Bound in Love

All God really demands of us is to love him and obey him. Those words are hard words. They are hard to understand and they are hard to swallow. What is love? That might have been Pilate’s real question. Why do I have to obey might be the other question.

We are told in the Bible that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our strength, heart, mind, and soul. We are told the second greatest commandment is like unto it: to love our neighbor as ourselves. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Our God is love and his commandment is to be like him. We are to love him and to love our neighbor. But we do not know what love is. As we bump along in this world, we see glimpses of feelings and experiences that might be love. It might’ve been in a family setting, for we make great sacrifices in the name of family and we received great consolations from family.

Let’s just take a moment to define two important terms. One word heard frequently in Christian discussion is “grace.” I use the word grace when I wish to identify or describe the saving power of the love of God freely given by God himself. I have heard the term grace applied by some Bible-believing friends as a soothing or empowering feeling infusing one’s body and mind and lifting one’s spirit. That experience is what should properly be called consolation.

The scene at the foot of the Cross captures the difference between grace and consolation. Mary and the other women and the disciple John remained at the Cross as Jesus hung dying. Mary, the mother of our Lord, received the essential love of God from God himself in his last earthly moments. Jesus instructed and led even as he was dying. He made arrangements for the physical care of his mother when he gave John responsibility for her saying, “this is your son.” He gave Christians everywhere for all time the teaching on the importance of Mary beyond her role as the mother of our Lord when he said to John, “this is your mother.” And he taught Christians for all time how to read the Hebrew Scriptures when he began reciting the 22nd Psalm with the opening words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Mary and the other women at the foot of the cross with John received much grace in the last earthly moments of the life of Jesus. They received him. They received the gift of knowledge that would succor them during times of persecution in the future. They received teaching directly from God. They received the word directly from the Word of God. They received much grace. But they received no consolation. Mary especially, having known Jesus since his conception, knew the deep injustice of this execution. John, described repeatedly as the disciple whom Jesus loved, had a special human relationship with Jesus the man. John watched as his special friend was cruelly killed in a most gruesome way. We don’t know much about the other women around the cross, but we know how the crowd and even the others being crucified taunted and mocked Jesus on the cross. Having walked to the place of execution from the place of judgment, the women saw how Jesus had already been whipped and abused prior to being nailed to the cross itself. There were no warm feelings at that time and at that place. There were no consolations, but there were many graces.

So where does grace come from? It is a gift. It is the gift. It is the gift from the Giver. It is God’s love, given by God to us without regard to our deserving nature. We don’t deserve it. But he gives it anyway. He gives it freely, but he paid dearly and giving it.

So two words: love and obey, summarize the entire Bible. If we read and comprehend those two words, we know our Bible completely. Now in my Bible study, I have not found a Scripture that states these two imperative simply. Regardless, no part of the Bible can be read without involving the concepts of love and obedience. If we understand the concepts of love and obey, then we will come to understand the deeply fulfilling life of intimate relationship with God — the life for which we were all made.

It seems so simplistic. It seems to be too simple. I grant you that it is simple, but I guarantee it is hard. Simple and easy are not synonyms. Love is simple, but love is hard. Obey is even simpler, and even harder. We respond positively to a command to love even if we make a mess of following that command. Most of us a bristle in response to a command to obey even if we do a pretty good job of actually obeying in the end.

Love and obey is simple and elegant, like a nautilus curve or some other naturally occurring elegance. Love occupies our emotions in our hearts and heads, but it is lived out physically with our bodies in our lives. Obedience occupies our physicality and our bodies, but it is only truly achieved when it captures our hearts and our minds. We can obey while grumbling or without sincerity, and it is still obedience. It become something more noble when we stop grumbling and embrace it with our hearts and our minds. We can love with our hearts and minds and express our love verbally, but it becomes something more pure and noble when that expression of love takes over our whole body and changes our actions too.

Consider the Bible. It is a big book that you may want to know better, but many find it a bit daunting. A person skimming through it might come to the conclusion that the Old Testament is all about obedience while the New Testament is about love. In the story of his Passion, however, one can see how love and obedience are at the heart of the story of Jesus. In the agony in the garden, he prays that he might not have to go through the ordeal. His prayer didn’t end there, however, he prayed that he be obedient to his father’s will. In the second chapter of his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul offers a beautiful hymn to Jesus that begins with Jesus humbling himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

In the 10th chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus uses the imagery of a shepherd and his sheep as he explains there is no way other than through him that one can gain admittance to heaven. He explains that the sheep follow the shepherd because they recognize his voice.

Implied in love and obedience is the inclination to follow the one we love and the wisdom to perceive his presence. God knows we will be offered many times a chance to follow someone or something that seems wonderful, profound, and even powerful. We have to rely on the gift of God’s love to know which of these many attractive claimants for our allegiance is the true one, and which are false prophets who will lead us ultimately to our downfall.

