The Supreme Dynamic

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     We must not only approach other people with the love of God in our hearts, but we must know how to express it. I heard recently of a schoolmaster who was teaching his children Religious Knowledge. "What did Jesus come into the world for?" he asked. There was no answer. "What did he come for?" shouted the exasperated man. Still no answer. "Love!" he roared at them, striding around the classroom, hitting each child over the head, "Love! Love! Love!" -- Stephen Verney, in Fire in Coventry.

     In this last of the series of articles on morality and ethics, I shall not appear as a defender of either a new morality or an old one. I prefer to be a researchist, answerable to no one but God, and seeking only for truth. I am not obligated to advocate anything simply because it is old, nor reject anything simply because it is new. I am a slave to no system and a lackey to no time. Best of all, I am free to change as I learn and grow as I discover additional truth.

     Because I believe that our relationship as Christians stems from our relationship to God, our moral standard must be grounded in the nature of God as it has been revealed to us in both the written and the living Word, that is, propositionally and personally. I am convinced that God sought to keep men united and pure for fifteen-hundred years by law. The law could not accomplish its purpose, not because of inherent flaws but because of the weakness of men.

     What God once attempted by law he now proposes to accomplish by a dynamic so far superior to law, that it operates in a field where law is neither needed or found. A great many men, frightened by what is called "the new morality" and feeling called to rush to arms against it, decry its emphasis upon love as an absolute, and actually end up attacking and denouncing love, a thing which no inspired writer ever did.

     When someone says, "love is a monolithic and jealous standard, a univalent norm. It shoulders aside all other, lesser goods," why do we have to fear it? Sometimes we are influenced more by who says a thing than by what he says. Our concern is often for the camp in which he is rather than for the value of what he states. I shall take the position in this article that love is the standard by which all else is measured, and I do so because I believe the word of God teaches just that. If a situation ethicist also affirms it this does not negate it. Rather it just proves that he coincides with the Bible to this extent.

     Our whole problem centers around the nature of love, and while the Greeks had several words which we translate by the English word "love," our concern is with agape. This is the love God had for the world (John 3:16), the love which Jesus manifests for his disciples (John 15:19), and the love we must have for both God and our brothers (1 John 4:21). It is also the love we must have for our enemies (Luke 6:37). In my analysis of love I

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want to make a few general observations as a foundation for our study.

     1. This love is not an emotion or sentiment, but an act of the will. It represents, therefore, not so much an involuntary response to conditions, as a deliberate choice, a calculated set of the mind. This is why it can be commanded. "A new commandment I give unto you...that ye love one another" (John 13:31). One cannot command or maintain full control of an emotion. He cannot always direct it.

     However, I think there is much more to it than this. I may be wrong, seriously wrong, but I do not believe that one who is not a member of the new humanity, can really demonstrate agape. There is nothing in the purely human nature which can produce or stimulate it. Indeed, that nature is definitely opposed to it. It is an attribute of the divine nature. God is love. Thus it belongs to those who are made partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).

     It is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22), and is distinctly declared to be "poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us" (Romans 5:5). From this it is obvious that this love can never be adopted as a universal basis of moral conduct. Men who walk after the flesh must be restrained by laws of society. It is only those who are Christ's who have "crucified the flesh with its inordinate affections and base desires" (Gal. 5:24). These only can "walk in the Spirit and not fulfill the desires of the flesh" (verse 16).

     2. The love of which we speak is always active in the accomplishment of its purpose, which is also the divine purpose. It cannot be passive for by nature it is creative. Man has being because of divine love. The universe was not brought into existence purely as a demonstration of superior power, nor does it exist simply as an exhibit of awesome wonder. The Almighty does not need to show what he can do to satisfy a super-ego. He cannot "point with pride" at some accomplishment. The world is not a transcendent "county fair."

     God is love--love unlimited and unbounded-- and love seeks an object upon which it can lavish itself. Life is not so much a gift of love as it is love itself, animating, throbbing and thrilling in a new-found relationship. "For God is love, and his love was disclosed to us in this, that he sent his only Son into the world to bring us life" (1 John 4:9). We need to be careful here, because of the way we think of "sending" and "bringing." Jesus did not come as a special delivery carrier to ring the doorbell and hand us a neatly-wrapped package of life.

