Day 42 — Love at the Centre

Opening Prayer

Lord God, you made me to love you and to love my neighbour. Forgive the desires and habits that turn me inwards or attach my heart to lesser things. As I hear Jesus’ words, reorder my loves by your Spirit and teach me to delight in the life for which you made me. Amen.

Headline

The journey from vice to virtue is the reordering of our loves: away from lives curved in upon ourselves and towards wholehearted love for God and our neighbour.

Matthew 22:34-40 

Comment

An expert in the law asks Jesus to identify the greatest commandment. His question is a test, but Jesus’ answer takes us to the centre of the life God intends: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (v.37). God does not ask for one carefully protected part of us. He claims the whole person—our desires, thoughts, choices, bodies, time and possessions.

Jesus immediately joins this to a second command: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (v.39). Love for God cannot remain an inward feeling or a private spiritual interest. It takes visible form in the way we attend to, speak about and act towards the people God has placed beside us. Nor can love for our neighbour be detached from love for God, because God’s character and word teach us what love truly seeks.

That is why Jesus can say, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (v.40). He is not replacing God’s commands with a vague instruction to be nice. He is revealing their unity and purpose. God’s will forms a people who love him above every rival and seek their neighbour’s good. Love is not one virtue among many; it is the life towards which every virtue is directed.

This helps us understand what the seven vices have in common. They are not merely seven forbidden behaviours. They are settled habits of disordered love. Pride places the self where God belongs. Envy treats another person’s good as a threat. Sloth resists love’s demands. Wrath sacrifices another person to our desire for control or revenge. Greed trusts possessions more than the Giver. Indulgence turns a good gift into a ruling appetite. Lust seeks gratification without loving the other person as a whole person. In different ways, every vice bends love away from God and neighbour and curves it back towards the self.

The problem is not always that we desire something obviously evil. Security, pleasure, approval, justice, rest and intimacy are genuine goods. The trouble comes when we demand them on our terms, seek them apart from God or obtain them at another person’s expense. A vice promises to secure some good for us, but it cannot carry the weight we place upon it. Its promise of freedom eventually narrows and fragments our lives.

The virtues move in the opposite direction. Humility, loving-kindness, diligence, patience, gentleness, mercy, gratitude, generosity, temperance and chastity are distinct habits, but each enables us to love God and others more truthfully. They are not badges of spiritual achievement. They are the fruit of grace as the Spirit straightens what sin has bent and trains us to receive God’s gifts as gifts rather than grasping them as substitutes for him.

Even this command begins and ends with grace. Jesus does not merely describe the love we have failed to give; he embodies it. He loved his Father with undivided obedience and loved his neighbours by giving himself for sinners. United to Christ, we are forgiven for our lovelessness and given his Spirit. We do not pursue virtue to persuade God to love us. Because he has loved us in Christ, we are freed to learn the love for which we were made. This is the road towards wholeness: not becoming impressive, but becoming more able to love.

Why does God want me to hear this today? Perhaps because I have been measuring spiritual growth mainly by the habits I have stopped, the rules I have kept or the image I present. Jesus gives me a deeper measure: am I learning to love God with more of myself and to seek my neighbour’s good? He invites me to notice where a legitimate desire has become a ruling love, and to bring it back under his gracious rule.

Reflect

• Which desire—security, approval, comfort, control, pleasure or something else—most readily competes with your love for God?
• How does that disordered love affect the way you see or treat other people?
• Which virtue would help you love God and one particular neighbour more faithfully today?

Action

Choose one ordinary decision you will make today and ask what love requires within it. Name the lesser good you are tempted to treat as ultimate. Thank God for it as his gift, surrender your demand to possess or control it, and take one concrete step that expresses love for God and seeks another person’s good.

Closing Prayer

Father, you have loved me first in your Son. Forgive me for loving your gifts more than you and for seeking my good at the expense of others. By your Spirit, reorder my desires. Teach me to love you with my whole being and my neighbour as myself, so that the life of Jesus may increasingly be seen in me. Amen.