As a Christian, I believe that 1. God is love, and 2. Jesus is God. As a corollary to those two beliefs, I believe that everything Jesus said and did on Earth was an act of love. Over and over Jesus expresses radical love to those around him, and that was illustrated most powerfully through his sacrificial death on the cross and resurrection three days later.
However, just because everything Jesus did was loving does not mean that every person around him experienced it as love. Sometimes they may have been offended, or angry, or mournful, or disheartened, etc. The love that Jesus expressed through his every action did not always feel like it was “good news,” even if it actually was! Sometimes following Jesus is extremely costly, hard, and burdensome. For example, take the following incidents found in the Gospels:
- When Jesus commanded the rich young ruler to sell all his possessions and give it away to the poor, the young man went away very sad. He probably didn’t think this was a very loving thing for Jesus to command.
- When Jesus initially ignored the Syrophonecian woman and referred to her as a dog, that does not sound very loving.
- When Jesus defended the woman caught in adultery but then told her to go and sin no more, she might not have experienced that final statement as loving.
- When Jesus told his disciples to pick up their cross and deny themselves, that does not sound very loving.
- When Jesus told the Samaritan woman that her religious beliefs were wrong, and that salvation comes from the Jews, she might not have experienced that as loving.
- When Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and his disciples, they may not have experienced it as love.
- When Jesus told his followers to “hate” their father, mother, children, and even their own lives, for the sake of following him, that does not sound very loving.
- When Jesus promised weeping and gnashing of teeth for those who do not care for the “least of these brothers and sisters of mine,” that does not sound loving.
- When Jesus said that it is better not to marry and to live as a eunuch for the sake of the Kingdom of God, that does not sound very loving.
- When Jesus said to love your enemies, and to do good to those who hurt you, that does not sound loving. It sounds like a recipe for disaster.
- When Jesus told his disciples that he would need to die on the cross, that did not sound like a loving act of self-sacrifice, it sounded like foolishness. And when why Peter rebuked him for talking about such things, Jesus called him Satan! That doesn’t sound very loving.
These are just a few instances that I could think of the top of my head where the commands of Jesus don’t always feel loving to our modern ears. I’m sure there are many more. Depending on who you are and your life experiences, Jesus’ commands can feel challenging, risky, and potentially damaging to your mind, emotions, and body. Thus it can be incredibly tempting to reinterpret the words of Jesus through a hermeneutic wherein “only commands that feel loving are valid.” But to adopt that hermeneutic is to re-make Jesus into our own image, and to miss out on the potential liberation that may come through obedience. The rich young ruler may have kept his wealth and his security when he walked away from Jesus, but he missed out on the opportunity to do justice, experience God’s provision, and follow Jesus.
The question for Christians today is, which of God’s commands are we tempted to discount simply because they don’t feel loving? I would argue probably the most universally-ignored command is the one to love our enemies, but there are many others as well. Do we have the faith to believe that Jesus’ words are good news even if it doesn’t always feel like it?