     He is the life, and he came to live in us, identifying with us, and merging with us, so that just as he became flesh then, he is now incarnate in us. "God is love; he who dwells in love is dwelling in God, and God in him" (1 John 4:16). Because we are human we find this difficult to accept. We want to explain everything, to capture it in our little mental box and slam the lid shut on it. The greatest temptation on earth is to reduce love to human terms, to talk love instead of living it. So John says, "My children, love must not be a matter of words or talk; it must be genuine and show itself in action" (1 John 3: 18). God disclosed his love for us by sharing himself, we can only show our love for others by sharing life. It is easier to share money, time and things. The tragedy of our day is that we so often substitute these for love. Sometimes we commit a greater sin in mistaking them for life.

     3. The opposite of this love is not hate, but selfishness. Hate is simply lack of love, as darkness is absence of light. The Latin oppositus is a compound of ob and pono, to place in the way. Darkness does not get in the way of light, and hate does not get in the way of love. Darkness recedes before light and hate is a shadow which flees as love is turned on.

     But selfishness opposes love, as the flesh opposes the Spirit. It is antagonistic, adverse and stubborn. This is an important distinction for it is possible to hate a brother without exercising any conscious feeling of animosity toward him at all. Love is concern, and to be unconcerned

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is not to love, and not to love is to hate. "But if a man has enough to live on, and yet when he sees his brother in need shuts up his heart against him, how can it be said that the divine love dwells in him?" (1 John 3:17).

     4. Other forms of love exhibit themselves toward that which is loveable in the object. The value exists before the love is bestowed and it is recognition of the value which calls forth the love. Such love is an automatic response to the beauty or other attribute which attracts it. In the case of agape the reverse is true.

     Here the love creates the value in the object. It is not loved because it is loveable, but it becomes loveable and capable of loving because it is loved. "We love because he loved us first" (1 John 4:19). It is not that "we love him because he first loved us," but we love. His love transforms us, dries up the fountain of selfishness within, and makes us capable of loving through the indwelling Spirit. "Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, and that is God's own proof of his love for us" (Romans 5:8). God never got anyone out of what he was in to love him, but he loves men to get them out of whatever they are in.

     It is this kind of love which makes it possible for us to love our enemies, a thing which no selfish or egotistic individual can ever do. Jesus is very specific. "Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors; only so can you be children of your heavenly Father" (Matthew 5:45). The converse must also be true, that only children of the Father can exhibit this love. One need not be a child of God to love only those who love him. "Surely the taxgatherers do as much as that" (Matthew 5:46). To match love for love, or to meet love halfway, is not agape, for no one can bargain or barter with it.

     In our generation there is a lot of sticky sentimentality and trifling twaddle which parades as love. We use the word to describe our feelings for bicycles and Buicks, sandwiches and scenery, weather and wives. Thus the term has been washed out and squeezed dry of any transcendent quality. We need to study again the nature of a value so great that its essence is of God, a dynamic of such a vast potential that it is greater even than faith and hope, those twins of the forward and backward look. Let us consider the following truths.

     Love gives assurance that we have been safely transported across the border into life. "We know that we have crossed the frontier from death to life because we love our brothers. The man without love for his brothers is living in death already" (1 John 3:14).

     Love makes possible a divine-human relationship in spite of the limitations of the senses such as sight. "Though God has never been seen by any man, God himself dwells in us if we love one another, his love is brought to perfection within us" (1 John 4:12).

     Love completely banishes fear. "Love contains no fear--indeed fully-developed love expels every particle of fear, for fear always contains some of the torture of feeling guilty" (1 John 4:18). This is vital to our thesis because fear is one of the most potent forces in the universe. Thomas Carlyle wrote, "We must get rid of fear; we cannot act at all till then. A man's acts are slavish, not true but specious; his very thoughts are false, he thinks too as a slave and coward, till he have got fear under his feet." Gandhi said, "Where there is fear, there is no religion." That which can eradicate fear and the guilt-complexes which accrue from it is indeed a mighty dynamic.

