LOVE

Hugo McCord

Love is “a strong affection for or attachment or devotion to a person or persons” (Webster). Though love is non-physical, unweighable, intangible, and invisible, it is a reality. Its essence is internal, mental and emotional, but its effects are external.

The greatest of all things exists only in the human brain. Evolutionists vainly speculate that they can explain the origin of man’s skull and its contents, but they have no explanation, not even a guess, how love originated in that skull. If the universe is a survival of the fittest, dog eat dog, the devil take the hindermost in blood, how did love originate? Who or what put love into man’s brain?

If love, “affection for or attachment or devotion,” travels from one’s mind only to his own body, then it is self-love, pure selfishness. All babies are born with self-love. Little by little, as the little ones receive tender care, they respond in appreciation, and they themselves add to their self-love an out-going love “to a person or persons.”

As little children, we love others because “a person or persons” first loved us (cf. 1 John 4:19). A normal person never kills self-love, never “hates” himself (cf. Ephesians 5:29). As long as he lives he “nourishes and cares for” himself, and should learn to love his neighbors as much as he loves himself, and should learn to treat others the way he wants to be treated (Ephesians 5:29; Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 7:12; 19:19).

The very existence of that inward reality called “love” is a proof most certain of the existence of the Creator, for love did not get here by itself. Of necessity, therefore, “he who made all things” (Hebrews 3:4) made the human brain, and gave it the ability to think, yes, the ability to cultivate “strong affection or devotion or attachment to a person or persons.”

As the Creator is unseen (“No man has seen God at any time,” John 1:18), so love is invisible. As the Creator does not “leave himself without a witness” (“sending rain and fruitful seasons,” Acts 14:17), so love makes its presence known in the actions of people as they go “about doing good” (Acts 10:38).

As a child grows in the use of his computer brain activity, he comes to realize that, as “only God can make a tree” (Joyce Kilmer) or a brain or love, so reverence for God is “the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10).

But as the growing child matures, he realizes that instruction only “by the things that are made” (Romans 1:20) falls short. He does not know what his Maker wants him to do. Accordingly, he humbly confesses, “I know that the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps” (Jeremiah 10:23).

Then how happy is that adolescent when he finds a book of divine directions, the only book among millions that originated in heaven! As he reads, he prays to the book’s Author, “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from your law” (Psalm 119:18).

In that book of directions he is thrilled to learn that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16), and that God’s love exhibited in Jesus provides the way for “the whole world” to go to “heaven” (Colossians 1:5; 1 John 2:2). But he also learns that God’s love in Jesus by itself will not take the whole world to heaven, that human love for God must respond to the divine love, that “the first and great commandment” for sinners is “to love the Lord your God with all” of one’s heart, soul, and understanding (Matthew 22:37-38).

Love from above meets love from beneath. Heavenly love constrains, yes, impels, us to love him who first loved us (2 Corinthians 5:14; 1 John 4:19). Love begets love! Since God’s love for us “did not spare his own Son” (Romans 8:32), our love for him must not be “in word or in tongue” only, “but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18). Consequently, we “live no longer for” ourselves, but for him who died for us “and rose again” (2 Corinthians 5:15).

However, some make too much of love, making it a cover for disobedience. Misleading preachers assert:

1. “There is no law but love.” They seize Paul’s words, “you are not under law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14), and say that because the word “law” does not have the definite article “the” before it, therefore Christians are under no law of any kind. They also misuse his words that “you are not under law” (Galatians 5:18) in the same way.

But since Paul was discussing only one law, namely, the law of Moses (cf. Romans 7:7; 10:4-5; Galatians 5:3), the word “law” was definite without the article. So clear is it that only the law of Moses is under discussion, the ASV translators have inserted the article 30 of the 35 times that the word “law” appears without the article in the book of Romans.

To conclude that Christians are under no law is to render meaningless the phrases “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” and “the law of Christ” (Romans 8:2; Galatians 6:2). Also, such a conclusion would be the opposite of 1 John 3:4, “sin is lawlessness,” being without law (anomia).

Furthermore, under the cover that “there is no law but love” some actually justify fornication, lying, stealing, and murder. Christians were warned about such a trap 2000 years ago:

Brothers, you were called for freedom; only do not exercise your freedom for fleshly indulgence, but be enslaved to one another through love (Galatians 5:13).

2. “Love is life’s only guide.” An abuse of Romans 13:8, “Owe no man anything, save to love one another,” is the sophistry that since love is the only guide for one’s conscience, he may do as he pleases so long as love is the motivation. But Bible love keeps God’s commandments (John 14:15, 21, 23, 24; 1 John 5:3). Augustine said that a Christian loves and does as he pleases, but his meaning was that he who loves God pleases only to do God’s will.

3. “Love fellowships everybody.” This fallacy teaches people to be so loving that they never criticize anybody for anything, let alone disfellowshipping anyone. They overlook the fact that disfellowshipping is a loving act, its first reason being that it is love that prompts a congregation to withdraw from a sinning brother, for loving brothers and sisters want his spirit to be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus (1 Corinthians 5:1-3).

Actually the doctrine that love is so sweet it never draws the line on anybody is a loveless doctrine, doing nothing to warn a sinner who is on his way to torment. The sad act of disfellowshipping is a loving act: “Let everything that you do be done in love” as you “expel the evil man from among you” (1 Corinthians 5:13; 16:13). And Christians do not forget that, when loving discipline has effected its God-given mission, they are “to confirm” their “love toward” the restored member (2 Corinthians 2:8).

Some preachers today say that love fellowships all but the Jews and other infidels, but one wonders why lawless love would refrain from fellowshipping Jews and Moslems and Buddhists and all people of God’s creation, since he is the Father of all humanity.

4. “Love makes baptism optional.” If Jesus had known that baptism is not necessary he would have saved himself about 70 miles of walking (Matthew 3:13). Moreover, the first time that the Father publicly recognized Jesus as his Son was when Jesus had come up out of the water and stood wet on the bank of the Jordan (Matthew 3:17). Would it be loving to say to everyone, “Go and do likewise” (cf. Luke 10:37)?

5. “Love makes the church non-essential.” If Jesus had known the church is unimportant, he would not have had to shed his blood, for he bought the church “with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). Not only did he give himself, yes, his life, for his church, but he will return as “the savior” of the church, his spiritual body (Ephesians 1:22-23; 5:23).

6. “Love means that one faith is as good as another.” But Paul listed as many gods as there are faiths (Ephesians 4:5).

7. “Love means that one name is as good as another.” But Peter listed only one name in which we are to glorify God (1 Peter 4:16).

8. “Love makes the Lord’s Supper superfluous.” Whoever says that has no respect for him who said of eating the bread, “Do this in memory of me,” and who said of the drinking from the cup, “Do this in memory of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24-25).

9. “Love means that all marriages are acceptable.” But Jesus taught that, unless a spouse has committed fornication, all second marriages are adulterous (Matthew 19:9).

10. “Love means there is no hell.” “God is love,” but his love does not rule out the fact that the same God “is a consuming fire,” and that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31; 12:29).