The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart. 1 Timothy 1:5
Is it just me, or have we all been duped?
Eight years ago, I stumbled onto something that made me question my entire so-called “Protestant heritage”. I am not quite ready to venture into that story here (I have been re-reading and re-highlighting my Bible since then, like an infant who has discovered a new toy, and I’m still stuck in the novelty of it all), but one thing I can share is the experience of being a Christian outside the warm fuzziness of a global identity with its own superheroes and folktales of historical conquests. These conquests, so the stories go, have kept the household of God firmly from sliding into the hellish cauldron of heresy that is the unfortunate and inevitable fate of those who dare set foot outside the community walls – walls carefully and lovingly constructed by the family fathers and ideological forebears whose insights are the lights of the city behind them.
It’s a rather desolate (albeit breathtaking) landscape out here, I must admit, and the journey is solitary at times. Most pilgrims who have walked these roads have disappeared through other doors. Doors with their own walls. Walls enclosing their own communities. Communities circulating their own folktales. Folktales with their own heroes. Heroes carrying their own lights.
But there are pleasant surprises here. Whilst the paths of this landscape are narrow, they are void of the abominable heresies warned against behind those walls. The pitfalls are plentiful, that is true, but you will steer clear of them as long as you remain on the trails.
Also, the pilgrims one encounters here are remarkably easy to communicate with, as if the exquisite nature of this place has brought them to a blissful state of rest that has banished all need for religious propaganda or its insignia. Conversations are not umpired by ecclesiastical allegiances, credal checkboxes or big-name dropping.
All of this has made me think of something: What if we have misunderstood sin?
Yes, we have heard ad nauseam that sin is to “miss the mark”. But which mark? What if we, in our neurotic efforts to hit the mark and escape the fires of hell, have been aiming at the wrong target?
What if, and this is going to sound crazy, we find ourselves one day arriving at another door – one leading to the wedding feast of the Lamb – with a smile of expectancy on our faces and a lifetime of testimonies of hitting the bullseye again and again and again, only to hear a single sentence uttered by the guardian of that door:
“You have not loved adequately.”
“Huh? What the flowers? What’s love got to do with it?”
“Everything.”
“I’m sorry. I am justified by grace through faith.”
“You have not loved adequately.”
“Wait, this is annoying. I am saved by grace. I am a Protestant!”
“A what?”
“A Protestant! I protest against a works-based gospel!”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Because works cannot save you. Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9: ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast!'”
“Have you read verse 10?”
“Verse 10?”
“Yes. ‘For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.'”
“Oh.”
“If you wanted to spend your life protesting, you should have protested against a works-free gospel, not a works-based gospel. Have you not read James?”
“I am a follower of Luther, and Luther did not like James. He called it a straw letter, because it suggests that we have to do works to be saved.”
“Luther was wrong. He missed the meaning of James’ letter.”
“Which is?”
“You have not loved adequately.”
“Oh no, here we go again. Are we speaking about the same James, the one who sounds like a legalist?”
“A what?”
“A legalist.”
“What is that?”
“One who keeps the law to get saved.”
“The James I speak about did not do that. He got saved to keep the law.”
“Ah. You see! He’s a legalist. Whether he kept the law to get saved or got saved to keep the law, he was still under the law. In any case, what has keeping the law got to do with loving adequately?”
“Everything.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t. James does not abolish the law. He speaks about the law in its fulfilled state. That is why he calls it the perfect law, the law of liberty, and the royal law, namely to love your neighbour as yourself. Breaking this law means your religion is worthless and your faith is no different from the faith of demons. The works James refers to are works of love.”
“Uhm, can’t we rather speak about Paul and his message of grace?”
“We can. Where would you like to start?”
“Romans, please.”
“Do you think Romans differ from James?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Yet Romans’ main point is exactly the same as James’.”
“No!”
“Yes. You have not loved adequately.”
“Where does it say that?”
“All over, but especially in Chapter 13. The entire law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” which means the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Romans’ charge that we are all lawbreakers is just another way of saying we have not loved adequately. To be freed from sin in Romans is to be freed from the inability to love. To not love is to remain in sin.”
“Let’s rather go to Corinthians.”
“Sure. That’s where we read that even if I have all faith and have not love, I am nothing. Correct?”
“Let’s skip Corinthians and go to Galatians.”
“Ah, the calling to freedom in order to serve one another through love and so fulfill the whole law as expressed through a single word: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
“Uhm… Ephesians?”
“The letter that links Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith with being rooted and grounded in love?”
“Let’s forget about James and Paul and rather go to Jesus. He was all about grace and acceptance, wasn’t he?”
“The gospels? Would you like to start with Matthew, where we read that the Law and the Prophets can be summarised in the command to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and that those who did not do this will be called lawless and told to depart from Christ even if they prophesied and drove out demons and did many mighty works in his name? They did not love adequately, you see. Or should we start with the separation of the sheep and the goats on the Day of Judgment, where we see that the sheep are distinguished from the goats by their care for the hungry, the naked, the sick and those in prison? The goats… they did not love adequately. What about Jesus saying that all the Law and the Prophets hang on the two commandments to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and your neighbour as yourself? Or perhaps you want to go to Mark, where we read that to love one’s neighbour as oneself is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices? Or Luke, who spoke about a Samaritan who understood the aim of the law better than a priest and Levite combined. He loved adequately, they did not. Or John, where Jesus introduced a new commandment to his disciples, namely to love one another as he has loved them. Maybe Acts, where Jesus is quoted as having said it is more blessed to give than to receive?”
“Stop, please. I thought people get saved by grace.”
“They do, but grace that does not enter your heart and flow from it as love is grace that cannot save. You shall know true grace by its fruit, and its fruit is works of love. If grace is powerless to transform you, it is powerless to save you from death. Inadequate love simply means never having been saved to begin with.
“Why did no one tell me this?”
“Where you come from, they spoke so much about the forgiveness of sins that they had no time left to speak about what sin really is. They hit the mark, but the target… I’m sorry. It was the wrong one.”
Justice of God 