Who Is My Neighbor?. Samira Izadi Page

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      By now, we have established that the Bible provides empirical evidence that loving God and loving our neighbor are inextricably connected. What needs deeper exploration is the meaning of love. With all due respect to legendary and award-winning singer Tina Turner, her song “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” was wrong on so many levels. Love is definitely not a second-hand emotion. Love does not break hearts; it mends them. And love is certainly not an old-fashioned notion. But Ms. Turner is not the only one getting it wrong when it comes to understanding and using the word love. The Church also shares in the guilt.

      Saying “I love you” has become one of the many Christian expressions we are expected to share with one another. We say it to people with no real evidence or demonstration that we really love them. Other than a two-minute interaction in the atrium or a greeting in Sunday school, what evidence is there, in most cases, that we love our brothers and sisters in Christ or that they love us? When we ask about their week or their family, many of us do not ask with the desire to hear about how much their child is messing up in college or how they are struggling with putting her parents in a nursing home. We care, but just not to a point of altering our day. At best, we ask “How are you?” as a conversation filler so that we feel good about acknowledging their presence and to show all is good between us.

      I will answer Tina Turner’s question, “What’s love got to do with it?” Everything. If any group of people on earth should know the meaning of love, it is Christians. After all, our God is Love. Love is the ultimate expression of our faith. And we were called into God’s family by love and commissioned to demonstrate love unconditionally. Claiming to love God without loving my neighbor is no more possible than drinking a glass of water without getting my lips wet. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, there are six words for love:

      The kind of love we ought to have for our neighbor is agape. Agape love is of and from God. It centers on goodwill for another person and is based on God’s moral preference. Agape love is seen by what it does. However, this love does not mean allowing people to do whatever they want. It is about God’s preference. In simple terms, the question is always, what does God want? To love (agape) means to want what God wants for another person. But it goes further. Agape love is the moral essence of God. It is the same word used when we read, “God is love.” Agape love has the power to generate or regenerate (1 John 4:8).

      What does God’s love generate? What are God’s purposes? I can best answer those questions through a simple practice I use. I interpret everything in the Bible in light of the gospels. Everything in scripture finds its meaning based on the eternal purposes of God who is Agape. Let’s explore this further through a few verses from the Gospel of John.

      John 3:13 tells us, “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” It means no one fully knows God’s will and purposes or what God wants except Jesus. John 3:16 unfolds the truth of the ages: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” The word for love here is agape. What is generated by this love is eternal life. This agape is not just for one person or group, not just for the Church or for Christians, but for the world. Consider for a moment the magnitude of this proclamation. No other religion uses this depth of love. At the heart of the one true God is a heavenly parental care for every man, woman, girl, and boy for all times and that they should live with God forever.

      John 3:17 continues: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Here we see God’s purposes for sending his son into the world. God desires that all people would be saved, not condemned. God’s love is not a Western creation perpetrated upon the world. It is an incomprehensible expression of the Creator for all creation so that every person in every nation should know God and God’s love for them. As ambassadors of God, we are obligated to give this message to people across the five continents, and especially to those whose access to this message of agape love has been hindered or forbidden. We know that the character of God does not allow partiality. His love is no less for people in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, India, the Philippines, Venezuela, Cuba, or the Congo than it is for people in Las Vegas or Detroit.

      Agape is a missional love. This is the kind of love the Apostle Paul calls for in 1 Corinthians 13. He says if we do not have this regenerating, active, moving, life-giving love for the entire world, we do not have agape love, and, in that, we have nothing and are nothing useful for the Kingdom of God. Remember, we have established that agape is the moral essence of God. And when we have this love, we have the presence of God through the Holy Spirit at work through us.