Make Love Your Goal

"Let love be your highest goal!" (1 Cor 14:1, NLT) "Follow the way of love..." (NIV). "Pursue love..." (ESV, HCSB). "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love" (Gal 5:6b).

The singular mark of the church should be love. Why? There are many reasons foremost of which is that God is love (1 Jn 4:8, 16). Also, the greatest struggle inside the church has always been love, or the lack of it. Yet the church (and the gospel) has often been reduced to rules, rituals, commandments, theories or organizational goals and concerns. The highest priority of various churches are outreach, worship, youth ministry, leadership development, evangelism, discipleship, church growth, mission, purity, holiness, sacraments, particular doctrines of particular Christian leaders, denominational concerns, etc. These are not unimportant and certainly have their place. But should such agendas and ideologies ever supersede the place of loving others, or relegating love to just one of the many things the church does?

What should the church do? Shame people or slam "bad" people? Win the "culture wars"? Elect our "Christian" candidate? The Christian church is singularly commanded to bear witness to God's love for the world (Jn 3:16).

"Love is not something you choose to do, but what you choose to be." Dallas Willard.

"(Jesus' cry of forsakenness from the cross was) the climax of his pain (and) the climax of his love. The fact is that if 'Jesus is Jesus Forsaken,' that is, the Son who entrusts himself to the Father, without residuals and conditions, in the act in which the Father seems to hide the name of Abba in the most cruel and darkest trial--if Jesus is this, then our faith in him is a partaking, through grace, intimately, in the very event of his abandonment. Our faith is carrying within us the faith of the abandoned One in the occupations of our day. Whoever finds this man has found the solution to every problem human and divine."  Chiara Lubich.

"By each action done to the sick and dying, I quench the thirst of Jesus for love of that person--by my giving God's love in me to that particular person, by caring for the unwanted, the unloved, (the) lonely, and ... all the poor people. This is how I quench the thirst of Jesus for others by giving his love in action to them." Mother Theresa.

"It is hard to find a church or para-church staff that is practically oriented around Jesus' instruction: 'Love one another, even as I have loved you' (Jn 13:34). You might think this would be their primary explicit goal, but it usually turns out otherwise." Dallas Willard, Getting Love Right, 2012.

"At the 'heart' of Paul's theology was the 'Gospel' or 'good news,' about Jesus as the revelation of God's love and the source of all benefits that accrue to us from it (liberation, reconcilliation, redemption, justification, access to God, sanctification, and so on). The proclamation of this mystery is what Paul called the 'good news,' and his primary concern was that those whom he brought to Christian faith might fully participate in the Paschal mystery and its benefits. (Paul) regards love as the 'super' virtue that joins together all the other virtues in perfect harmony." Daniel J. Harrington, Jesus the Revelation of the Father's Love: What the NT Teaches Us. 2010.

"We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it. It is also good to love--love is difficult. Love is perhaps the most difficult task given us, the most extreme, the final proof and text, for which all other work is only preparation." Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926).

"Jesus calls men not to a new religion but to life." Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Mt 5:17-20 is an indispensable text for understanding why everything "hangs" on loving God and our neighbor. From tradition we receive secondary forms of faith and practice. But what remains primary is the commandment Jesus gave regarding love for God and neighbor. All our religious practice and piety "hangs" on these commandments.

 "All the patterns, morals and predictions of the OT come to their complete realization in (Jesus). The first lesson we get in reading the Bible is this one: Look to Jesus as its central story." Scot McKnight, The Jesus Creed: Loving God and Loving Others.

"God does not demand great acts from us, but only surrender and gratitude." Therese of Lisieux.

"We do not achieve the disposition of agape love by direct effort, but by attending to and putting into practice the conditions out of which it arises." Dallas Willard.