What Is Love?

There's a guy who hangs out down next to the highway on the street going between WalMart and Target. He holds a cardboard sign saying something like, "Vietnam Veteran, Please Help." Is it love to give to him? If I don't give to him does that mean I'm not walking in love? What if he's a con-man? What if he's not really a Vietnam Veteran but just a "vivales" as they say in Spanish? Is it still love to give to him?

We could make a rule or law out of giving to guys who stand on street corners asking for money. It might even make us feel that we were particularly good if we gave to every such person. But is it always love to do so? Does love give money to a man so he can buy drugs or alcohol? Does love give money to a guy who's just evading responsibility? Is it love to help him buy his drugs? Is it love to support his dishonesty? Is it love to support even just his laziness.

Christians like to make a big deal out of helping the poor. "I go down once a week and work at the homeless shelter, aren't I special."  My mom remembers going with a church group to help feed the homeless in our small town. (The weather is really nice here during the winters and so along with snowbirds from the Northern U.S. and from Canada we get an influx of homeless people from the coast.) They had prepared some sack lunches or something to distribute to the homeless. Unfortunately, they hadn't coordinated with the other churches in town and as a result there was an oversupply of food and an under supply of homeless. I kind of imagine some church lady, holding a sack lunch in one hand running through the park chasing after some poor homeless guy trying to deliver it, so she could say she had fed the poor. The upshot for my mom was that the churches distribution of lunches had undermined the ministry of the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army feeds the homeless all the time not just when the spirit news media moves them. Was that love?

My point is that real love isn't amenable to an easily complied with set of rules like, "love always gives to the guy who’s begging for money", or "love is feeding the homeless."  So how do we know what love would do? How do we define love?

John tells us that love is acting like God would act. Love is doing what God would do.

1 John 4:17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

Our love is perfect, i.e. mature, fully developed, grown up, when we are in this world as God is. Love is doing what God would do. This is a typical Jewish understanding of our relationship to God sometimes referred to as imitatio dei, i.e. imitating God.

Paul says basically the same thing as John in

Ephesians 5:1 NRSV Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

But in order to imitate God we have to know what he would do in a particular situation. How can we know what God would do? We know what God would do because God has put his love in us.

Romans 5:5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

It doesn't say love "for" God has been shed abroad in our hearts. It says His very own love, the love of God, has been shed abroad in our hearts. That's how we can know what God would do. That's how we are able to imitate the love of God, because we have His love in us. We don't need a book of rules because we carry around the ultimate rule in our hearts. Understanding that we have God's love in us sheds a little light on the rest of the two verses quoted above.

1 John 4:17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

Why would mature love cause us to have boldness on the day of judgment? I guess the traditional Christian interpretation of that verse would go something like: Mature love guarantees that on the day of judgment we will not be found guilty. In other words, if we learn to walk in love God will acquit us on the day of judgment. That's a nice interpretation but I don't think that's what John is talking about. Let me show you why.

First, the Day of Judgment is not how Jews of Jesus day would have referred to that time when God judges the world. Jesus was a Jew, his disciple John was a Jew, they would have probably referred to that day as, "the Day of The LORD," a phrase used some 23 times in the Hebrew Scriptures some 5 times in the New Testament, 7 times if we include two uses of "day of God." The phrase "Day of Judgment" on the other hand, is found nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures. 

Second, the Greek word "krisis" translated "judgment" in this verse can mean something other than the imposition of a sentence by a judge. According to Thayers Greek English Lexicon it can mean:

1) a separating, sundering, separation 1a) a trial, contest 2) selection 3) judgment…

According to the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament it means:

"This word, denoting an act, has such senses as a."estrangement," "conflict" b. "Selection. c. "decision," "judgment," "verdict," even "accusation" and d. "decision" in a battle or illness."

Nigel Turner in Christian Words says:

"Krisis… was in secular Greek the power of deciding, the distinguishing of one thing from another, as the smaller from the greater, the decision of a ruler or of the gods. It was the verdict of a court, even the trial itself, as well as its result, i.e.  a verdict or condemnation. Apart from anything legal, krisis was a trial of skill, a dispute, an issue to be decided in war."

I think that the meaning, "a trial or contest", "a conflict", "a trial of skill, a dispute" is what John means here. I suggest that he means "trial" not in the sense of a judicial proceeding but in the same way that in English we use "trial" to mean a circumstance or trouble which puts you to the test. So I would interpret it as, "the day of testing" or "the day of trouble" or "the day of crisis." Similar to what Jesus says in the parable of the sower:

Luke 8:13 They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away.

So lets test out that interpretation and see how it works.

1 John 4:17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment trouble: because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

Why would mature, perfect, fully developed love give us boldness or confidence in the day of trouble? Love and confidence don't appear to be related. They seem to be separate unrelated emotions. We don't often hear then joined to each other as in: "That guy is so full of love it gives him confidence." At first it appears to make no sense.

The sense comes from remembering that John is not talking about our love but God's love in us, perfected and matured. Our love is perfected, matured, fully developed, when  "as he is so are we in this world." Our love is perfected when we are an imitation of God. Our love is fully developed when we do what God would do in any given situation.

Paul puts the same idea differently and says, "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts." When we are born again, we are born into the family of God and we receive His nature, His love. The love of God in us, matured and perfected, gives us boldness in the day of trouble because it let's us know what God's love will do for us. We know what God's love towards us is like because we have experienced God's love in us, towards others.

When someone in need asks us for help God's love in us tells us what to do. As we yield to that love and obey the love in us, that love of God in us becomes stronger and matures and develops and we in this world become more like God. A person in need asks us for help and even though we ourselves don't have much money to help, God's love in us tells us we should give them what little we have. So we obey. We obey God's love in us. In that moment of doing what we did not want to do, what we did not feel we could do, what we rationally concluded it would not be wise to do, in that moment of obeying the love of God in us, we come to know the love of God for us.

So when our day of trial, of testing, of troubles comes, we can be bold and have confidence, be audacious, full of Chutzpah, because we absolutely know what the love of God will do for us. We know what God will do for us because we have done what God would do for others. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

The next verse is saying basically the same
thing:

1 John 4:17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment trouble: because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

He that feareth is not made perfect in love? That doesn't make much sense either. Love and fear don't normally go together. We don't usually think of them as opposites. But as God's love in us is perfected, matures, fully develops, it casts out fear because God's love in us lets us know what God's love toward us is like.

Someone does you a great wrong and you desire to denounce them from the roof tops, you want to make them pay, your greatest desire in life is for justice to be done, for that person to suffer for the wrong they have committed against you, but love, God's love in you, compels you to forgive them. God's love in you tells you to forgive and to forget about it. After much struggle and effort and resistance you finally obey and yield to that love, and forgive and forget what that person has done to you. In that moment you have, in a very real sense, literally, factually, truly, really, experienced the love of God.

When fear comes to try and capture you it cannot succeed against you. You will cast it out, because you literally know what is the breadth, and length and depth and height of God's love. You know because you have lived it out here in this world. Since you know what you would do, you know what God will do for you.