     Love is ultimate and universal, indestructible and enduring. It is destined to conquer all else. "Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen" (1 Corinthians 13:7). As the New English Version has it, "There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance."

     This is enough to demonstrate that we are not talking about a weak or vacillating influence, but a vital and energizing quality which knows no bounds or restraints. We have already written about the folly of trying to define love, but still

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we must describe it, so that we may recognize it if we cannot fully explain it.

     Joseph Fletcher says that "agape is goodwill at work in partnership with reason." He also says that "love and justice are the same, for love is justice distributed, nothing else." Those who have been regular readers of this paper through the years know that I have repeatedly affirmed that love is that "active and beneficent goodwill which stops at nothing to achieve the good of the beloved object." In reality it is the life of God at work in and through us, to transform the universe, for God is love!

     When I thus affirm that love transcends all legalistic codes, and exists in a realm superior to imposed regulations, I am simply saying that life divine, the life of God, is not, and cannot be made, subject to prison walls. It cannot be confined to statutes and codes. These may act as guidelines but not as imposed laws. And that brings us to the place where we are ready to consider love in relation to law under the new covenant.

     In the days of Jesus the rabbis had agreed that there were 613 commandments in the Torah. When a scribe sought to tempt Jesus by asking which was the great commandment of the Law, the reply was to love God with the undivided personality. The second was to love man as one loves himself. Jesus did not stop there. He employed a well-known Jewish expression about suspension, saying, "Everything in the Law and the prophets hangs on these two commandments." What does this mean?

     Alfred Edersheim says that all sprang from these two as their root and principle, and stood in living connection with them. No law was to be kept for the law's sake, or for mere love of law. Such love is impersonal, misdirected and may be cold and calculating. Laws are things. They are to be used. But love is for persons, God and man. Jesus declared that the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. Human welfare has priority over laws or statutes.

     Paul writes, "He who loves his neighbor has satisfied every claim of the law." He then cites the law against adultery, murder, stealing and covetousness, and adds, "Any other commandment there may be, are all summed up in the one rule, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" Note the expression, "satisfied every claim of the law." Law has no more claim upon one who really loves, than a collection agency has upon a man who has received a receipt marked "paid in full."

     Every command that was ever given is summed up in the one rule of love. This offers no licence to ignore, break or violate any commandment. The apostle says, "Love hurts nobody; therefore love is the answer to the Law's demands." Love is the answer! Does this not mean that every situation must be approached, not with a lawbook in the hand, but with the love of God in the heart?

     "Love cannot wrong a neighbor; therefore the whole law is summed up in love." It is not that love ought not, might not, or should not wrong a neighbor, but it cannot. Love can do no wrong. That which hurts or wrongs is not love. This is difficult for us to accept because we are always bending and warping concepts to justify and condone our actions regardless of their effect upon others. But if we can once embrace the significance of this our whole attitude toward self and others will be transformed.

     In a magnificent treatise on freedom, found in Galatians 5:13-15, Paul writes, "You, my friends, were called to be free men; only do not turn your freedom into licence for your lower nature, but be servants to one another in love. For the

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whole law can be summed up in a single commandment: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' But if you go on fighting one another, tooth and nail, all you can expect is mutual destruction." Does this not say that the ultimate purpose of our relationship is service rendered in love?

     So long as love is regarded as the divine nature, operating in active concern through us, it is the basis for ethical behavior. It is both the center and circumference of our commitment, linking us to God and men in a redemptive fellowship. It creates of us a community of the reconciled and a reconciling community.

     I am not afraid of turning men loose with love as the tie that binds. "If you are guided by the Spirit you will not fulfill the desires of the lower nature" (Gal. 5:16). "If you are led by the Spirit you are not under law" (verse 18). "And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the lower nature with its passions and desires. If the Spirit is the source of our life, let the Spirit also direct our course" (verses 24, 25). As Augustine said, "Love with care, and then do what you will!" I concur with this, for it has a built-in spiritual safeguard. Can you find it?