“Those who call themselves His followers may despise and shun the outcast ones; but no circumstance of birth or nationality, no condition of life, can turn away His love from the children of men.”[1]
It is inherent to our fallen natures to attribute degrees to almost everything, even the intangible or spiritual. We have a penchant for aligning things by preference scales, grading from worst to best or first to last. Whether food choices or brands of everything from clothing to motor vehicles to our smart devices, we all have our preferences ranging from “Yessir!” to “Not on your life.”
Of course, you could be forgiven for thinking that religion is exempt from human bias and choice pyramids based on our own favorites. After all, the Bible is full of absolutes and replete with examples of the tragic consequences for those who sought to do it “my way.” In either ignorance or rejection of God’s counsels.
Is love a gradient?
Theologian John Peckham has identified degrees of love ranging from the eran through phileo to agape, with the misconception that the latter is Divinity’s sole domain.
Peter Prime concurs with this proposition. After showing the interchange between philein and agapan, found when comparing John 5:20 with John 3:35 and John 11:3 with John 11:5, he comments, “These texts indicate that agapan, in and of itself, does not have an intrinsic, exclusive meaning that is applicable to God alone.”[2]
Does this mean, then, that there is no difference between God’s love and human love? Or, that all ‘love’ is equal? If so, it would suggest no gradient or levels of love. But, of course, we all know that there is. Let me illustrate with some examples:
Firstly, imagine you are eating your dinner, watching the news. Before you are images of the Middle Eastern and/or Eastern European conflicts. Hardly even latching onto the thought that races through your mind like a Tomahawk missile that this loss of life is so terrible, you carry on eating. Then the next morsel of “news” is about a commercial airliner crashing somewhere, with a terrible loss of human life. And once again, you munch on. But when you realize that your family member was on that flight, dinner is forgotten! Why? Because we have degrees of love based on how close our relationships are with others.
Secondly, I want to deduce why a simple song has had so much universal and long-lasting appeal. The prodigious American songwriter Bourdleaux Bryant wrote a song specifically for the Everly Brothers in 1960. The song “Love Hurts” became a hit for them. Subsequently, it has been recorded by over 40 major recording artists and has been performed by hundreds more. Why? Because the reality is ubiquitous, that “love” does, in fact, lead to pain.
As attested by the opening lyrics:
Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and marks
Any heart not tough nor strong enough
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain …
Love is like a stove, burns you when it’s hot
Love hurts
The reason love can bring pain is directly related to the degree of investment made into a relationship. So, we naturally have tiers in our love, based on how “hot the stove burns.”
What about God’s love?
But does that directly translate to God’s love? Should we view His love through the lens of our own familiar experience? Many misunderstandings and discouragements come from attempting to bring the Divine down to our level. No more so than when we compare His love expression with our own. If we do this, He has nothing to offer us, and we can be deceived into thinking that there is no more we can offer to Him or to others.
Despite this, God uses one of the highest platforms of our affection to represent His merciful care—that of parental love.
“Like as a father pities his children, so the LORD pities them that fear him” (Ps. 103:13).
Ellen White makes the comparison with a mother’s watch-care.
“As a mother in tender love watches her child, so the compassionate Master watched His disciples. When their hearts were subdued, their unholy ambition quelled, and in humility they prayed for help, it was given them.”[3]
In both instances, there is a conditionality to the reception of God’s merciful response. Yet in no way does that suggest that the condition generates the love, but rather indicates that when we seek, we can receive what has been available all the time.
Ellen White also points out that the higher forms of human love can be used by the enemy as a snare.
“Many are the ways by which Satan works through human influence to bind his captives. He secures multitudes to himself by attaching them by the silken cords of affection to those who are enemies of the cross of Christ. Whatever this attachment may be, parental, filial, conjugal, or social, the effect is the same; the opposers of truth exert their power to control the conscience, and the souls held under their sway have not sufficient courage or independence to obey their own convictions of duty.”[4]
How important it is then to make love for God the top tier in our affection scale.
One author delineates between God’s love and our own, claiming that in our natural state, we can never experience His form of love. He avers that God’s plan is for us to not only be recipients of this level of love but also conduits of it.
“He will bring man back to the place where the uninhibited, divine love of God will flow through him. This will surpass the experience of Adam when he came forth from the hand of God. It was this that Jesus prayed for in His last prayer for His disciples before He went to Gethsemane, “…that the love wherewith thou has loved me may be in them, and I in them.” John 17:26. Imagine if you can, divine love flowing through human channels.” [5]
If our picture of God is viewed and formed through the lens of our tiered, partial, and often petulant exhibition (or reception) of human love, then we will most definitely have formed a ‘god’ in our own image.
If our picture of God is viewed and formed through the lens of our tiered, partial and often petulant exhibition (or reception) of human love, then we will most definitely have formed a “god” in our own image.
Scripture, however, is clear:
– God is love
– He loves unconditionally
– He desires that we reflect that love to Him and our fellow beings, who, like us, are out of sync with Him and the rest of Creation.
