Reconciliation by Josefina de Vasconcellos

Let love be your only debt! If you love others, you have done all that the Law demands. In the Law there are many commands, such as, “Be faithful in marriage. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not want what belongs to others.” But all of these are summed up in the command that says, “Love others as much as you love yourself.” No one who loves others will harm them. So love is all that the Law demands.

You know what sort of times we live in, and so you should live properly. It is time to wake up. You know that the day when we will be saved is nearer now than when we first put our faith in the Lord. Night is almost over, and day will soon appear. We must stop behaving as people do in the dark and be ready to live in the light. So behave properly, as people do in the day. Don’t go to wild parties or get drunk or be vulgar or indecent. Don’t quarrel or be jealous.Let the Lord Jesus Christ be as near to you as the clothes you wear. Then you won’t try to satisfy your selfish desires. (Contemporary English Version)

No matter the question about law, love is the answer.

There is one singular obligation that Christians have toward both the Church and others in the world: Love. The highest expression of love transcends not only the Law of Scripture, but also the law of the land around us. The unifying principle and perfect summation of law is to love your neighbor as yourself.

Love is one of those things that is not to be checked-off of some personally contrived list of things to do for the day, as if once we do our one good deed for the day, the rest of the day is ours.

No, love is the entirety and the ultimate goal of God’s continuing guidance and instruction for us throughout every day. Love also goes well beyond avoiding hurting another; love is constantly on the lookout for ways to express itself in others’ lives.

Can you imagine how much the U.S. Department of Justice would change overnight if it adopted this biblical command to have love at the center of every single decision it makes?

The love that has been given to us, from the Lover our souls, is meant to be practical, persistent, and pervasive. Love begins with seeing others and valuing them, even if they are very different from ourselves (i.e. the immigrant, the homeless, the mentally ill, etc.)

And that love is expected to grow into a concern of practical care. Love helps carries another’s back-breaking burden. Love seeks to support and advocate, to be generous and willing to sacrifice on behalf of the others. Love not only is to undergird the Law of Scripture, but it is also meant to be the base from which the law of the land is built.

“Love is a human dynamic of wrapping one’s self around another person or thing and deeply investing in it with the core of one’s being.” Nijay Gupta

At the least, and at it’s core, love is a deep human propensity toward bonding with another. For example, giving a plastic bottle of water to a homeless person is a good deed, but love seeks connection and relationship.

My late brother-in-law had a practice, when walking to work, of stopping and sitting down with a homeless person nearly every day. He brought two brown bags with him, so that he could share the other. They would sit and talk. The person was seen, acknowledged, listened to, and loved.

What we most need to grasp about the Apostle Paul and his instructions to all the churches is that the primary aspect of every Christian is to know God’s love for the world, especially its people. When that happens, God’s redeeming and transforming work comes through Christians who love – which then returns to God and loves God.

Hate has no place in God’s agenda for the people of this world. This is why Paul takes pains to point out the angry, fearful, and hateful things we are not to do, as well as the love we are to do.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8, NIV)

Distance and detachment are the soil of hate. Anything that tries to separate us as humans has a distinct smell of fire in the air.

Love has kind and civil speech behind it. Love is a discourse between people. Love is not some sort of coldhearted need that we grit our teeth doing. I admit that love is not my first thought whenever watching the news about the current U.S. President and his Cabinet, because there is a lot of fire around its golden calf.

Yet, my response is to connect with God, and to have connections with all sorts of people, no matter what their politics and thinking are. And, yes, I can do it all in love. When you consistently pray for anyone every day for a long time, it’s hard to hate them, even though you still detest their words and actions.

To keep up dialogues with others in a political camp that is, to me, dangerous helps me to wonder “What happened to them to have such a stance?” instead of “What’s wrong with this crazy mind?” The combination of heart, will, and action serves me well; that’s because this is what love involves.

Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. (Romans 6:17, NLT)

The Apostle Paul’s theology is thoroughly conceived and proclaimed in love; and he used a cluster of terms to talk about the great love that he himself experienced and wanted others to experience, as well. Words such as “grace,” “faith,” “compassion,” “mercy,” and “kindness” are all ways of speaking the nuances of God’s love and the Christian’s love for neighbor.

Although Paul gets a lot of talk amongst Christians concerning faith, justification, and redemption, the very heart of all of it all is that Christ’s atonement was conceived in love within the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit.

Love is the real distinguishing mark of Christ-following and Spirit-filled churches and Christians. Anything less is neither following in the steps of Jesus, nor possessing the Lord’s given Spirit. If you find God, then you have found love, and vice versa.

Finally, love is such a large dynamic force that we have a lifetime opportunity of growing our hearts as big as our heads. If we come to see that we don’t want to harm others or fantasize about their undoing, then we know we’re on the right track toward putting our spiritual effort into the development of love.

You will be doing the right thing if you obey the law of the Kingdom, which is found in the scripture, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” (James 2:8, GNT)

Holy God, you call us to righteousness and light. Teach us the undivided law of love, so that we may love people even as you do, love you with all our will and strength, and find our freedom in blessed loving speech and service to others, taught to us in word and deed by our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.