Love is one of those things that, for the longest time, confused and perplexed me. I knew that I deeply desired to love and to be loved, but I had no clue as to what love actually was. The expressions of love that I had exhibited in my own life and had experienced from others seemed woefully insufficient.
One reason that love is so confusing to us is that the ability to love is not natural to the fallen carnal man. When we are dead in our sins and trespasses we have an inability to truly love. The unconverted man cannot truly love.
The apostle John tells us in 1 John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us.” John is telling us here that the only way that we are able to truly love is if God first sets his love upon us. When God sets his unconditional love upon us in the conversion of our souls by faith in his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, he regenerates us to new life. Paul says of this regeneration, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). It is only this new man, this new creation, this regenerated soul that truly has the ability to love.
Sure, man is able to be filled with emotions and lust for someone else. The Greeks had multiple words to express the idea of love that we lump into one catchall word. There is the word phileo, which speaks of the brotherly love and affection shared between close friends. Think of the City of Brotherly Love—Philadelphia (compound of phileo and adelphoi) . There is eros, where we get our English word erotic, which speaks of romantic passions, lusts, and pleasures. Then there is storge, which speaks of the close natural affections shared by natural family members. And there is agape, which we often associate with the unconditional love which God shows to sinners who are saved by grace through faith in Christ.
When I married my wife, we were both unconverted. At the time, I was softening in my atheism but was still an ardent agnostic. She was raised around the church and exposed to the Christian faith but had still not yet been truly converted. Evidence of her unconverted state at that time was that she married me. We were filled with passions and emotional feelings for one another. We were best friends and cared deeply for one another, but we were also incapable of truly loving one another because we remained unconverted. When we were saved by Christ, everything truly changed within us. We began to love in a way we had never experienced before. No longer was our relationship merely ruled by the passions of our flesh, but it was suddenly grounded in a sincere, deep, trusting, committed, unconditional love.
But even still, we had to ask the question, “What truly is love?” We know that love is not merely a feeling—it cannot simply be feelings alone. Love is more than that. Love also cannot be equated with euphoric temporal happiness. We all know that there are times when our relationships with those we love are filled with painful feelings and periods of deep, dark unhappiness, but we still love them. And we are still committed to them. Love also cannot be a relativistic feeling based on the individual’s own perceived happiness. This is the lie the world sells us and is one of the primary reasons the divorce rate is so high in our country today. In pastoral counseling sessions, I often hear, as a reason for the desire for divorce, “I’m not happy anymore.” Temporal unhappiness is not a legitimate reason for divorce, but when our minds are deluded into thinking love equals happiness at all times, then we are quick to abandon the covenant of marriage in pursuit of fueling the idolatry of self.
As a believer in Christ, I want to love and love well. I want to love my wife, my children, my church, my neighbors. I also want these people to love me in return. The Scriptures clearly show that one of the primary evidences of my conversion to Christ is that I love the Bride of Christ, the Church, my brothers and sisters in Christ (1 John 1:7-17). If I don’t love the Church, I have no reason to have confidence in my conversion. But how do I love? How do I know that I am loving the church, my wife, my children, and my neighbor, and how do I know that these people love me in return?
The answer to this question is rooted in the Bible, and the Bible tells us that love is expressed through law-keeping. That is to say, that love is expressed through the keeping of the moral law of God as expressed and summarized in the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20:1-17. This is helpful for us because there is a standard, there is a metric, and there is a gauge that is external to the individual. Love is not some arbitrary, relativistic feeling based upon the individual’s perceived perception of things. Rather, love is determined by God, who is the Omnibenevolent One, and he has revealed to us what love is in his moral law.
The third use of the law is the normative use of the law. In this way, God has purposed the law to serve as a map for the regenerate, not as a means of justification, but as a means of guiding the Christian on his way to the Celestial City. The law defines the way of righteousness and good works. The normative use of the law guides us in knowing how to love and how to discern that we are being loved. (1 John 5:3, Titus 2:11-14)
I want to support this idea from two New Testament texts. First, let us consider Mark 12:28-34.
