Global warming continues to be a topic provoking concern, debate, and cries for action among many. We are used to meteorologists making accurate forecasts of the temperature even a number of days in advance – often to the precise degree – and so we may be concerned when climatologists forecast dangerous temperature changes.
But what would you think about a forecast that predicted temperatures several thousand years in advance?
Some two thousand years ago Jesus of Nazareth made such a forecast regarding moral and ethical temperature declines at the end of the present age, saying: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12).
Perhaps there has always been evil in this world and a resulting coldness in human hearts and interactions, but Christ clearly stated that there would come a time when the love of most would grow cold. The Greek expression (ton pollon) translated “of many” in some Bibles is better translated – as in the NIV – “of most” or “of the majority,” showing that this coldness was something that would eventually be widespread and would be the norm rather than the exception.
Spiritually, the problem our world faces is not global warming, but global cooling. We see this moral chill every day in news reports not only of atrocities committed by religious and political fanatics, but also hate crimes against total strangers, and even violence by parents against their own children and spouses against each other. Just as frightening is the fact that the immediate context of Christ’s forecast is not necessarily only talking about the unconverted of the world – it seems to apply to religious people as well.
If you or I heard a forecast of impending unbelievably cold physical temperatures, we would doubtless take action to do what we could to survive the situation and help offset the cold as best we could. But do we take Christ’s moral forecast seriously enough to take action in that regard? And what, if anything, can we do to offset the growing lack of love this world seems even now to be experiencing – and which also unavoidably affects Christians?
Fortunately, the same book that forecasts the cooling of love indicates things we can do to turn that climate change around, even if only in our own lives. Consider these four Christian climate warmers:
1) Forgiveness: The Gospel of John tells us the story of the woman who anointed Christ in the home of a disapproving Pharisee. Jesus told the Pharisee that although the woman had sinned much in her life, those who are forgiven much, love much (John 7:46-47). We can apply that principle to ourselves in terms of looking at those around us in the moral wilderness in which we live. As society worsens around us, it’s easy to become judgmental – like the Pharisee – if we are not careful. But reminding ourselves of how much we have been forgiven can help us feel and show more love to those whose lives are still in the grip of sin.
2) Prayer: We can and should be praying for God’s love, of course, but sometimes we have to remind ourselves to break that prayer down. Something that can help in this regard is to put names to the prayer. Praying for help to love person X and Person Y can be far more effective than praying for the “idea” of love. Try it and see for yourself.
3) Study: Regularly studying the life of Christ may be one of the most valuable climate warmers at our disposal. Actually seeing God’s love in living everyday action through the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus shows us love in a way in which we don’t usually see it. It can help us by providing both a model and an inspiration. Notice these words of the apostle Paul: “… the goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5 CSB). Frequently focusing our study of God’s word on the topic of love becomes more important the colder society becomes around us.
4) Encouragement: The book of Hebrews contains these important words: “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds … encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:23-25). These verses make it clear that encouraging one another is directly related to spurring one another to love. The fact that this is said to be all the more vital as we see the end of the age approaching ties directly to Christ’s warning of the love of the majority growing cold in the last days.
In some ways these pointers seem so very basic, yet they are so very true. The Bible is clear that love is increased, fanned like a flame, by these specific things – and each one is something we can do personally if we are determined to do so. The important thing for us in the cooling world in which we live is to be sure to utilize these principles – to increase the love in our lives – and not to become numbed by the cold around us.
One of the most important ideas emphasized in the New Testament is the concept of the “spirit of the law” – the idea that we must keep the deeper meaning or intent of a law, not just its literal “letter of the law” application. The example that comes immediately to mind, of course, is that of Christ’s words regarding the commandment forbidding adultery: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27–28).
We all know this example, and recognize its importance, but we may not have taken the time to work through the other nine commandments and to systematically think out in each case what the spirit of the law – what some call its extended application – might involve in our Christian lives. In this article we look briefly at each commandment in terms of how we are to keep its spirit and intent.
1. “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Jesus showed us the intent of this law when he said “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment” (Matthew 22:37–38). This shows us that this law is not just about worship, but also about whom we love above all – do we love ourselves, others, or God first?
2. “You shall not make idols.” Where the first commandment tells us to worship the right God, the second commandment tells us to worship God the right way. In its intent, this law tells us that anything – even an aspect of our religion – can become an idol if we let it come between us and God.
3. “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.” We usually think of this law as applying to what we say – as in using God’s name inappropriately (Leviticus 24:16; etc.), but the word vain (as it is rendered in the KJV, ESV, etc.) can also mean “worthless,” or “to make of no value.” Thus, the Old Testament tells us that people “profaned God’s name” who touched the holy things (Leviticus 22:2), offered sub-standard offerings to God (Malachi 1:10–14), or even sacrificed their children to Molech (Leviticus 18:21). The spirit of this law covers anything we might do that devalues God.
4. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” The spirit of this commandment is that we must honor God with our time. Jesus went out of his way to heal on the Sabbath Day (Mark 3:1–6; etc.), showing the rest God calls us to is not just about what we don’t do, but also about what we do.
