Praise of charity, or love, is ubiquitous in Christian circles—but validly so. Scripture identifies no other virtue so completely with God. Yes, we hear about it a lot, but that is natural; asking a Christian not to talk of charity is, in a very real sense, like asking them not to talk about God himself. But, why is that exactly?
In his great exaltation of charity (the thirteenth chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians), the apostle Paul describes it as superior to even faith. This can perhaps be confusing: If we are saved through faith (and we are per Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians: Ch. 2, v. 4-9), how can any other virtue be superior? I believe we can resolve this paradox by taking a closer look at the work of salvation. Let us examine Ephesians (Ch. 2, v. 8): “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:”. We often focus on the words “through faith” in this passage—because that is the part of the transaction of salvation that rests with us: God has given faith, the ability to believe, to everyone (Epistle to the Romans Ch. 12, v. 3; Epistle to the Ephesians: Ch. 2, v. 8) and commands everyone to believe on his Son, Jesus Christ (Epistle to the Romans: Ch. 10, v. 8-13). However, it is also important to examine the words “by grace;” let’s look a little earlier in the passage in Ephesians for enlightenment: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)” (Epistle to the Ephesians: Ch. 2, v. 4-5). Salvation involves our faith, but it rests fundamentally on “his great love wherewith he loved us”. That is why he quickens us together with Christ when we believe. We are saved by grace—that is, we are saved because of the love of God.
In the Gospel according to John (Ch. 3, v. 16), we famously read that love is what motivated God to send his only begotten son to earth to procure the salvation he offers by grace through faith, but let us not only consider love in relation to why Christ came but also who he is. Musing on the relationship of love to Christ and salvation, Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote the following:
[Love] is pure action and its every deed is holy, for it is the fulfilling of the law [of God]. [Note: Here, Kierkegaard is referencing Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Ch. 13, v. 10).]
This, then, is Christian love. Even if it is not or was not thus in any man […], it nevertheless was thus in Him who was love, in our Lord Jesus Christ. [Paul] therefore says of him (Romans 10:4): “Christ is the end of the law.” What the law was unable to produce [in man] that Christ was. Whereas the law with its demand thereby became the destruction of all, because they were not what it demanded and only learned to recognize sin through it, Christ became the [destruction of the law’s demand] because he was what it demanded. […]
Yes, he was love, and his love was the fulfilling of the law.
from Works of Love (Section III-A)
What Kierkegaard is getting at (in a somewhat roundabout way) is that, by examining the person of Jesus Christ, we come to better understand what the disciple John means in his first epistle (Ch. 4, v. 8, 16) when he says, “God is love.” Love is why God chose to offer salvation and also who he sent to procure it.
This is because love is also how God procured it. His work—the life, death, and resurrection of Christ—is not merely motivated by love, it is love. It demonstrates what love is when it is perfectly realized. This is what John is getting at in his first epistle (Ch. 4, v. 16) when he says, “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us.” The story of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection—which fulfilled the law, atoned for our sins, and opened Paradise—is the absolute expression of God’s love. It is the perfect self-expression of the God Who Is Love of himself. To believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ is to believe in the love of God and the God who is himself that love.
And we may go further. In the Gospel according to John (Ch. 16, v. 27), Jesus says to his disciples, “For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.” Perhaps this is interpretive, but I take this passage to mean that, when an individual places their faith in Jesus Christ, God understands that act, too, as an expression of love.
Thus, the more we contemplate charity—the conception of love set forth in the Gospel and the Scriptures—the more we understand that it is the central principle of the Christian faith. It is why God saves us and who he is and how he saves us and how we receive his salvation. For these reasons, we simply cannot overemphasize charity. It permeates Christianity by design, not by accident. It is the lighthouse that, properly attended to, will always keep the Christian’s faith and practice on course. To believe in it is to believe in Jesus Christ. To try to practice it is to imitate (however imperfectly) the perfection of Christ. To proclaim it is to proclaim the record that God gave of himself in the person of his Son: “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” (The First Epistle of John: Ch. 5, v. 11) To receive it is to receive Christ and, with Christ, that eternal and everlasting life which is in Christ and which God offers freely through Christ’s work of reconciliation to all who believe and call upon him (Epistle to the Romans: Ch. 10, v. 11-13). Charity—that is, love properly understood—always leads us back to God because charity is simply God beckoning us to himself: To sit with him, to speak with him, to follow him, to know him.
(Photo by Emmanuel Phaeton on Unsplash)
Comparing Notes 