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Isaiah 63:7-8
2 Timothy 1:8-13
John 19:25-27

Today, in our Lenten series “Guided to the Cross,” we consider the topic, “Guided to Love.” Of course, the Scripture has a lot to say about this topic, including the three lessons selected for this evening. We’ll consider them as we proceed.

But when we read about love in the Bible, we need to understand that maybe we don’t always quite get what the Scriptural authors are talking about — or the Lord himself, when the inspired writers speak in his name. The Bible took shape in a culture vastly different from our own, which has been shaped by the philosophical revolution that took place in western Europe in the 17th century — a thought-revolution scholars call the Enlightenment. What the so-called Enlightenment did was to throw off everything that didn’t fit into a naturalistic, supposedly scientific, world view — and, of course, that caused many major thinkers and influencers to question what the Scriptures say about events that occurred in Bible times including the creation of the world, miracles, and especially the resurrection of Jesus. Instead of the Word of God being the source of truth, what we call “science” became the arbiter of what is really actual and true.

That naturalistic way of thinking became the default perspective of most people in the Western world, including you and me, with the result that when we talk about spiritual things like faith and love and belief in God we tend to put them into a special box that doesn’t always connect with our daily life or the events and issues of the world around us. For us it can be hard to see how our relationship with God relates to football games, or the price of eggs, or the Ukraine war, or buying our next car, or electing leaders at the local or state or national level, or dealing with fellow workers or people in the community or even, perhaps, family members. For people in biblical times the Lord was involved in all aspects of daily life in one way or another, but for us it’s hard to see that.

It’s hard sometimes even to sense the presence of the living Lord in our church events or worship services, because the way you and I unconsciously approach the experiences of life is so different from the way people approached life in the world out of which the Bible emerged. So when we hear the words of Scripture we automatically apply a different way of thinking to the words we hear, so that we understand these words in terms of our “Enlightenment” world, the world of Western culture, and not in the way Jesus and the apostles and prophets understood and used them. And that applies particularly, today, to the way we understand the idea of love.

So let’s look, first, at our Old Testament reading for this evening, from Isaiah chapter 63:

I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord
according to all that the Lord has granted us and the great goodness to the house of Israel
that he has granted them according to his compassion, according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
For he said, “Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely.”
And he became their Savior [or, literally in Hebrew, moshia’ or “Messiah”].

You probably noticed that the English word love occurs twice in this passage. Of course, the Bible wasn’t written in English, so sometimes we have to go back to the original language to get the “meat” of what the Holy Spirit is saying through the inspired writers. And here the prophet begins by saying, chasdei-adonai azkir, “the chesed of the Lord I will remember.” It is this one word, chesed, that the translators render as “steadfast love,” and it occurs again a few verses later when the prophet speaks of the Lord’s compassion as the greatness, or abundance, of his steadfast love, ukerov chasdav.

This word, chesed, is perhaps the most important word in the vocabulary of the Hebrew Bible — other than the Lord’s name itself — because it describes the way the Lord relates to his people, his family that he has chosen. English translators render it in various ways because it really has no simple English equivalent. So it appears as “steadfast love,” as in our passage from Isaiah, or sometimes simply as “love.” Older versions call it “lovingkindness.” But these translations don’t bring out the full nuance of this word, because chesed is a covenant word; it refers to the Lord’s faithfulness, or loyalty, to an agreement he has made with his people.

The Lord loves us, the biblical authors tell us, on the basis of a relationship he has with us, and not just because somehow he likes us or has a feeling for us or finds us attractive. This word, chesed, is a favorite word of the Psalmists because they often appeal to the Lord for his help on the basis of his chesed, as in Psalm 6:4, “Save me for the sake of your steadfast love.” Perhaps the best translation of this word chesed is “covenant love,” because it operates within the context of the covenant, the treaty or agreement God has made with his people.

In the Greek of the New Testament, as I am sure you know, there are three words translated as “love” in English. One is eros, which means passionate or even erotic or romantic love; it doesn’t really appear in the New Testament. Another is the verb phileo, which expresses a bond of general human friendship. But the main word for “love” is agape, as we find it, for example, in 1 John 4:7-10, where he uses it as an adjective, a verb, and a noun:

Beloved (agapetoi), let us love (agapomen) one another, for love (agape) is from God, and whoever loves (ho agapon) has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love (me agapon) does not know God, because God is love (agape). In this the love (agape) of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love (agape), not that we have loved God (egapekamen ton theon) but that he loved us (egapesen hemas) and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

So what is the point of all this philological pedagogy — word study — as we seek to be guided to love? It is this: that if we expect the Scriptures to guide us to love, we need to lay aside the usual understandings of love that we have from our American, Western culture and try to grasp what the inspired writers of Scripture understood real love to be. I am persuaded that agape in the Greek New Testament corresponds to chesed in the Hebrew Bible, with many of the same implications. New Testament love is covenant love, a love that exists within a relationship of fidelity to another person or a community; in fact, that faithfulness or loyalty to another is what love really means. If there is no faithfulness, no commitment, then there is no love in the biblical sense.