5. “Honor your father and your mother.” The spirit of this commandment does not involve anything substantially different from its basic meaning – rather the difference is one of extent. It is easy to think of the command applying to children, but the Bible shows that its ongoing application should be something we do throughout our lives – as long as our parents live and even beyond – continuing to respect their memory.
6. “You shall not murder.” Jesus showed us the spiritual application of this commandment by emphasizing that we must not break it by letting anger control us: “You have heard that it was said … ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment” (Matthew 5:21).
7. “You shall not commit adultery.” We already mentioned the spiritual application of this law in Jesus’ saying that “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Clearly, the spirit of this law applies to pornography and anything that is lust-inciting.
8. “You shall not steal.” The indirect or spiritual extent of this law involves not just taking something that is not ours, but also not paying what we should – whether that is not paying taxes we should pay or withholding any form of payment that is due to others. “Indeed the wages of the laborers … which you kept back by fraud, cry out” (James 5:4).
9. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” Anything that willfully or carelessly deceives others is breaking the spirit of this commandment. So the spirit of this law forbids not only exaggeration and lying, but also slander (Matthew 15:19; etc.), gossip (Psalm 15:3; etc.), and even flattery (Romans 16:18; etc.).
10. “You shall not covet.” This final commandment may seem as though it is already stated at the spiritual level and that is true to an extent. But there is also an indirect aspect to the law – we can covet not only by wanting something that is not right for us to want, but also by not wanting to give up what we ourselves have. When the rich young ruler asked Jesus what he must do to gain eternal life, Jesus listed all the commandments pertaining to love of our neighbor – except coveting. Then when the man said he had kept these laws, Jesus replied “go, sell all that you have and give to the poor” (Mark 10:21). Jesus recognized that the individual still coveted in being unwilling to give up what he had.
Ultimately, when Jesus said that love of God and others is the fulfilling of the law (Matthew 22:36–40) he was summarizing the spirit of the law. But thinking a little on how we apply love to God and others by keeping the spirit of the individual laws can help us fulfill their broader goal. And this is far from just a theological exercise. While we tend to judge ourselves by the letter of the law, the Bible makes it clear (Matthew 5:21; etc.) that God judges us not just by the letter, but also by the perfect spirit of the law.
For Many Christians, the concepts of justice and love sum up the major thrusts of the Old Testament and New Testament respectively. But this view misses a great deal of truth in both parts of the Bible.
Starting with simple word counts (using the NIV as a basis), the word “justice” occurs 115 times in the Old Testament and only 15 times in the New. But there are far more books in the Old Testament than the New, of course, and when we look at the average occurrences in the individual books, we find the frequency of the word justice is actually about the same in both Testaments.
When we look at the word love, we find the same thing. The Old Testament mentions love a surprising 425 times, and the New Testament mentions the same concept 261 times. But once again, when we check the averages, we find they are essentially the same – the word love occurs with about the same frequency in the books of the Old Testament and New Testament.
But there is more to this. Looking at simple word counts only gives us part of the picture. First, there are OT verses that clearly show the equivalent importance of both justice and love. David, for example, wrote “I will sing of your love and justice” (Psalm 101:1), and Hosea urges us to “maintain love and justice” (Hosea 12:6).
We may be familiar with such verses, but when we read the Old Testament carefully, we find something surprising. In many places in the Pentateuch, laws regarding justice are clearly alternated with laws regarding love. We find this, for example, in Exodus 23:1-9 as we see below – where the laws regarding justice are in normal type and those regarding love are in italic type:
“Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person by being a malicious witness. “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.
“If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it.
“Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.“Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent.
“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.“
When we consider the numerical frequency of the words justice and love that we looked at in the beginning of this article, and we add the frequent alternation of laws of justice with laws of love in the Old Testament, we realize that to characterize the Old Testament as the testament of “justice,” as opposed to the New Testament of “love” is a complete misunderstanding. Both the Old and New Testaments stress the important of justice and love.
Both the Old and New Testaments show that God is a God of justice and love. For example, in the Old Testament we read “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.” (Psalm 89:14), and in the New Testament we read both that “God is love” (1 John 4:8; 4:16) and “Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments” (Revelation 16:7; 19:2). Verses such as these show that the two cannot be separated – true justice involves love and true love involves justice.
The application of this fact for us as Christians is to look at our own lives and to consider if they reflect the godly qualities of both justice and love.
As Christians we know that the greatest responsibility and opportunity we have in the lives we are given is to love God and our fellow human beings (Matthew 22:37-39). But none of us is perfect in this regard; so how do we grow in love for God and others?
The apostle John gives us an answer to this important question. In his letters, John talks extensively about love, mentioning the concept no fewer than 34 times, including his well-known summary statements such as “…God is love” (1 John 4:8). But John’s teaching on love is not as general as it might sometimes appear.
In his first epistle, the apostle talks about an easily overlooked aspect of the two directions or dimensions of love – love of God and love of people – that must both be present in our lives. In doing so, John answers the question of “How do we increase our love for God and man?” by answering a slightly different one: “How do we know if we love God and others?” He gives us the answer first in terms of whether we truly love God or not. Notice what he tells us:
“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister” (1 John 4:20-21).
