The Scarlet Letter
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
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It’s important that we understand that in the Bible “love” has more than one face. When God calls
“Love your neighbour” is less than warm affection and pleasure but it is wider than “affection” and it involves a commitment to the neighbour. In the OT setting “love” is centrally covenant commitment to the other. Within the gracious covenant God introduced each Israelite was a brother/sister to the other and they were called to commit to each other in ways that honoured that relationship and status.
The love of neighbour didn’t require personal affection, a level of emotional attachment, but it did require a recognition of the relationship under the Holy Father and a commitment to one another.
The same is true when God calls
Having said that, we’re not to conclude that “covenant faithfulness” (love—hesed in the OT) was nothing more than “a business deal” between two partners (one of them very much the senior partner) that had nothing in it but “keeping up one’s end of the bargain.” This is not an agreement between two strangers who have no personal connection with each other. This is relational fidelity that flows and is meant to flow between two parties that choose to please one another. However we are to spell it out there is to be admiration in Israel—a view of God that leads them to boast about him the way we would glory in the character, purposes and achievements of people we know. It is a call to take pleasure in God as well as to revere him and hold him in awe.
You can’t rejoice over someone’s ways and doings without engaging your heart in some way. You only have to read Psalm 119 where the psalmist exults in God’s law and his graciousness. “Oh how I love your law! I think about all the day,” he says (119:97) as he pours out the music of his heart. He speaks his joy, pleasure and admiration for God as he reflects on God’s gift of his law.
To reduce biblical love of God and neighbour to nothing but an honourable obedience to the stipulations of a fine covenant agreed on is to understate it. Like everything else that’s rich and lovely, covenant love would deepen and stretch—as the love of a husband for his wife or children for parents. See 2 Thessalonians 1:3 and Philippians 1:9 as examples in the NT. Those who know God best find pleasure in him and have warmth toward their fellow-believers that goes beyond “doing what is right in terms of the covenant” and they show us the potential that lies in our relationship with God.
This is what we should expect. The contours of the covenant God made with
It’s certainly true that the OT characteristically deals with the righteousness and love of God in relation to the covenants he made—the Abrahamic covenant in particular—but we’re not to forget that the covenants are an expression of a prior character and purpose. God’s outgoing and lavishly generous holiness did not begin with the covenants; the covenants bear witness to what has existed before the covenants. They bear witness to the truth that God is such that he has the capacity and the desire to share life and fellowship with his creation and that he is willing to go the distance to bring that creation to a final glory despite the creation’s unwillingness to give him thanks and work with him toward the fulfilment of his purpose.
This means that the call to “love the Lord with all your heart” has in it a call to more than respectful obedience—it’s a call to warm allegiance and a joyous fellowship with Someone we admire and wish to please as well as to obey.
Finally for now, the love of God toward the human family must be experienced individually—of course; how could it be otherwise! But this individual experience of God’s love is not to be construed as the final end of it all. God purposed a human family; a family living in joyful righteousness and mutual commitment and fellowship in his image. To so speak and live as if the entire biblical witness is about me and my “personal relationship” with God is to make the tail wag the dog. It isn’t all about me. It’s first and foremost about God; then about God and us.
Once more, Karel Wilson Baker’s marvellous poem: Pronouns
The Lord said,
"Say, 'We'."
But I shook my head,
Hid my hands tight behind my back and said,
Stubbornly,
"I."
The Lord said,
“Say, 'We.'”
But I looked upon them, grimy and all awry.
Myself in all those twisted shapes? Ah, no!
Distastefully I turned my head away,
Persisting.
“They.”
The Lord,
“Say, 'We.'”
And I
At last,
Richer by a hoard
Of years,
And tears,
Looked in their eyes and found the heavy word
That bent my neck and bowed my head:
Like a shamed schoolboy then I mumbled low,
“We, Lord.”
Not “My God” but “Our Father.”
From "Contemporary Prayers and
