The quest for understanding what Christians believe by faith leads to spiritual growth when they align themselves with the will of God. Spiritual growth not only transforms earthly life, but makes possible the resurrection life promised by Jesus. It also reveals the key to eternal life itself.
The two most important teachings of the Christian faith:
That key was the most significant truth to be found in the Jewish Law. Jesus pulled it out of the Torah and placed it squarely at the heart of Christian faith. He tied together for all time a single verse from Deuteronomy with another from Leviticus in his double commandment to love:
Jesus used many parables to explain how this love could be recognized, learned and practiced in everyday life. They focused on actions that could be understood and carried out by anyone who had ears to hear what he was saying. In his earthly time and place, this was the most direct way of delivering his message. As people have learned over the centuries since then, putting the lessons of Jesus into practice brings about a qualitative change in the lives of Christian people.
It took the Apostle Paul to clarify for a wider audience what this great commandment was all about. Paul made it clear that it was not only about doing, but about being. It was not only about loving, but about becoming love incarnate, as Jesus was himself.
The incarnate love of Jesus is divine and therefore different from the many forms of love known to human beings. It is simple and perfect, like God himself. Because it is difficult to describe, it is also hard to emulate. Here is Paul’s clearest explanation of the love that humans needed to both practise and become in order to know eternal life.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not arrogant or proud. It is not rude, it does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable, resentful or easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13:1-8a; composite of NIV and NRSV
Jesus knew it was impossible for humans in earthly life to fully obey his great commandment to love. That is as true today as it was two thousand years ago. His ultimate act of love was to die on the cross, to pay the price of our shortcomings for all time. That is why, so long as we try each and every day to fulfill his commandment, God lifts us up by grace into eternal life and perfect love.