What is love?

In our world, “love” can mean anything from attachment to admiration, from affection to attraction. For some, “love” is a painful word, carrying the trauma of past abuse.

Christians talk a lot about love, but we all know Christians whose “love” doesn’t look much like Jesus. What is Jesus’ way of love?

Jesus says the greatest commandment in the Torah is to “love God”—a command that has been used to justify all kinds of things. But Jesus pairs “love God” with “love your neighbour”: we show our love for God most purely when we love our neighbour as if their needs were our own.

And then Jesus goes on to define our neighbour not only as “those who are with us, those who are like us,” but as anyone we come across in need, even if they are “stranger” and “other.” Indeed, we may be surprised to learn that the “other” often shows neighbour love to us.

But Jesus pushes this further, commanding us to “love your enemies“—not simply those who disagree with us, but those who actively oppose us, even wishing us harm. We do this, Jesus says, by treating them with kindness even as we nonviolently resist the evil they perpetuate.

Love in the way of Jesus is open-armed and open-handed. It approaches another person as a child of the Creator, welcoming them in peace. It is generous with others, especially those who have a need we can meet. Their needs are as our needs.

Love in the way of Jesus, then, pays special attention to those who are considered “least” or “lost” or “last” in this world: the poor, the sick, the outcast. It seeks out these beloved children of God. It stands with them even in suffering, even in shame, even unto death.

Love in the way of Jesus is attachment, it is affection. It is all that is good in the love that we know in the world. But it is also action, an active, dedicated compassion on behalf of the other, for their good and for the common good.

Love in the way of Jesus, then, leads to the pursuit of justice—especially on behalf of the poor, the widow, the stranger, the outcast, the sick, all those most vulnerable to harm by the powers-that-be. As Cornel West says, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”

© Michael W. Pahl