What is Christian Love?

The emphasis put on this principle suggests that we need an adequate definition of what is meant. Christian love is something much greater than natural affection as understood by the world. The Apostle to the Gentiles gave a comprehensive definition which is well known but not much heeded except by those who make a genuine effort to be Christians. Rarely has a command been presented in such emphatic and uncompromising terms. Before defining the quality, the Apostle affirms that apart from it all other virtues fail. Faith and works and even heroic self-sacrifice count for nothing, if the greatest virtue of all is absent. Such strong language ought to arouse every reader, and induce a very intent examination of the definition which follows. Then with the first of the essential qualities enumerated, an attentive reader might well fear that almost everyone is condemned. In the Authorized Version we have the words, "Charity suffereth long, and is kind". The Revised Version more correctly renders the essential word as love, but the first two qualities mentioned are the same, long-suffering and kindness.

Long-suffering is not characteristic even of Christians. An impatient intolerance is more often seen. Then we must recognize that Christian kindness is something much more than a complacent feeling of goodwill toward something which engages our natural affection. The most brutal of men can sometimes appear kind when they are well fed and comfortable. It may only be the kindness of an indolent toleration. Much more than this is needed. If we listen to conversation in ordinary households, or follow the course of national diplomacy or of business enterprise, we may often be pained to find that we are in some measure joining in that which is distinctly unkind. Harsh criticisms are often passed; failings and even misfortunes are made more grievous by unsympathetic words.

It might be urged in defence of human nature that very often there is a remarkable manifestation of kindness even to those who have no claim of kinship or community of interests. We must all thankfully admit that this is true. Yet we also have to admit that frequently such charitable actions serve the more effectively to reveal the difference between a natural good fellowship and Christian love. A clash of interests or even the clash of divided opinion will put our kindness to the test. We have known men who have seemed remarkable for their good humoured kindness and indulgence to those with whom they came in contact in ordinary life, to become fiendishly cruel as the result of menaced interests or even merely of diverse opinions. Religious controversy has been one of the saddest fields for this evil. It is possible for a man to be very religious, his habits ascetic, and his mind filled with Bible texts, and yet to be to the last degree impatient and unkind when his opinions have been seriously challenged. He may be an indulgent father and a kindly friend so long as his cherished convictions are not contradicted, but his sympathies cannot endure the simplest of tests. He may have plenty of knowledge by which he is in some measure "puffed up". Christ has not been formed in him. Opponents are treated as enemies, and unkindness to enemies is often even cultivated.