“All you need is love, love, love is all you need, love is all you need …” – The Beetles.
It may have been a smash hit, but the Beetles’ 1967 song “All you need is love” is not exactly good theology! When we think of the biblical importance of love, many scriptures come to mind – ranging from “God so loved the world …” (John 3:16) to the apostle Paul’s great summary statement in 1 Corinthians 13:13 – “now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Love, of course, is of supreme importance because it is perhaps the central defining characteristic of the nature of God himself – “God is love” (1 John 4:7) – so its centrality in the Christian Faith cannot be argued.
But does the supreme importance of love mean that love is all the Christian needs? Many actually think this and go about their lives thinking that as long as they have love, they are “good Christians.” The Bible, however, shows that this is not really true at all. To imagine God as only as God of love is to limit his nature and to entirely miss the fact that the God of love is also, for example, the God of Justice (Isaiah 30:18, Psalm 33:4-6, Isaiah 61:8; etc.) as well as light or truth ( 1 John 1:5; etc.) and many other things. When we remember this, we can better understand what Paul had in mind when he wrote to the Philippian church:
“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1:9-11).
Paul had already told these Christians he knew they had love (verse 8), but then he emphasized the knowledge they needed. The word “knowledge” that Paul uses in this passage is not gnôsis which connotes simply “knowing” but epignôsis, which is used in the New Testament to connote full discernment and spiritual knowledge. Paul echoes the need for this kind of knowledge that guides love in his letter to the Colossians:
“we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:9-10).
These two passages both show that we need to grow in the knowledge of God and his will if we are to please him and bear the fruit of good works based in love. It is perfectly possible to have love in our lives – to be sincere, dedicated, loving – and still wrong. We can love mistakenly or unwisely and as Paul and many other biblical writers show, our love should be coupled with the spiritual knowledge that guides us in seeing how, when and where to show love.
If we were to believe the advertising of this world (especially around Valentine’s Day) we would believe that all a relationship needs is love (and perhaps expensive gifts to “demonstrate” that love). But any married couple can confirm that a healthy and strong relationship needs far more than just love. Our relationship with God is no different. We cannot be truly “one” with God by simply having love that we “demonstrate” through sacrifices, gifts, or other works. The Old Testament prophetic books are full of statements to this effect, and the principle is clear in the New Testament also.
When the Bible tells us that “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments” (1 John 5:5) it shows that we must come to know – and know deeply – how to love. Saying “all you need is love” is like saying “all you need is air.” Of course we need air, and of course we need love, but they are not the only things we need. As the apostle Peter summarized, we must “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). We must have love, but to be effective Christians we must always remember that love is not all we need.
Around the turn of our present era – just before and during the life of Jesus – two Jewish rabbis lived and rose to considerable fame. Even if you have heard of one or both of these teachers of the law, you may not know much about them – despite the fact they both had considerable influence on what we read in the New Testament today.
The first of these teachers, Hillel the Elder, also known as Hillel the Great (c. 110 BC – AD 10), lived in Jerusalem during the time of King Herod and became the most famous Jewish scholar of that era. The second scholar was Shammai (50 BC – AD 30), who tradition says was a Pharisee who became a leading Jewish teacher and whose influence was also considerable in the development of Jewish thought.
Although their lives overlapped, Hillel was about sixty years old at the time of Shammai’s birth; but some of their interactions are recorded, and their teachings were completely different. Generally speaking, Hillel’s teachings were more lenient and compassionate, while those of Shammai were more strict and severe. A famous example is that Shammai said it was wrong to tell an ugly bride that she looked beautiful, while Hillel said that all brides are beautiful on their wedding day. While Shammai and his followers believed only worthy students should be admitted to study the law of God, Hillel and his disciples stressed that the law may be taught to anyone, in the hope that the person would grow and become worthy.
Shammai’s strictness could be extreme. He and his followers said that if someone forgot to ask a blessing on a meal and had left the place where he ate, the person must return to that place to recite the blessing. Hillel said, however, that the person could recite a blessing in the place where they realized their omission. But While Shammai could be overly strict, sometimes Hillel could be overly lenient. For example, Shammai held that a man may only divorce his wife for a serious transgression, but Hillel allowed divorce for even such trivial offenses as burning a meal.
This is why Jesus said “anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery” (Matthew 5:32) – clearly distancing himself from the teachings of Hillel on this point. Jesus also phrased the “Golden Rule” of “do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31) in a positive way, in contrast to Hillel’s famous but more negative expression of the same concept. But in other ways, Jesus sided with Hillel over Shammai. While Shammai stressed the importance of the Jewish people and their temple, Hillel – and Jesus after him – was more accepting of non-Jewish people and looked beyond the temple (John 4:21).
But Jesus did not follow either of the major rabbis’ teachings exclusively, and in a sense, his agreement with them was often coincidental. This is seen in the fact that the discussions of the two scholars and their followers contributed to the belief that the oral law – as expounded by Hillel and Shammai – was just as binding as the written law of God. Jesus firmly rejected this approach of many in his day by citing Scripture: “They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules” (Matthew 15:9). Nevertheless, much of what we read in the Gospels is a result of Jesus rejecting or confirming what Hillel and Shammai taught on various points – the major theological views of his day.
The influence of these teachers on the apostle Paul was also extensive – especially because Paul had studied with the scholar Gamaliel (Acts 22:3) who was the grandson of Hillel. The book of Acts relates that Gamaliel intervened on behalf of the apostles of Jesus when they were seized and brought before the Sanhedrin – doubtless because many of their teachings agreed with aspects of his own and that of his grandfather, Hillel. Nevertheless, we see many instances in the writings of Paul where the apostle disagreed as well as agreed with the views of his celebrated teacher, and the views of Hillel and Shammai before him.
Ultimately, we can study and understand the New Testament without the teachings of the great rabbinical thinkers of New Testament times, but knowing something of their views can sometimes help us better understand what Jesus and Paul had in mind when they gave examples of how and how not to interpret the law of God.
* For more information on the historical background of the New Testament, download our free e-book Inside the Four Gospels: Four Portraits, Many Lessonshere.
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