What Is (Rightly Ordered) Love?
C.S. Lewis once remarked that love “begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god.” He went on to say that if we forget that important warning, then “the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God'' (Lewis, The Four Loves, pg. 7). Lewis is eerily prescient here, per usual.
Lewis foresaw how technocratic, totalitarian institutions could slowly constrict the life out of a community. He rightly feared the consequences of science that is untethered from morality and objective truth. And strangely enough, it seems he even envisioned a world where innumerable “Love is Love” bumper stickers might permeate the streets in obeisance to the new god—love. Pretty impressive.
But what is love? Is love whatever I say it is? Is it whatever you say it is? And who gets to decide?
I would like to show you that the nature of love is directional. Like any transitive verb, love is either good or bad depending on its object. Regarding love, Augustine tells us that,
Living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things: to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally.
That’s kind of a tongue-twister, but Augustine is essentially telling us that our love needs to be ordered according to an objective standard. We need to love the right things with the right amount of love (and inversely, we need to hate the right things with the right amount of hate).
Our world tells us that the highest object of our love should be the self. “Do whatever makes you happy,” is the oft quoted refrain. But haven’t we seen firsthand the fruits of that standard? Pride, sexual perversion, luxury, obesity, and greed might come to our minds. Clearly, our own happiness is not a sufficient standard to guide us. So what standard should order our love?
In Mark 12:30-31, Jesus gives us some direction when he tells the questioning scribes of the two greatest commandments,
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.”
In this text, Jesus tells us that we ought to love God and love others. Paul fleshes this idea out more fully in Romans 13:8-10. He says,
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 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.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
We see that love is always defined by God’s law—a law that is succinctly stated in the Ten Commandments, a law that involves loving God (the first four commandments) and loving your neighbor (the last six commandments). We don’t define love by our own whims and fancies.
As Pastor J. Chase Davis describes, “[God’s love] is defined, constrained, and fleshed out by what is in God’s law…We don’t get to insert into God’s law what we believe to be most loving.”
What a vitally important concept in our day that has made love into a god.
So many in our world today serve the tyrannical “Love is Love” god—or demon, as Lewis would say. As Christians, we have a great opportunity to show the world the freedom of true love—love defined by God’s word. Love that is truly ordered to God and to our neighbor. Love that became incarnate in Jesus Christ. Love that frees us from sin, and death, and the Devil.