What Does the Bible Mean by Love?

Now, even though John tells us that love, in Christ, is sacrifice, I would gently suggest that service is a better lens through which we can see how to navigate the implications of love in our own lives. Why?

Because, even though the cross is undoubtedly the purest definition of love the world has ever known, it’s something we can’t do ourselves. You and I don’t have the ability to bring anyone back to God through our own sacrifice. We can’t substitute ourselves for another’s salvation.

Atoning sacrifice is what Jesus achieved on the cross at that first Easter. We can’t replicate that. But service is the heart for the other that took Jesus there in the first place. And that is something we can reflect in our own lives.

Love, for the Christian, is living a life of service to God and neighbor.

A Modern Application

Such a spirit of service will look like many things in our lives, but I believe that one crucial application for our present moment can be found in Mark 2 (also in Matthew 9 and Luke 5):

When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinnersnand tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Mark 2:16

Our modern era has seen an increasing shift towards association as agreement. Can we make space for different political affiliations within our churches? Would I even go near somebody with shady business ethics? What if somebody has a different view on environmental sustainability to me?

By modern standards, I believe we’re becoming increasingly tribal in the West. But this is nothing new when we zoom out in time and space, including into Jesus’ time.

Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?

Because they’re tax collectors and sinners!

Or, as Jesus himself puts it: It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

Mark 2:17

The Pharisees made the same mistake that we often do: namely, that if somebody is in association with an ‘other,’ this must mean that they endorse their practices or see things the same way.

But Jesus offers us a healthier alternative: namely, that we can hold our ground on things we believe are biblical (and thus we are loving God), while also entering into the mess of real people’s lives in order to show them the way of Christ (and thus we are loving our neighbor).

If Jesus can associate with tax collectors (considered the worst of traitors), then I think we can make room for those who have a different ethical or political framework to ourselves. Not because we agree with them. But because we don’t.

Once more, if love is service, this will look like much more than just this. A life committed to looking beyond one’s own needs has infinite implications to it. But in an age of political, ethical, and even theological division, I believe that asking ourselves whether we associate with those we disagree with is an easy litmus test for us to begin with.