Jesus at 2am

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…

– Matt. 5:43f (NRSV)

…and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’   This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’   On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

– Matt. 22:35-40  (NRSV)

To embrace the idea that love stands at the center of the Christian life is to dive headfirst into paradox.  For love – of God, self, neighbor and enemy – is commanded as the principle duty of a disciple.  And yet if love is as we have described it – not merely a moral choice (to act “as if” we loved, regardless of our feelings), but a condition of the heart (agape in all its complexity, complete with affection, passion, devotion…) – then it transcends the powers of human volition.  We cannot, by willful effort, no matter how sincere or devout, force ourselves to love what we do not.

How many of us have tried – with the best of intent – to love things like vegetables or exercise or Grey’s Anatomy (long story…), only to find that our efforts amount to naught?  Try as we might, it turns out that our affections are simply beyond our control.  And resolutions to “do better next time” serve only to demoralize us, as our attempts prove continually vain.

If our willpower is so frail as to render us unable to love even these simple displeasures, how much more helpless are we to fulfill the commandment to love the God whom we have not seen or the enemy we have seen all too well? (Thus we can understand the impulse to define “Christian love” as something less than it is – to turn agape into mere behavior not internal disposition.  At least behavior is something we imagine we can control.)

But what is truly required is not a renewed commitment to “try harder,” but a deep surrender to the truth that we must be transformed.  We must be made new, cast in a different mold.  The heart inclined to idolatry, arrogance, self-preservation and revenge must be reshaped, day by day, into the likeness of the heart of Christ.

This is work that only God can do.  And our great comfort is that it is a work promised to us in scripture as an aspect of the Messianic age:  ”…I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:25f, NRSV).

The wonder of Christian grace is that the very love to which we are commanded is itself a gift!  What God demands, God himself will provide.  And we become the beneficiaries on every front.  We have been set free from a life of endless striving for make a small change here or there, and blessed with the Spirit who will re-create us from the inside out.

This is not to say that willful effort in the process of spiritual growth is not required.  But once we understand how it is that growth occurs, we will find ourselves far more able to apply our efforts properly and with far more fruit for our labor (love, joy peace, patience, kindness…).

It is to the topic of “spiritual discipline” (our contribution to our growth) that we will turn next time…