Some choose to love, thinking love the greatest of all the virtues, and citing the example of none other than Jesus himself in support of their choice. And yes, Jesus was the master of love! But he was also the master thinker, and master of the scriptures. He was master at teaching and correcting and rebuking and training and understanding and explaining and counseling and leading and sacrificing.
And with all this in mind, love alone simply cannot account for the whole of his being—even though love cannot be separated from any of these things.
To this day, I have not met a single soul who has it all—who is good at everything at which Jesus was good. But sadly, I have met some who, having picked love as their favorite, pretend that the rest of these traits are not its equal, and that the energetic and deliberate pursuit of them is somehow misguided, even!
They have reduced the whole of the character of Jesus into the one trait of love, and have decided not to pursue all the rest of his completeness of character. And the result is a fellowship which is dysfunctional in some ways. It cannot meet all the needs of its members, just like an imaginary Jesus who, having come to Earth only to say, “I love you guys!”, could never have been the complete Savior that Jesus was.
He was kind and stern, loving and challenging, affirming and warning, forgiving and holding people accountable, acknowledging both success and failure, interested in people’s immediate needs and their eternal ones. He would both listen and question what was said. He would follow the righteous traditions and shun the unrighteous ones. He would both tell the truth and call out a lie. He would look at a sinner with compassion, and tell him the very thing he did not want to hear. He would love his dear friend, Lazarus, and let him suffer and die as part of the plan to advance the kingdom. He both believed in people and trained them to overcome what was hindering them.
And I dare say that a person like this would not be readily accepted in our fellowships today, for who among us is even convinced that all these traits are good ones? Many congregations are not—and even if they say they are, you can see it isn’t so by watching what they do and what they pursue.
The way I see it, the whole of Jesus is hardly understood, and is not being sought after. Some love the love and reject a lot of the rest, while some love the sternness and reject a lot of the rest, and others just go after studying the scriptures, and pay little attention to the rest. But who has it all? And who even thinks that would be a good idea?
