And Have not Charity, I Am Nothing
I mentioned earlier that the subject of love as it pertains to the living of the first great commandment, would be discussed at a latter part of this writing. We are at that juncture. I must most humbly acknowledge that this is a most difficult subject and if it were possible, I would defer it indefinitely. Why? Because herein lies the very essence of what the great commandment is all about but also may be the most difficult to master. It is what makes God, God. It is God. If we love God, we in effect love love for God is love. But it may be the most elusive quality of all, for our imperfect selves to truly comprehend and then to live and obey.
Much has been written about love. In fact, there probably isn’t a subject more written about, more sung about, more acted on and more misunderstood and misapplied than the subject of love. There are many kinds of love: romantic and sexual, fraternal or brotherly, parental, and then there is the love that Jesus referred to in the first and great commandment.
Charity comes from the Greek word “agape” which is used throughout the New Testament and is interchangeable with love as used by Jesus. In the Greek translation of the bible, Agape is the word used when Jesus told of the first and great commandment of loving the Lord thy God. However, the Hebrew word, hesed, in the Old Testament is not necessarily interchangeable with the word charity or love as used by Jesus. Hesed refers to a “faithful love”, one based on a covenant, such as a marriage covenant. Jesus recognized the validity of the voluntary, loving covenant relationship in his use of the many bridegroom metaphors. The relationship between the Lord and his people was similar to a beautiful and healthy marriage, based on mutual love, trust, respect, faithfulness and sacrifice for the other party. The Hebrew hesed implies a two way street, where a party enters into a covenant which is conditional on both parties being faithful.
While Jesus did not leave behind or do away with the conditional, covenant relationship between the bridegroom and the bride, he did introduce a new form of love that was unconditional, that allowed His sheep to escape the damning and soul retarding doctrine of an “eye for an eye”. Jesus brought balance. The Jews had taken the idea of conditional and covenant relationships and devolved them down to a revenge type of relationship where unfaithfulness is punishable by some kind of horrible penalty as manifested in the cruel practice of stoning an adulteress. Jesus did not condone what the adulteress had done for he said, “go and sin no more”. But he also taught us there was a much higher, kinder and loving way of dealing with what the adulteress had done.
Jesus still recognized the importance of faithfulness in a loving, covenant relationship. An example is the parable of the 10 virgins in which 5 of the virgins were foolish and did not have their lamps full at the time that the bridegroom was coming. The foolish virgins besought the 5 wise virgins to bail them out under the doctrine of unconditional love and full mercy. The wise virgins, feeling love and compassion for their 5 foolish sisters, answered that they had none to give. This was not out of a sense of unkindness or lack of “agape” or charity but based on the principle that the oil in the lamps represented a lifetime of accumulation of righteousness, learning, raised consciousness which all led to greater light. They could not give to the 5 foolish virgins “borrowed light” , that which takes a lifetime to accumulate. They may have thought that they could buy the requisite oil at the market but it was impossible, whatever oil they bought was not adequate or sufficient, hence, when the 5 foolish virgins made it to the marriage feast, the Bridegroom did not recognize them, the light from their oil came from a different source just as the voice of a shepherd may be true or may be false to the sheep.
Under the doctrine of complete, unconditional love and grace, the 5 foolish virgins would have been rescued and saved through grace. They would have not lost anything and would have been on equal standing with the 5 wise virgins. This was not Jesus’ doctrine. Jesus, the Bridegroom, did not stop loving the 5 foolish virgins, He had warned them out of love to have their lamps full. Under the principle of love that Jesus taught, they missed the marriage feast, this time, but they could do what the 5 wise virgins did and begin repenting, calling upon the Lord or Bridegroom continuously and spend their remaining days accumulating the oil that would lead to greater light. It would not be easy but under Jesus’ doctrine, the second great commandment would take over, and the 5 wise virgins would love their neighbor as themselves, helping the 5 foolish virgins in the slow, painstaking process of acquiring oil.
A second witness to this principle of Jesus-like love is the story of the Prodigal Son. In this case, the “foolish” brother wasted and squandered his wealth, analogous to the oil in the lamps. While he was given a big feast, it was not in a covenant relationship with the father. The beloved son had not been faithful. The father loved His wayward son unconditionally, but the father could not give his son back all that he lost and squandered. On the other hand, the faithful, older brother who had kept the covenant relationship, inherited all that his father had, infinitely greater than what the feast had to offer. The father tried to teach his older son the same thing that Jesus was trying to teach, that he should rejoice and feel great love towards his wayward brother who had returned. Why? Because as the father said, he was dead, now he was alive, he was lost, now he was found. The father did not say, he is completely restored by my grace and an equal inheritor with you. But, he was giving a hint to his son, “Now that he is found, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to follow the second great commandment and love him as yourself? Are you going to serve the least of thy bretheren and thereby serve me?” So, Jesus took the best of the Hebrew hesed and combined it with the best of the Greek agape or charity to bring about perfect balance between justice and mercy.
