Love, the Greatest Spiritual FruitНамуна

Love God, Love Others

Maybe nothing gives away love's significant role in Scripture more than biblical superlatives. You may have heard this word superlative before. Perhaps in high school, your class voted on senior superlatives and gave out awards for the best smile, cutest couple, or most likely to succeed. While they have an astronomically high fail rate, these senior superlative awards are handed out to celebrate or recognize a graduating class's greatest or best characteristics. For something to be “superlative,” it must stand out in terms of excellence from others.

In the Scriptures, love receives many superlatives. Take, for example, Matthew 22:36–40. In this biblical scene, the Pharisees approach Jesus. One of them, an expert in Old Testament law, tries to put Jesus to the test. Assessing Jesus’s understanding of God’s Law (which many experts say has upwards of six hundred laws contained within it), the Pharisee asks him, “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?” Don’t miss the superlative: the inquiring Pharisee asks Jesus, not just which law is important but which is superlative among the rest. Which is the greatest?

Clearly, this Pharisee puts Jesus to task by making him choose one from the countless bunch to ascribe superlative status.

Jesus answers the inquiring man and gives him not only the greatest commandment but the second as well. Jesus replies, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command.” He continues, “The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus’s response puts the importance of love on full display, as both the first and second greatest commandments are commands for Christians to love—first God, then our neighbor.

As if this superlative status was not enough to demonstrate the vital role of love in Christian living, Jesus concludes his answer with an astonishing claim, “All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.” And the obvious priority of love doesn’t stop with Jesus. Paul, too, makes this same claim just before discussing the fruit of the Spirit: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal. 5:14).

If you’ve read these popular verses many times, it may be easy to gloss over the wonder within them. Think for a moment about the entirety of the Old Testament story—all the twists and turns of the Israelite people, their centuries-long slavery in Egypt, their wandering in the wilderness, their reception of the commandments, their establishment of a monarchy, their conquests, their entry into the promised land, their prophets, their priests, all their law-breaking. Now imagine that at some point in the story, someone shows up and says that all the complexities of the covenant between God and his people can be summarized in this—love God, love others.

It’s not hard to see it when we really look: Love is center stage in Christian living. While the Spirit is surely cultivating other virtues in us, love is supreme.

If love’s supreme status is true for Jesus—and all across the Bible—a question naturally arises: does love take supreme status in our lives? If someone followed you around, would they say that this virtue was the highest and best? That your whole life could be summed up by it?