This means that love, for a Christian believer, can’t be the kind of love that refers to preferences or happy circumstances: “I love the change of seasons,” “I love baseball,” “I just love pecan pie” (to choose a favorite of mine), or as Hannibal used to say on The A Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.” And the kind of love the New Testament tells us about can’t just be the kind of love that refers to attraction, like falling in love with a woman because she’s sexy or with a man because he’s a hulk. And it can’t be a grasping sort of love, like the love of money or expensive cars or the love of power and domination over other people — and, sadly, that’s the only kind of love some people have, and it really amounts to a love of self at others’ expense.

We use the word love in all these ways, based on the outlook that our culture has stamped upon us. But when we hear the Scriptures speaking of love we come to understand it differently, and we act based upon that different understanding. We know that love means being faithful to God as he is faithful to us, and it means being committed to others with whom we have a bond in church, in family, in friendship, or in whatever other appropriate partnership life has brought us into. It is the kind of love that causes us to follow the admonition of the apostle Paul to the Philippians: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).

When we understand love as faithfulness, or commitment, rather than as a feeling or emotion, then we can see why Paul says what he says in our second lesson. “I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord,” he says, “because he judged me faithful . . .” (1 Timothy 1:12). Despite Paul’s history of persecuting Christian believers, he had experienced God’s love through the mercy by which the Lord had called him to serve as a proclaimer of the gospel of the risen Jesus. He adds that “the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (v. 14).

Paul didn’t deserve to become an apostle of Jesus, he admits; it was a pure gift — he calls it “grace,” charis — that he had been enlisted in God’s plan to reach the nations with the news that Jesus is Lord. Because of his covenant love, his chesed or agape, the Lord has been faithful to his people — including Saul of Tarsus, now called Paul — in spite of their sin. As Paul writes to Timothy in his second letter, “If we are faithless, he remains faithful — for he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). I am sure you and I can testify to the same experience of God’s love, in that despite all our shortcomings he has never cast us off or abandoned us. That faithfulness is what love is.

Finally, how do we see this “covenant love” in our gospel reading from John 19? Jesus is dying upon that cruel Roman cross, scorned and betrayed by the leaders of the very people he has come to rescue from the wrong direction they have taken. Does Jesus show love and faithfulness from the cross, despite the agony of his impending death? Yes, he does, but first let’s notice some other people who are demonstrating their love for him, perhaps at some peril to themselves.

The account reads, “Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” And nearby is one of his disciples as well; we don’t know which one he was, because he is simply called “the disciple whom he loved.” Traditionally he has been identified with John the brother of James, but John or Yochanan was a common name in Judea at the time as it is with us today. Whoever he was, together with the women he is there with Jesus in this darkest hour. These friends of Jesus are faithful to him even now, and thereby demonstrating their love, their agape, in the biblical sense.

And from his cross Jesus demonstrates that same love, a concern for the welfare of his mother in commending her to this unnamed disciple who will provide for her. In going to his cross Jesus has lived out his love, his commitment, not only for his family members but for all of his people in spite of their rejection of his message. As the same Gospel records, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11). Yes, as Paul says, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Would you and I show that same forbearance, that same generous outreach, to people who had wronged us or dismissed our concerns as unimportant? Let us hope so, the Lord being our helper.

And so we are guided to love not only through a deeper understanding of the Scriptures but, most powerfully, by the example of Jesus our Savior — and not only by his example, but by his command. In the upper room, before his arrest and crucifixion, he told his disciples, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). For the believer love is not optional; our commitment to our Lord, in response to his faithfulness to us and to all the Lord’s people, is a requirement for all who would follow Jesus and be called by his name. We don’t have to wait till we feel like loving, or till we find something attractive in other people that makes us want to love them. When we understand what Christian love really is, then we know what we need to do to bring it into realization: to be loyal, committed, faithful in service and steadfast in our concern for our brothers and sisters in the family of God and, indeed, for all members of the human family.