LOVE

Hugo McCord

Love, the most important quality or attribute in the universe, is invisible, inaudible, intangible, and unweighable. Love is “a strong affection for or attachment or devotion to a person or persons” (Webster). Webster defines his word “affection” as a “fond or tender feeling; warm liking, as the affection of a parent for a child.”

What is the source of love? Life is real and love is real. Is it sensible to say that life and love are accidents? Is it to sensible to say that the Creator of life and love is alive and loving? One who believes in God has no trouble explaining the existence of life and love. But an evolutionist, yoked with a survival of the fittest doctrine, is helpless if he tries to explain the origin of life and love. Evolutionist Thomas Huxley was very honest in admitting he did not know how beautiful scenery and music arrived in this world. He wrote:

One thing that weighs with me against pessimism and tells for a benevolent author of the universe, is my enjoyment of scenery and music. I do not see how they can have helped in the struggle for existence. They are gratuitous gifts (DARWINISM,P. 478).

I. The Royal Law

Jesus said that the second greatest command is “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39), and James called it “the royal law” (James 2:8). When a “certain lawyer” asked Jesus “who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29), the Master Teacher told the Jewish lawyer about the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), from which we learn that a neighbor is not simply a fellow Jew, but a neighbor in God’s eyes is any human being. He is not “someone who should help me when I am in trouble.”

Peter told Cornelius that God had shown him in a vision “that I should not call any man common or unclean” (Acts 10:28). Peter had overlooked the fact that every human being is created in “the image of God” (James 3:9) and has an eternal soul (Matthew 10:28), and is precious in the Lord’s eyes (Luke 15:7).

A Philippine surgeon, beginning an operation on a Philippine, as he spread mercurochrome on the man’s stomach, said to the man’s friend (who had been invited to the operating room), “Just as soon as I cut, and pull back this man’s dark skin, we are all alike on the inside.” Apparently the doctor believed that all humans are one, and Paul agreed with him, saying that “Adam” was “the first man” (1 Corinthians 15:45), and that God “has made from one every nation of men” (Acts 17:26).

Some Greek manuscripts (D of the 6th century, E of the 8th century, and others) say that God “has made from one blood every nation of men” (Acts 17:26). The late and esteemed Foy Wallace, Jr., visiting the FBI headquarters in Washington, asked if analysts could differentiate by blood tests people of one nation from people of a different nation. He was told that animal blood differs from human blood, but that the blood of human beings is the same the world around. Therefore all people are of one creation, and all of them are neighbors to Christians. Jesus used the royal law to show Christians that if they give special attention to “a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothes,” and neglect “a poor man in shabby clothing,” they are showing “partiality,” and are “committing sin, and are condemned by the law as transgressors” (James 2:2, 9).

I was in a gospel meeting in Bayugan in the Philippines July 21-23, 1971. One of the things I preached was that the royal law tells Christians they are to love and help Christian neighbors but also non-Christian neighbors. I cited Paul’s teaching “the churches of Galatia” (Galatians 1:2) that “as we have therefore opportunity, let us do good to all men, especially to them who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10). I also cited Paul’s complimenting the church at Corinth for their liberal contribution of money for “the saints” in “Jerusalem” (Romans 15:31) and for “all men” (2 Corinthians 9:13).

I was surprised, at the Sunday morning Bible class in Bayugan, that a brother spoke up saying the church should only help needy Christians, not non-Christians. And I was shocked to realize that somebody had traveled from the United States all the way to the Philippine Islands to spread that false doctrine, reminding me of the misguided zeal of the Pharisees that they would “search the sea and the land to make one convert” (Matthew 23:15).

I was relieved when the local preacher of the Bayugan church, Roman Cariaga, stood up and rebuked the brother, using the passage from James 2:1-11 to show that if the church is willing only to help needy Christians it is “showing partiality” (James 2:1) and is guilty of “discriminating” (James 2:4) in refusing to help non-Christians.

