Love Is An End In Itself

 

We get it wrong when we think that there is some other goal outside of love. 

When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was, what the most important thing in the world was, he answered quite simply that it is love. He said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself." Those things go together, for Jesus, in a really important way. You can't really love God without loving people. And you can't really love people unless you love the one who created them, the one who is in them.

Now, the problem is that we often put other things, other goals, other outcomes above the outcome of love. When Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself," he also said "there's no law against these things." another way of saying that is "there's no law above these things." If you find yourself having to break the command to love in order to follow some other command, then you've missed the point of that command. You've missed the real orientation of all commands. 

Every command in the Bible—every law, every commission—is directed to and oriented toward the command to love. That is what Christians exist to do: to love each other, to love God. And to love the world that God so loves. 

What happens when we put other goals above love is that we will find ourselves discarding love, or compromising on the command to love, in order to meet this other goal. For example, if we think that the goal, that the calling of Christians, is to take dominion over the world or something, as some Christians have actually articulated... if we believe that it is our goal to rule the world, then to reach that goal, we will find ourselves compromising the outcome of love. 

We will find ourselves putting our trust in people who do not exhibit love, who do not love their neighbors as themselves, who do not love God and the God who so loved this world. We will find ourselves compromising on the very core values, the very core realities, that make us Christians. When we are following Christ, we are putting love above every other law, above every other goal. 

Love is an end in itself for Christians.

The goal is not to use love to do something else. The goal is not to accomplish some power grab or authority in the world. The goal is simply to love, and then to let the chips fall where they may. Jesus said at one point to his disciples: "seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be added unto you." If we can love God and love others, then everything else will take care of itself. 

So if you find yourself in a position to choose between love or something else, the only Christian choice in that decision is love. There's no other choice, because that is what Christ called us to. Jesus gave us that commandment and put that law above every other law so that his name would be above every other name.