Love

The grace of God, which is love moving in and around us, brings us to spiritual life by uniting us to God through our trust. This is being saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8). The central feature of this new life is the practice of love, which means we emulate the same grace-love which gave, gives, and will give us life.

In most ordinary conversation, love means a warm, sentimental affection that comes from being personally attracted to the object of love. You love your dog, a sunset, friend, or any thing for which you have a pleasant feeling. This type of affinity, for whatever is pleasing, is easy to achieve. This is the love Jesus discusses when he says,

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? (Matthew 5:46-47)

Having a warm affection for those who treat us with kindness is a very low bar. Everyone should have that. When love is feeling good about those who treat us well, it is actually self-centered. Our attraction toward others is the result of their pleasing actions toward us.

When Jesus says that, instead, he wants us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44), he is not suggesting that we will be able to feel warm affection, which comes from friendly interaction, with our enemies. He moves the essence of love from how we feel to what we do. His immediate following statement is “and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44). His version of love begins with how we treat others despite our feelings toward them.

We have heard it said that to love someone does not mean we have to like them. This is true . . . with one important caveat. When love is the way we act out of a commitment to grace, then it does not necessitate that first we have warm and close feelings, admire, or enjoy their company. However, this statement should not give us permission to dislike people, satisfied that we can still love them in how we treat them. Compassion and empathy can help us to dislike less, to develop an appreciation for, even those who are disagreeable and who mistreat us.

In the contemporary imagination, love is a feeling, and loving actions come from that feeling. In Christian spirituality, the way of Jesus, love is acting like God and trusting that feeling like God will come in time. God treats us lovingly and has affection for us. Our path to godliness is to treat others better than we feel toward them and earnestly seek for our feelings to change as well.

We know love by this, that He laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16).

God delights in us in ways we cannot yet delight in our enemies. The actions of God mirror a warm affection. Our journey is to lay down our lives, to be selfless in treating others with love. We need to love through our actions those we do not like, which means acting to serve their best interests. We cannot be satisfied with disliking others, but undertake the long journey of liking more and more those we love.