The English word, charity, comes from the Latin word caritas, which means something that is dear, precious or valuable. Charity originally meant the same as it means today, to give something valuable to the poor. Since the poor have nothing to give back, except maybe their labor, charity evolved to mean unconditional love, no expectation of something in return. The Greek word Agape doesn’t necessarily mean unconditional love, it can mean conditional love also. Likewise, the word charity does not have the inherent definition of “Christ’s unconditional love”. We receive a much better idea of what charity is from Paul and from Moroni in their famous discourses on charity:
I Corinthians 13:4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
Moroni 7:47 But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.
Both Paul and Moroni talk of Charity as if it were a person. It is. Charity or love is God. God is love. Charity (God) is the pure love of Christ. It is both a verb and a noun. God so loved the world that He sent His only son to be a manifestation of His love.
Charity (God) never faileth. Prophesies, tongues and knowledge, all represent the letter of the law. Although based on truth, they will eventually fail in that they will be replaced by the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is based on love. Prophesies, tongues and knowledge are the law and the prophets that hang on (depend on) the First and Second commandments. Eventually, the effect of the letter of the law must be swallowed up by the Spirit of the law – Charity and love of God.
Moroni says that, “ whoso is found possessed of it (charity) at the last day, it shall be well with him.” Why is it well with him the possessor? What is the last day? How does one become a possessor?
I propose that the last day does not refer to the judgment day or to the time we are in our deathbed. Rather, I feel it refers to the last day that we are subject to our enemies and the pain and helplessness that our enemies are able to create in this darkened world. The last day that we have stopped being victims and are like Jesus, having overcome the world. We are being told that in order to do that, we must be in possession of charity. Charity is a gift, a gift of the Spirit. It seems that it might be impossible to obtain, given all that is required of us to “love our enemies”, to “suffer long”, to sacrifice everything for Jesus. But, referring back to the scripture that was mentioned earlier, his burden is light and easy to bear. Once we learn how to believe in and on him, we will find it much easier to do, much easier than we have supposed. We have been taught by false traditions that it really is impossible to conquer death in this life, that we will have to wait for sometime in the distant eternities to obtain this. For those who believe in reincarnation or in multiple mortalities, there is the dreaded expectation of returning to this grinding mortality and picking up where we left off. I assert that is not what Jesus is teaching, we don’t have to wait, it is available now, in this present life. We will explore why there be “few who find it” and how this is possible in future sections of the book.
Notice that no where in the verses on charity does it say that charity is Christ’s unconditional love. It is His pure love. Another way of saying pure is “perfect love”.
Perfect comes from per- meaning complete and fectus meaning, perform or accomplish. It conveys the theme wholeness, holiness, integration, and unity that winds its way through all of the Lord’s teachings. When He asks us to be perfect, He is asking us to be complete, to be whole or to be holy in our performance. Perfect is essentially the opposite of hypocrisy, which comes from the word meaning “stage actor”, performing something but not completely, only on the stage. Acting out something part-time, but not being that person all the time, completely.
The chapter for this famous verse about being perfect, contains the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount and towards the end, it is all about love. He concludes by saying, “therefore, be perfect the same as your Father in heaven. Perfect in what? Love. God is love. Perfection in love comes from giving our all, completely to Him. When we master the first commandment, the second commandment follows naturally.
Jesus and His Father, shed forth their love on all who would receive it. Their love is given freely and unconditionally. However, the fruits of their love and the blessings derived there from, are not unconditional. Jesus said, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap”. The parable of the sower, gives further insight into the fruits of love,
19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.
20 But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it;
21 Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended.
22 He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.
23 But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
And who is the sower? “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man”; I propose that when Jesus refers to the seed being the word of the kingdom, the word is, in fact, the two great commandments on which everything else hangs and everything else follows. “All these things shall be added unto you.” The sower, Jesus, is spreading forth His good seed in all places. It is unconditionally given. But the results are not unconditionally given. The reaping of the harvest depends on how the seed is received.
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