way that became the core of his ministry in Galilee. Radical as this may appear on the surface, Chilton’s approach has much in keeping with what is known of Jewish life at the time. It makes Jesus a truly human being instead of a demi-god as some would have him be.

Another Alienated Jew.

Paul too knew how it felt to be an alienated Jew. As Saul, a native of the Jewish community in the Greek city of Tarsus, he never felt comfortable in Jerusalem. He had a foreign accent. He knew all about Hellenistic culture and its scorn for everything Jewish. He had worked in the marketplace of a port city where ships from all over the Mediterranean world came and went.
Diligent to extremes at keeping the strictest ritual laws of Judaism, he became frustrated by continual failure. Try as he might, he failed to make his mark in the holy city. To make matters worse, his own teacher Gamaliel had gone soft about this new sect that preached the resurrection of a criminal (Acts. 5:33-39). Paul not only witnessed but approved the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr for this new heresy of Judaism. He ravaged this motley crew of lawbreakers at every turn, throwing them into prison whenever he could. Then with murder in his heart, he set off for Damascus with orders he had wheedled from the high priest to capture as many of these rabble-rousers as possible and drag them back to Jerusalem for trial and punishment.

How else but by the grace of God could love have become the dominant quality of Paul the apostle? He had sought all his life to be worthy in his relationship to God. To him, that was the sole purpose of Israel’s covenant with God and its strict code of ritual laws. On the way to Damascus the totally undeserved grace of the loving God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth accosted and captured him. His alienation from God disappeared as he learned from Ananias and other followers of Jesus the whole story about this strange man of God who had risen from the dead. Like the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable, he realized that he too had been forgiven. He now could claim the relationship with God he had so long desired, not because he had proved himself worthy, but because he was loved by God.

In the Hebrew scriptures which Paul knew so well, the two words chesid and racham appear nearly 200 times. The King James Version of the Bible translated both as mercy. The New Revised Standard Version uses the much stronger phrase steadfast love. The experience and understanding of this steadfast love came to Paul with such transforming compassion that he spent the rest of his life thanking God he had seen the vision of meeting Jesus himself on the Damascus Road.

Steadfast Love Today.

Twenty centuries later, in a time of global competitiveness, corruption and violence, how to experience and live by God’s steadfast love remains our major problem.

Michael, a participant in an Internet forum, told of how he had spent much of his teen and young adult years indulging in any drug he could get his hands on. He had committed a number of crimes beyond drug possession. He had been an all-around bad egg. When he finally came back to the church of his early childhood, he didn’t identify with the prodigal son for quite a while. Recently, he began to understand that he had more of tendencies of the elder brother. Now comfortable in his faith and his position as a pastor, it is far too easy, he says, to forget that he had been taken in not because he is good, but because God is. He says that with an exclamation mark. That is exactly how Paul felt. If Bruce Chilton’s reconstruction of Jesus’ early life has any validity, that is how Jesus must have felt too. Could that not be the way he both understood and shared with others his unconditional love the four gospels describe so clearly?

In a short paragraph in 1 John 4:7-12, the word love appears in one form or another no less than fifteen times. Most startling of all those references are these two simple statements, "For God is love;" and "If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us." I committed these to memory in my earliest years in Sunday school. They remain the primary guideposts of my religious experience. The daily challenge is to match that experience with behavior.

In his remarkable hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13 Paul said a great deal about how one lives entirely dependent on God’s gracious love. Taken as a whole, the Bible can be read as a love story about how much God loves us and how we can respond by loving other people.

Tommy’s Story.

A professor of the theology of faith at Loyola University, in Chicago, told about a student named Tommy who came into his class on fall semester. He had a head of flowing flaxen hair that reached six inches below his shoulders and a smirk on his face that paraded his cockiness. It was his questions that bothered the professor most. He kept interrupting with objections to the possibility that there was an unconditional loving God. After a while teacher and student learned to tolerate each other.

When he turned in his final paper at the end of the semester, Tommy asked the professor, "Do you think I’ll ever find God?"

"No," the professor said firmly. Then instantly regretting it he added, "I don’t think you’ll ever find God, but I’m sure God will find you."

Tommy shrugged and left the classroom. In time he graduated and disappeared from the campus. But the professor often thought of him and wondered what had happened to him.
One day, a knock came at the door of the professor’s office. There stood Tommy, now totally bald. He had lost all his hair to chemotherapy. He explained that he was being treated aggressively for cancer in both lungs.

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked the professor.
"Sure," Tommy replied. "What would you like to know?"

"What it’s like to be twenty-four and dying?"

"Well, it could be worse."

"Like what?"

"Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real 'biggies' in life. But what I really came to see you about is something you said to me on the last day of class. I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, 'No!' which surprised me. Then you said, 'But God will find you.' I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time.
"But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, then I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the doors of heaven.

"But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened.

"One day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn't really care...about God, about an afterlife, or anything like that. I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable. I thought about you and your class and I remembered something else you had said: 'The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.'

"So I went home and I told my Dad that I really did love him. And he did something he had never done before. He cried and he hugged me and told me he loved me. Then we talked all night even though he had to go to work in the morning.