The text reads,
28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.
In this section of Mark (Mark 11:27-12:44) the chief priests, scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees come to Jesus asking him questions, not seeking to humble themselves before the Christ to learn from him but to trap him so they could arrest him and kill him. (Mark 11:18, 12:12) What’s interesting about this scribe in Mark 12:28-34 is that it seems both he and his question are genuine, and Jesus responds accordingly.
The scribe’s question is, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” He’s asking Jesus which of the Ten Commandments is the most important because he appears to sincerely want to serve and obey God. Jesus answers him with, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Jesus begins with a reference to the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9), and then Jesus summarizes the Ten Commandments into two commandments. When Jesus says, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” he is summarizing the first table of the law, commandments 1-4, into a single command. He is saying that to express our love of God is to keep commandments 1-4, which are the commandments that govern man's relationship with God.
Secondly, Jesus says, “The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Here, Jesus summarizes the second table of the law, commandments 5-10, into a single command. In doing so, Jesus is saying that we love our neighbor as ourselves by keeping commandments 5-10, which are the commandments that govern man’s relationship with fellow man.
So then we love God, and we love our neighbor by keeping the moral law of God as expressed in the Ten Commandments.
The next text to consider is Romans 13:8-10, where Paul explicitly states that love is fulfilling the law.
8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Notice carefully what Paul does here. He says, “For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” But how do we love each other, and how do we know that our neighbor loves us in return? How do we know if we are fulfilling the law? Notice what Paul writes next. He quotes the 7th commandment, the 6th commandment, the 8th commandment, and the 10th commandment. He essentially quotes the second table of the law as the means by which we love one another. And then he says, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is fulfilling the law.”
This makes sense to us; love is expressed through law-keeping, not ever fleeting emotions. If I love someone, I am striving in all things to keep the law between us. I am striving not to sin against them and to do no wrong to them. God is the one who has the authority to determine right and wrong, good and evil, that which is moral and immoral, and he has revealed these things to us in his moral law as summarized in the Ten Commandments. So then, love is defined by the law of God, not by the emotional state of sinful, depraved men.
I’ve thought about this in my own life. My wife is my closest neighbor. I desire to love her well. As I meditated on the law serving as a map guiding me in loving my wife well, I made this list. Perhaps you could call it “The Ten Commandments of a Husband Loving His Wife.”
1.) He puts no other gods before Yahweh in their family and household.
2.) He leads his wife to engage in the right and proper biblically prescribed worship of God.
3.) He does not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain by violating the covenant of marriage in any way. He does not break his oaths and vows of marriage but is committed to her till death separates them.
4.) He does not forsake the gathering of the saints for corporate worship on the Lord’s Day but rather leads in having his family gathered together morning and evening to worship corporately each and every Sunday.
5.) He evangelizes, leads, and disciplines his children and requires them to honor and obey their mother. He trains his children in righteousness and raises them in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
6.) He does not do anything that diminishes the imago dei in his wife, rather in everything he desires her human flourishing, sacrifices his life to guard and protect her, and strives in everything to build her up into the image of Christ.
7.) He does not commit adultery; he is faithful to his wife; he guards the marriage bed; he puts to death the sinful lusts of his flesh; he protects his eyes from the pornographic world around him.
8.) He does not steal from her or rob from her—he freely gives to her of his money, time, emotions, and the totality of himself. He does not leave her wanting physically, emotionally, or spiritually.
9.) He does not lie to her and bear false witness against her. In everything, he is truthful and honest and does not withhold necessary information from her.
10.) He finds himself to be completely satisfied with the wife of his youth and, therefore, does not covet his neighbor’s wife or any other woman.
A husband loves his wife by keeping the moral law of God as expressed in the Ten Commandments in the covenant of marriage. The same is true in our relationships with our children, the church, and our neighbors. The law defines love for us: let us go and love well, doing no harm to one another and fulfilling the law. Let us follow the map that our God has graciously given to us.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Chase