Phillips wrote, “Divine love is a principle that governs heaven and the entire universe, with the exception of this earth.”[6]
All of us bound to this broken world cannot begin to comprehend a form of love external to our realm. Neither could the followers of Christ in the first century. This is why He came to reveal not only the Father but also His unrecognizable love. Before offering the prayer in John 17, Jesus gave His disciples an adamant commandment, “[t]hat you love one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34). Jesus did not just tell His disciples to get along nor to even love each other as friends and neighbors, but as He had loved them.
How God loves—how we ought to love
The Bible is very clear that God doesn’t play favorites, but His compassion and mercy are for all His earthly fallen beings. Jesus showed this impartiality in His brief sojourn among us. Following the injunction to emulate His love, Jesus immediately illustrates what the “as” looks like when He approves the highest love tier that exists in the human reckoning while also foreshadowing His fulfillment of the same.
“Greater love has no man than this; that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knows not what his lord does: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” (John 15:13-15) Jesus called them friends! Previously He was accused by ‘His own’ that He was a friend of publicans and sinners (Luke 7:34) and when Judas betrayed Him later that night He called him friend (Matthew 26:50). Jesus is willing to befriend any of us and the worst of us.”[7]
One who received a powerful personal exhibition of Jesus’ ability to love those who weren’t His friends was the Apostle Paul. He expressed it in the most arresting crescendo of magnanimity. As he applauds the transcendent elevation of God’s incomparable mercy, he takes us on a journey to the heart of divine love.
“For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Rom. 5:6-10).
Did you catch that?
Verse 6 – When we were weak and ungodly, God loved us!
Verse 8 – When we were sinners, God loved us!
Verse 10 – When we were enemies, God loved us!
And we are to do the same.
In the upper room Jesus instructed His closest to most closely reflect Him. This would be evidence to the world that they were His followers and that He could empower us to live above all human emotional plateaus (John 13:35).
Only the beloved disciple John wrote an expansion on the discourse and prayer recorded in John 13 to 17. It is his five-chapter epistle 1 John. It is often said, that 1 Corinthians 13 is the “love chapter” and is an appropriate trope at wedding ceremonies. However, although it reveals the optimal form of relational love it uses the noun agape only nine times. Whereas 1 John 4 uses the noun or its verbal form 27 times, and in the whole book 46 times. Truly, this is the “love chapter” and book!
There we are reminded: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another” (1 John 4:11). Here is the “as” again. But can it be a reality?
Love without degrees
In the country I hail from, the indigenous people are called the Maori. As a people, they were beyond brutal and merciless, with cannibalism and the trade of severed heads being the normal way of life. I descended from one of the most violent tribes, the Ngapuhi, whose cruelty to prisoners makes the Assyrians look like decent folks and would be indecent for me to publish here. The primary driver behind the culture, pre-Christianity, was an ideology called Utu. This was the concept of revenge or payback—an endless cycle of reciprocal violence.
The gospel was first preached to the Maori in 1814, and missionaries flooded in to share Christ with these lost souls. In 1835, a mission station was opened near a place called Matamata. The daughter of Wiremu Ngakuku, a Rangitira (chief) of a local tribe, attended the school. She rapidly achieved a level of literacy uncommon among many of the European settlers, whalers and sealers. Her name was Tarore. She received a Maori language copy of the Gospel of Luke and committed much of it to memory. When she shared this with her father and the tribe, she got to Luke 6:27-28 where Jesus admonished His hearers,
“But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.”
Immediately Ngakuku was touched by the Spirit of God and realized that this “new way,” so diametric to Utu, was the true way to live. He and his daughter began sharing the gospel with those in the area.
In 1836, a violent and cannibalistic conflict arose between tribes, and the pupils were evacuated from the mission. Instead of fighting, Ngakuku led his tribe away from the conflict. At night, their camp was attacked by the Ngati Whakaue. Fortunately, Ngakuku heard them coming and led his people quietly into the forest. Unfortunately, Tarore was left behind sleeping and was brutally murdered, ritualistically mutilated, and had her book taken by her murderer. When her body was retrieved, Ngakuku’s men said he must have Utu. But he said that the new way must be followed to stop the violence.
Meanwhile, the warrior who had killed Tarore and taken the Gospel of Luke asked an ex-slave boy who had been to a mission school to read it to him. When the lad got to Luke 6:27-28, he also felt the Spirit of God and understood why Ngakuku had not responded in the “normal” manner. He then determined to go to him and seek his forgiveness. Undeterred by the protestations of his tribe (that this was a one-way ticket to a violent death), he went with his newfound faith for which he was willing to die. When the two men met they embraced and became brothers in Christ.
Divine love can find a conduit through the most hideous of humanity and reach a level that has no levels.
Let us love without degrees.
[1] Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898), 194.
[2] Peter J. Prime, The Gospel of Love and Real Evangelism (Silver Spring, MD: The Ministerial Association General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 2009), 19.
[3] Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Warburton, Australia: Signs Publishing Company, 1978), 336.
[4] Ellen G.White, The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan (Altamont, TN: Harvestime Books, 1998), 597.
[5] Frank Phillips, His Robe or Mine (Berrien Springs, MI: Justified Walk Ministries, 2003), 99.
[6] Ibid, 100.
[7] Gordon Gosset, What’s to Know? On the Journey from Egypt to Canaan (Christchurch, New Zealand: Gosset Publishing, 2019), 74.