Apparently Roman had met the brother before, and was ready. He showed that if a Christian lady’s non-Christian husband dies, according to the brother’s doctrine, the church building could not be used for the funeral. He also showed that if there was a bloody car accident on the street in front of the church building, and some water for the emergency was needed, it would be sinful to turn on the hydrant at the church building.

It is a shame that some sincere Christians, in their fervent desire to follow the Bible exactly, have manufactured a doctrine that love for a neighbor must mean a Christian neighbor. May their doctrine soon die.

The word “neighbor,” being any human being, sometimes is an enemy or a persecutor, making love more difficult. But Jesus said “love your enemies and pray for the ones who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). This means that Christians are to have the same disposition and attitude that God has, “who is kind to the unthankful and evil” (Luke 6:35).

However, in one sense, God hates sinners (Hosea 9:15), but not personally, for they are all his children by creation (Luke 3:23, 38), and every human being is precious in his sight (Luke 15:7). But God hates “their sinful deeds” (Hosea 9:15, NIV), “the wickedness of their doings” (Hosea 9:15, ASV). When God said of the ten wicked tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel in about 750 BC, “I will love them no more” (Hosea 9:15), he did not mean he no longer had affection for them, for they were made in his “image” (James 3:9) and were “his people” (Psalm 100:3), and he was “not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9).

But he meant he would not prosper them any more because of their “wickedness” (Hosea 9:15, ASV), nor would he allow their kingdom to be reestablished. The Lord “was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight” (2 Kings 17:18). “So Israel was carried away out of their land into Assyria” (2 Kings 17:33).

Though God allowed the Israelites to be punished, his affection for each individual was unchanged and unchangeable. “As I live,” said the Lord, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezekiel 33:11). Since every human being “shall give an account of himself to God” (Romans 14:12), we are not surprised that some individuals of the ten tribes were allowed to return to Palestine in 536 BC (1 Chronicles 9:3; Ezra 10:25-44).

There is a sense in which, not the affection of love (philia), but its commitment (agape) ceases when a son disobeys his father, as in the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). Jesus said, “If you keep my commandments, you will continue in my love (agape), even I have kept my Father’s commandments, and I continue in his love (agape). It “is impossible to retain a sense of God’s pardoning love without continuing in the obedience of faith” (Adam Clarke).

II. How All Men Know

Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another” (John 15:35). Before anyone can be a disciple of Jesus five things are required:

1. One must believe that God is real, that the “heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), that God “exists, and that he rewards those who search for him” (Hebrews 11:6). However, millions of people believe that God is real who would deny that they are disciples of Jesus. The Mohammedans exclaim loudly their faith in God’s existence, shouting Allah Akbar, “God is Great.” Furthermore, even the “devils also believe” that “there is one God” and “tremble with fear” (James 2:19). Though faith in God’s existence is on the “must” list in becoming a disciple of Jesus (Hebrews 11:6), it is not enough.

2. Faith that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,” is also on the “must” list in becoming a disciple of Jesus (John 20:31). But faith alone is not enough, for “many among the rulers believed in” Jesus, “but because of the Pharisees, they were not confessing him, lest they be expelled from the synagogue. They love praise from men rather than praise from God” (John 12:42-43). Faith “without works is dead” (James 2:26).

3. Repentance is the translation of a Greek word (metanoeo) that means a change of mind, of the heart. “Godly sadness produces an unregretted change of heart” (2 Corinthians 7:10), and is followed by “doing works worthy of repentance” (Acts 26:20; Matthew 3:8). Jesus was blunt: “except you repent” you will all “perish” (Luke 13:3,5). But more than repentance is required to make one a disciple of Jesus.

4. One must “confess with” the “mouth the Lord Jesus” (Romans 10:9). Jesus has promised that “whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10:32). Jesus himself “before Pontius Pilate made the precious confession” (1 Timothy 6:13), and John assures us that “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he abides in God” (1 John 4:15). But it takes more than a confession with the mouth to make one a disciple of Jesus, for, on one occasion, an agent of the devil, called an “unclean spirit,” made the good confession, saying to Jesus, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:23-24).