"It was easier to do that with my Mom and kid brother. I was only sorry about one thing: that I had waited so long. Here I was just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to.

"Then, one day I turned around and God was there. He didn't come to me when I pleaded with him. Apparently God does things in his own way and at his own hour.

"But the important thing is that he was there. He found me. You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for him."

The professor asked Tommy if he would come and tell his story to a new class of students. He agreed, but he didn’t make it. He called a few days before he died and said to the professor, "I'm not going to make it to your class. Will you tell them for me? Will you. . . tell the whole world for me?"

God’s Persistent Love.

In 1893 Francis Thompson wrote a poem called, The Hound of Heaven. It begins with these lines:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat - and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

We cannot and do not all love God in the same way. Nor does God love us all in the same way. Divine love is as diverse as the six billion people who live on this planet. And how many more stars in the universe like our sun have planets where billions more of God’s creation live? And God loves them all. There is always more of God’s love for us at every stage of our lives. It takes all the fruits of the Spirit to experience it. Even then, we have only touched its outer limits.

An English clergyman told of taking his children down to the beach. One day he saw one of his sons struggling up the beach with his bucket and assumed he had some interesting creature he had caught, so I asked him "What have you got in there?"

"The sea."

The father pointed to the English Channel stretching as far as they could see.

"What about that then? I thought that was the sea."

"I've got as much as I can carry, thank you"

That clergyman posted this insight to an Internet discussion forum:

"The wisest and best informed of us can only stand on the edge of the ocean of God's love and take away as much as he or she can carry. If someone has a different bucket and carries more or less of that love, neither of us can carry all of the sea, and those with whom we disagree may have much to teach us so long as we respect each other and realize that none of has more than a drop of that ocean of love which is God."

Ralph Milton publishes a weekly e-mail magazine called RUMORS "for active Christians with a sense of humor." It’s free too. He invites anyone who wants to read what he writes to subscribe by sending an blank e-mail to this address: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com. Among a lot of anecdotes, wisecracks and short excerpts from the many books Ralph has written, he briefly summarizes the weekly scripture lessons in the Revised Common Lectionary. Here is one of Ralph’s inimitable comments.

"The central Christian question is about the meaning of the word love, and how we live that meaning. Jesus defined it for us. ‘Love is when you are willing to lay down your life for the one you love.’ And he also told us to "love your enemy." Ergo, I should lay down my life for my enemy? Get real!

"But that's exactly what he's saying. If you are a weak-kneed, wishy-washy Charlie Brown kind of character like me, you can't conceive of that, much less live it. For me, it is impossible. That's why I found today's passages (on love) profoundly discouraging until I got the right question. Then they became profoundly inspiring. On my own, not much is possible. The question is, "How can I let go and let God do the loving through me?" Then I might find, not just the needle in the haystack but the ‘pearl of great price.’ When I let go, and let the love of Christ soak down inside and take over the controls, then everything is possible! It's the letting go that's so hard!"

One of Mother Teresa’s most quoted sayings describes the essence of her life: "Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand."

Perhaps we can best grasp what loving means by looking at its opposite. These anonymous couplets may not be great poetry, but they tell a simple story about what may happen when people refuse to love.

THE COLD WITHIN

Six humans trapped by happenstance, in bleak and bitter cold,
Each one possessed a stick of wood, or so the story's told.
Their dying fire in need of logs, the first man held his back,
For of the faces 'round the fire, he noticed one was black.
The next man looking 'cross the way saw one not of his church,
And couldn't bring himself to give the fire his stick of birch.
The third one sat in tattered clothes, he gave his coat a hitch,
Why should his log be put to use to warm the idle rich?
The rich man just sat back and thought of wealth he had in store,
And how to keep what he had earned from lazy, shiftless poor.
The black man's face bespoke revenge as flame passed from their sight,
For all he saw in his stick of wood was a chance to spite the white.
The last man of this forlorn group did naught except for gain,
Giving only to those who gave was how he played the game.
Their logs held tight in death's still hand was proof of human sin,
They didn't die from the cold without: they died from the cold within.

Centuries ago, an anonymous contemplative included this among his thoughts in a classic we know as The Cloud of Unknowing: "Genuine goodness is a matter of habitually acting and responding appropriately in each situation, as it arises, moved always by the desire to please God." Could there be a better description of how to love?

In another issue of RUMORS, Ralph Milton expressed much the same thought: "We can't usually choose how we will feel, but we can choose how we will live. We make choices about our actions. By making choices to live in a loving way, we find ourselves living in love."

Years ago I had an intense debate with a friend about absolute moral values. He claimed that there are four: absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. I felt that there really is only one: absolute love. Love includes all the others. We never settled our debate. I still cling to my original belief.

In 1944, when World War II was at its height, Aldous Huxley, noted British author of the 20th century, wrote in The Perennial Philosophy, "Only those who manifest, in however small a measure, of the fruits of the Spirit can persuade others that the life of the spirit is worth living."

"The fruit of the Spirit," said Paul in his Letter to the Galatians, "is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." Later, writing to the Corinthians he said, "Now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."