Wrapped in love and obedience is this wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, we are told many times in Scripture. Love includes the recognition that he is God, a person worthy not just of praise but also adoration and worship. Love also includes a recognition that he is God, a person with true authority to whom our pledge of obedience is plainly appropriate. Wisdom comes with faith. When St. Thomas, who doubted the resurrection, touched Jesus in his hands and the wound on his side, his reaction was profound: “My Lord and my God.”

Thomas recognized and acknowledged that Jesus is worthy of adoration, worship, fealty, and obedience. We do not have the chance to touch Jesus’s side, which he notes to Thomas saying, “Blessed are they who do not touch my side and yet believe.” Our fearful first step of faith is driven by love. We feel the emptiness inside that can only be filled by God, and we dare to reach out and be filled by him. In this way, we are like the woman who said to herself, “if I can only touch the hem of his garment, I will be healed.”

We somehow see we do not need much of him in order to be healed. We usually get this insight only when we are beaten down by the vicissitudes of life. The woman in the Bible story is described as having had hemorrhages for many years. Imagine how weak she must’ve been. Her weakness was not without positive purpose, however; like so many in the stories of the gospel, this weak woman glimpses the truth, the way, and the life, as he walked by her. And she reached out to him for help. That reaching out is a reach of love.

The love that help us reach out in weakness can dissipate as we grow stronger. But love is our primary commandment, and God is love. We cannot follow God without love. Because our natural reservoir of love recedes as we gain earthly strength, God gives us the other commandment: obey. Now, we reach out to him in the form of our brother, and we reach out in obedience rather than to fill our earthly needs. Here, if we remain alert, we can see how love and obedience work together to God’s glory. Our reaching out to our brother because God told us to do so becomes an expression of love just as Jesus, who was obedient unto death even death on upon a cross, was the word of God — the expression of the love of God. Our obedience builds the kingdom of God; our obedience becomes love. And that love lifts both the one helped and the one helping.

Jesus gives his followers a command which seems daunting to the point of impossibility when he says, “be ye therefore perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect.” Knowing how far from perfect we are, we do not see how such a teaching can meaningfully affect us, but Jesus is in fact giving us the framework for the rest of our life. Having said him, “I love you,” we are told in effect, “show me.” The balance of our lives is a constant effort to be a little more holy, a little closer to following Jesus perfectly. He gives us in the Scriptures, in our communities, and in our hearts, guideposts and checkpoints to support and measure our journey toward him. We have been given the gift of love by the author of life. It was a free gift rather than something we earned or deserve. We are instructed to spend the rest of our earthly life respecting the giver in becoming worthy of the gift.

If we fearlessly examine our lives, we will find patterns that recur. We have habits that fill our days. We know how powerful these habits can be when we try to kick one; just ask anyone who has tried to give up cigarettes or alcohol. Just as we can have habits that are bad for us physically, we see week have some that are dangerous spiritually. What are we to do about these bad habits, particularly the ones that draw us away from God.

The first step is to recognize the power of habit. We do what we habitually do without thinking about it before hand. Perhaps we can take that characteristic of habituation and use it to our spiritual benefit. Rather than only try to break a bad habit, we can replace it with a good habit. When a person kicks booze but takes up smoking, he has kicked a habit but has he improved his life? No, not really. He changed the form of his habit but not the substance of it. If one is to go through the pain of breaking a habit, it would be so much better if he replaced that bad habit with a good habit.

What habits could I develop that might build the kingdom of heaven here in our fallen earthly existence? What habits could I develop in the name of becoming perfect? If it is my habit to start today slowly with a cup of coffee and the sports section, I may not be able to change my habit to get up and immediately throw myself into the day’s work. I may, however, be able to trade the sports section for the daily gospel or a daily reflection. God doesn’t mind if I am sipping coffee while reading his word. He doesn’t mind if I’m not fully awake — he may talk to me even more effectively in that state. If I cannot get a half hour of prayer in each day, perhaps I can develop the habit of reciting a set of prayers as I drive to work or school.

As I replace bad habits with good habits, I may see my strength and devotion grow to the point I can replace those good habits with even better habits. That process is sanctification. It is the plan for the rest of our lives. It is how we live out Jesus’s instruction to be perfect, and to obey him. Why do we do all this sanctifying change? It is how we spend our lives learning to live in love.

We were blessed and saved by love, and we must learn to live in love. Jesus tells us to abide in him and he will abide in us. He wants a level of intimacy many of us find a little frightening. He wants us all, and he wants all of us eventually. We are asked to spend our lives answering the question, “who do you say that I am?” Our lives, the habits of our lives, and the impulses of our lives; all these are our response to the blessing and gift of love by Love itself. All of these are how we love and obey.