5. A believer in God and in Jesus, one who has repented and made the precious confession, is eager (“What hinders my being immersed?”, Acts 8:36) to duplicate the burial of Jesus’ dead body by allowing someone to bury him in a tomb of water, and to duplicate Jesus’ resurrection by being “raised” up from the water (Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12). Baptism puts him “into Christ” (Galatians 3:27), and so he has become a disciple of Jesus. But baptism alone, without faith, penitence, and the confession, does not make one a disciple of Jesus. It would be just getting wet. The three immersions of a baby by a sincere Greek Catholic priest show how far people have strayed from the Bible.

After one has become a disciple of Jesus he proudly wears the name “Christian” (Christianos, meaning “Belonging to Christ”), and he glorifies “God in this name” (1 Peter 4:16). But Jesus did not say that by wearing the honorable name “Christian” that “all men will know that you are” one of his disciples. Something else is required by “all men.”

After a sinner has become a disciple of Jesus he comes together with other disciples on “the first day of the week” in a memorial service of Jesus’ suffering on the cross as they observe the “Lord’s Supper” (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 11:20). But Jesus did not say that by a Christian’s partaking of the “communion” (1 Corinthians 10:16) that “all men will know that” he is a disciple of Jesus.

Also on the first day of the week each Christian makes a contribution as he has been prospered to help in the Lord’s work, “as it is written, ‘He has scattered abroad, he has given to the poor” (1 Corinthians 16:1-2; 2 Corinthians 9:7, 9). Some disciples in Macedonia, even in their “deep poverty,” gave liberally to help “the poor among the saints” in far away Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 8:1-2; Romans 15:26). But Jesus did not say that by such unselfishness that “all men will know” that the Macedonians were his disciples. Money cannot buy tickets to heaven.

But what caused the Macedonians to be so liberal? Finally we come to understand how all men, religious or irreligious, to know who are the disciples of Jesus. Outsiders do not consider that faith in God and in Jesus, coupled with repentance, confession, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and liberal contributions as proofs of a person’s discipleship of Jesus. But real love among Jesus’ disciples for each other is the one criterion in the minds of outsiders of true discipleship of Jesus.

The disciple “who does not love his brother” is a child of “the devil,” and he “abides in death” (1 John 3:10, 14). “Little children” (as John talked to grown up disciples), “let us not love in word or in speech, but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18). “If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:12). He “who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).

III. “Members of One Another”

All Christians “are one body in Christ, and members of one another” (Romans 12:5), “fitted together” (Ephesians 4:16). Normally, each one has something to contribute both materially (“doing honorable work with his own hands, that he may have something to give to the one who is needy,” Ephesians 4:28) and spiritually (“building up” the body “in love,” Ephesians 4:16).

If a member habitually dashes away at the close of a worship service he does not rejoice “with the ones rejoicing,” and he does not “weep with the ones who are weeping” (Romans 12:15). He is not “devoted to one another” (Romans 12:10). He does not “encourage one another,” nor does he “build each other up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). He has “regard” for his “own things,” not “for the things of others” (Philippians 2:4).

If a member habitually attends no “love-feasts” (agapai, Jude 12, “among the early Christians, a meal eaten together as a symbol of affection and brotherhood,” Webster), “potluck dinners,” he displays selfishness instead of “brotherly love” (Hebrews 13:1).

If a member subscribes to no religious paper, if he attends no lectureships, if he never goes to Christian camps, he is saying that he does not “love the brotherhood” (1 Peter 2:17).

But Christians who “love one another,” and are “members of one another,” seek the company of fellow Christians (John 13:35; Romans 12:5), “not forsaking the” assemblies, “cheering up one another” (Hebrews 10:25). Their love for each other is so deep they would instantly “lay down” their “lives for the sake of” one another just as Jesus “laid down his life for” them (1 John 3:16).

9-21-2000