Indeed, it seems this is when such love as we have (or lack) is most revealed in its purist form. Lord help us. I’m not eager to find out how much of mine there is that doesn’t need the crutches of some positive emotions. Perhaps that is normal, and training wheels are granted us as a part of life.
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Since Kendel said as much … I’ll post not only the following paragraph, but the opening paragraphs to the sermon, which includes today’s snippet posted above, and going all the way to where tomorrow’s selection will pick up again. Here it is:
The original here quoted by our Lord is to be found in the words of God to Moses, ( Leviticus xix. 18:) “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord” Our Lord never thought of being original. The older the saying the better, if it utters the truth he wants to utter. In him it becomes fact: The Word was made flesh . And so, in the wondrous meeting of extremes, the words he spoke were no more words, but spirit and life.
The same words are twice quoted by St Paul, and once by St James, always in a similar mode: Love they represent as the fulfilling of the law.
Is the converse true then? Is the fulfilling of the law love? The apostle Paul says: “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” Does it follow that working no ill is love? Love will fulfil the law: will the law fulfil love? No, verily. If a man keeps the law, I know he is a lover of his neighbour. But he is not a lover because he keeps the law: he keeps the law because he is a lover. No heart will be content with the law for love. The law cannot fulfil love.
“But, at least, the law will be able to fulfil itself, though it reaches not to love.”
I do not believe it. I am certain that it is impossible to keep the law towards one’s neighbour except one loves him. The law itself is infinite, reaching to such delicacies of action, that the man who tries most will be the man most aware of defeat. We are not made for law, but for love. Love is law, because it is infinitely more than law. It is of an altogether higher region than law–is, in fact, the creator of law. Had it not been for love, not one of the shall-nots of the law would have been uttered. True, once uttered, they shew themselves in the form of justice, yea, even in the inferior and worldly forms of prudence and self-preservation; but it was love that spoke them first. Were there no love in us, what sense of justice could we have? Would not each be filled with the sense of his own wants, and be for ever tearing to himself? I do not say it is conscious love that breeds justice, but I do say that without love in our nature justice would never be born. For I do not call that justice which consists only in a sense of our own rights. True, there are poor and withered forms of love which are immeasurably below justice now; but even now they are of speechless worth, for they will grow into that which will supersede, because it will necessitate, justice.
He is not a lover because he keeps the law. He keeps the law because he is a lover.
and … Love is the creator of the law. Not one of the commandments would have been written were it not for love. And: “I am certain that it is impossible to keep the law towards one’s neighbour except one loves him.”
I love those!
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Does anybody else get the feeling that First John must have been one of MacDonald’s favorite go-tos?
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Can a loving father give an obedient and loving child a ‘law’, a specified behavior, without the child understanding the reasons behind it and it being something that would not necessarily be spontaneous or intuitive for the loving child to do?
I’ll take that as a rhetorical question since the answer is certainly: yes!
Here is another (probably also rhetorical - or maybe not!) question:
Which does ‘Christian’ society seem to be most prone to forget, and therefore most often in need of reminder about? That there are laws and rules? Or that there is a higher calling of love for which all such rules are merely a subset?
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The Lord’s Day of Rest occurs to me (surprise, surprise ; - ). That is something that will never be intuitive. The higher calling of love is always obedience and trust. There are ‘laws of love’!
Check out Matthew 5 & 6. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life…” sounds like a loving command to me!
(Click/tap the image or this for higher resolution.)
Merv, thanks for posting this. I have been at work and then busy catching up this evening. So, I hadn’t had time to add this.
This question just jumps out at me:
It reminds me of how we are so inclined to confuse law and grace.
I appreciate Phil’s openness here:
It’s true of all of us, I think. We are called to love, even when (especially when) we don’t feel like it. It’s a determined act of the will, as is keeping the law for the sake of another.
If we dish out law, rather than keeping law for the sake of the other, we’re only exercising judgement. Gracelessness.
Not love.
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Are we forbidden from mentioning law, I wonder. Even laws of love.
You’re probably feeling like it’s being frowned upon (if not outright “forbidden”) here, Dale. But I think your comment highlights something. It isn’t so much that “a law is being brought up” as it is about the spirit and context of how such law is used.
What I mean is this: Is law brought up primarily as a means of exercising control over others - others who are not your children? Or is it used more as a challenge to self-indulgence - that is for me to reflect on as to how I measure up against such law? I’m not saying there is no place for fiery prophecy, especially if such is used to speak truth to power - power in the highest echelons of society. But is it used more as a moral cudgel from a religious elite?
Here is an example of what I mean. At such a time as this, critics of the law will often bring up what Jesus had to say to the Pharisees and their attention to detail of religious law. It wasn’t a pretty sight as Jesus words plainly make clear. But those who wish to defend attentiveness to law will also nearly always bring up another part of Jesus reply: where he effectively says, yes they are blind guides, but they do after all still sit in the seat of Moses so you ought to do as they say, not as they do." And the law-enthusiast latches onto this as his “aha” moment … or similarly, their favorite verse in the whole “woman caught in adultery story” is at the end when Jesus tells her: go and sin no more. It’s almost as if they are determined to miss the entire point of what Jesus is doing in order to bring attention back around to where they want it: "yeah … yeah … Jesus, grace and forgiveness and all that … yada yada - we heard all that stuff, but look right here! You said to “go and sin no more”! We just knew it! Really you’re a man of the law aren’t you! And so their spirit is exposed - exactly identical to the spirit of the Pharisees then. They (we now) go to these Herculean efforts to emasculate the grace taught in the new testament and return instead to the old covenant (the law) that we’re so familiar with and so used to applying - mainly against others (but also to ourselves, at least enough to fuel our own feelings of righteousness).