The proof of our love for God, John says, is that we love others. In the next chapter of his letter, John repeats this fact: “… everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him” (1 John 5:1). But the apostle then reverses the direction of this understanding:
“This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God” (1 John 5:23).
The proof of our love for others, John tells us here, is that we love God. Just as it is not possible to truly love God without loving his children (1 John 5:1), it is also impossible to truly love God’s children without loving him (1 John 5:2). Together, these verses show the two directions that love must work in. In the first case, our love toward God involves – and is proved by – our love of our brothers and sisters. In the second case, we are told that our love for our brothers and sisters is based on – and proved by – our love and obedience to God.
Simple as it may sound, this two-way definition can be tremendously helpful to us as Christians. We can see what John says as both admonition and encouragement. First, there is clear admonition for all of us in the understanding that we cannot claim to love God if we cannot bring ourselves to love all people, and conversely, that we cannot pretend we truly love people if we do not deeply love God. Love of one without love of the other is not genuine love.
But the encouraging side of this equation relates to our original question – “How can we grow in love of God and others?” What John shows us indicates we can increase our love of God by loving people more, and if we want to increase our love of others, we can do that through actively developing our love of God. It may seem counterintuitive, but it is a truth that solidly underlies much of what John tells us.
Why is this? The reason is that unless God is the center of our life – what we love above all else – we will never truly love others as much as ourselves, because without God at the center of our lives, we will love ourselves above all else – we will primarily be “lovers of ourselves” (2 Timothy 3:2). Conversely, if we do not love others as much as ourselves, we are not fulfilling God’s command and our love of him will always be limited.
What John shows us is that as we grow in our love for God, our love for others will naturally increase at the same time. The closer we grow to God, the more he changes the way we think about ourselves – and others – and the more we begin to love others. As we grow to love the children of God more, it is a direct reaction that we begin to be less self-centered and our love for God naturally increases as a result.
John’s words on the two directions of love may indeed seem counterintuitive at first, yet they are profoundly true in showing us how we can know and grow our love for God and others.
“All you need is love, love, love is all you need, love is all you need …” – The Beatles.
It may have been a smash hit, but the Beatles’ 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.
The prophet Nathan served during the reigns of both King David and his son Solomon. Although Nathan was usually “behind the scenes” during the reigns of these kings, it is probable that no other single person was more influential during that pivotal era of biblical history.
Nathan is mentioned many times throughout the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles – mainly during the darkest and most troubled times of King David’s reign. We first meet him in 2 Samuel 7:2 when David told the prophet of his desire to build a temple for God. At first Nathan encouraged the king, but we are told that later that night God spoke to Nathan, telling him in detail why he would not accept a temple built by David, stressing that David had shed much blood (1 Chronicles 28:3).
It was not a flattering message to have to relay, but we see something of Nathan’s character in that he did not attempt to smooth over the reason for God’s refusal of David (or to cover the fact that he himself had been wrong to originally encourage the king) – we are specifically told that “Nathan reported to David all the words of this entire revelation” (2 Samuel 7:17, emphasis added).
Later, Nathan had to confront David with the king’s sins of adultery with Bathsheba and of having her husband Uriah killed (2 Samuel 12:1-15). Considering the fact that David had already killed to hide this situation, we see Nathan’s tremendous strength of character and faith in boldly accusing the king. Nathan not only accused David as God had commanded him to do, but also predicted that David’s first child by Bathsheba would die, and that the king would suffer great anguish as a result of the actions of his own family members.
Close to the end of David’s life, Nathan related to David the news of his son Adonijah’s plan to seize the throne. In this way the prophet skillfully enabled the hasty coronation of David’s chosen heir – Solomon.
Nathan was not simply a bringer of bad news, however. He also encouraged the king and informed David that his throne would be established forever (1 Chronicles 17:1-15). He was clearly a trusted advisor throughout his service to the king and a man of important accomplishments. There appears to have been a book written either by Nathan himself or about his service as a prophet (1 Chronicles 29:29), and Nathan apparently wrote a history of King Solomon along with two others (2 Chronicles 9:29).
But Nathan’s major accomplishment was undoubtedly the true faith he repeatedly showed in expressing tough love for David and confronting the king with his errors. Nathan’s character and faithfulness in conveying the word of God, no matter how negative the message sometimes may have seemed, obviously gained him the respect of Israel’s greatest king. True to his name, the prophet surely was a “Gift of God” to David in helping him to correct his course when he went astray (for example, Psalm 51) – something the king must surely have appreciated over time. In fact, it is doubtless a sign of David’s respect and love for Nathan that the king named his third son after the prophet (1 Chronicles 3:5). And it is through that Nathan – not Solomon or any of David’s other powerful sons – that Jesus Christ was descended (Luke 3:31). The prophet Nathan served in a “behind the scenes” career, but one which had a tremendous effect for good. He is an example to all of us of the value of truth spoken in love, and of faith in dealing with difficult situations concerning those we strive to serve.
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