It isn’t that the law is at fault here. It’s the spirit in us that wields such law that reveals what we’re about.
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This keeps coming to mind from John 1:
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Sond from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.e 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God,f who is at the Father’s side,g he has made him known.
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(44) The Moral Law [continuing on the heels of the extended portions posted above.]
Of what use then is the law? To lead us to Christ, the Truth,–to waken in our minds a sense of what our deepest nature, the presence, namely, of God in us, requires of us,–to let us know, in part by failure, that the purest effort of will of which we are capable cannot lift us up even to the abstaining from wrong to our neighbour. What man, for instance, who loves not his neighbour and yet wishes to keep the law, will dare be confident that never by word, look, tone, gesture, silence, will he bear false witness against that neighbour? What man can judge his neighbour aright save him whose love makes him refuse to judge him? Therefore are we told to love, and not judge. It is the sole justice of which we are capable, and that perfected will comprise all justice. Nay more, to refuse our neighbour love, is to do him the greatest wrong. But of this afterwards. In order to fulfil the commonest law, I repeat, we must rise into a loftier region altogether, a region that is above law, because it is spirit and life and makes the law: in order to keep the law towards our neighbour, we must love our neighbour. We are not made for law, but for grace–or for faith, to use another word so much misused. We are made on too large a scale altogether to have any pure relation to mere justice, if indeed we can say there is such a thing. It is but an abstract idea which, in reality, will not be abstracted. The law comes to make us long for the needful grace,–that is, for the divine condition, in which love is all, for God is Love.
This already is much longer than the shorter paragraph Lewis excerpted, and yet still doesn’t include some paragraphs after that will bring us to tomorrow’s quote. Lewis must have been desperate to keep his short book from becoming a volume and so excercised extreme selectivity. It must have agonized him, because this sermon is full of so much more.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “Love Thy Neighbor ”
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I wonder if those who show the least grace toward those who do not believe as they do tend to be those who formerly did not believe themselves? I find ex smokers show the least empathy for those still smoking. I have no tolerance for second hand smoke but that doesn’t keep me from understanding the physical unease of the deprived smoker as well as the ever greater public condemnation they receive.
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That seems likely as a part of human nature. I bet we have less sympathy in any area where we either were or deemed ourselves successful. Teachers are (or should be) routinely aware of this. The particular math concept seems blazingly obvious to me who’s rehearsed and taught it many years over, so why can’t the student in front of me just see it?! Even if I did struggle the same as them on my first several exposures to a challenge, I tend to forget my struggles and only dwell on my eventual successes. And my sympathy for the strugglers tends to dry up if I don’t remind myself of this.
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(45) The Same
In order to fulfil the commonest law, I repeat, we must rise into a loftier region altogether, a region that is above law, because it is spirit and life and makes the law…
And since I inadverdantly already included the above in yesterdays extended inclusion, I’ll just jump to the next one here as well.
(46) Upward toward the Center
“But how,” says a man, who is willing to recognize the universal neighbourhead, but finds himself unable to fulfil the bare law towards the woman even whom he loves best,–“How am I then to rise into that higher region, that empyrean of love?” And, beginning straightway to try to love his neighbour, he finds that the empyrean of which he spoke is no more to be reached in itself than the law was to be reached in itself. As he cannot keep the law without first rising into the love of his neighbour, so he cannot love his neighbour without first rising higher still. The whole system of the universe works upon this law–the driving of things upward towards the centre. The man who will love his neighbour can do so by no immediately operative exercise of the will. It is the man fulfilled of God from whom he came and by whom he is, who alone can as himself love his neighbour who came from God too and is by God too. The mystery of individuality and consequent relation is deep as the beginnings of humanity, and the questions thence arising can be solved only by him who has, practically, at least, solved the holy necessities resulting from his origin. In God alone can man meet man. In him alone the converging lines of existence touch and cross not. When the mind of Christ, the life of the Head, courses through that atom which the man is of the slowly revivifying body, when he is alive too, then the love of the brothers is there as conscious life. From Christ through the neighbours comes the life that makes him a part of the body.
It is possible to love our neighbour as ourselves. Our Lord never spoke hyperbolically, …
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “Love Thy Neighbor ”
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A question about loving a Pharisee or a Sadducee: Jesus à la the Good Samaritan (or the Good Samaritan à la Jesus ; - ) would have had empathy for, helped and loved a waylaid one along the dangerous highway even knowing what they were, but would he have been ‘loving’ by giving him a platform, allowing him on the stage, so to speak, in effect endorsing him?
That brings up an interesting point, Dale. So if we had asked Jesus to continue that story of the Good Samaritan, and speak of how the rescuer and the rescued might have continued (or not) to relate to each other weeks or years later, after the whole tragedy is but a memory; let’s say the Jewish fellow remains at odds with his Samaritan neighbors - except perhaps his “one friend” that had rescued him. How do you see that relationship developing?
If some crisis in his life and consequent aid from Jesus dissolved his resolute opposition to Jesus and spiritual matters, that’s one thing, but we know how it turned out when those whose hearts weren’t similarly softened and remained adamantly and explicitly opposed, don’t we.
Do we know, though? Might it be to foreclose prematurely on the Good Shepherd who is still out searching for a lost sheep?
The searches don’t conclude and cease just because we may deem ourselves to now be safely delivered into the fold.
Isn’t it possible that many in our society have yet to meet Christ in any recognizeable form?
Absolutely. It is also definite that some have and rejected him. Resolutely.
(47) No One Loves Because He Sees Why
Where a man does not love, the not-loving must seem rational. For no one loves because he sees why, but because he loves. No human reason can he given for the highest necessity of divinely created existence. For reasons are always from above downwards
.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “Love Thy Neighbor ”
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