8. Jesus’ Love Message
What has Jesus’ love message got to do with the atonement? Quite a lot. It is critical in fact. This can be seen by looking at how it impacted Len Evans, a Presbyterian minister from Niles, Ohio, who became an international conference speaker in the 1970s sharing his newfound awareness of Jesus’ love message. Evans (1978, p. 135) taught: “The Bible declares Jesus to be the ‘the wisdom of God’! If He has given one commandment, is it not then logical that this commandment contains the secret of the universe, the sufficient rule for renewal of our hearts and our lives and our fellowships?” Evans alleged that churches emphasise the vertical relationship with God at the expense of the horizontal relationships between people. He asserted that by loving others in obedience to Jesus’ second great commandment, people love God and fulfil the first commandment. God does not seek anything from us for himself and does not seek sacrifice, but mercy, which is the expression of love for others (Matt 9:13).
Although an engaging speaker, Evan’s message did not gain scholarly acceptance. One reason was that he appeared to give priority to the second commandment over the first. Even though Evans emphasised the horizontal, he intended Christians to keep together the two great commandments.
Qingping Liu (2007, p. 683) argued that Jesus’ first and second commandments are in conflict if a person’s neighbour is not a Christian and does not love God. In such a case, Liu said the first commandment would take priority over the second commandment because a Christian could not love an enemy of God. On the one hand, Jesus taught his followers to love their enemies (Matt 5:44), but on the other, Jesus said that he did not come to bring peace but a sword and that even next of kin would be divided because of him (Matt 10:34-39). Qingping Liu said, “In light of the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, not loving God is the greatest of sins and has to be sternly punished by God’s justice, because it involves a voluntary turning away from God and disobeying of the first great commandment (see Mark 16:16; John 8:24; see also Aquinas1952, 559-60).” (Liu, 2007, p. 683). Here Liu overlooks that in Christianity, salvation is by grace and not by one’s own efforts, even if those efforts are professing love for God. The two Scripture passages quoted by Liu are not about love, but about salvation through faith. Love is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22). Jesus gave the analogy of a branch drawing life from the vine and producing fruit. The fruit is evidence that a person’s faith is in Christ (John 15:10). Jesus said “a tree is known by its fruit” (Luke 6:43). A works-based view of Christianity is common, whether the works are obedience to laws, acceptance of certain dogma, or pharisaic professions of love or faith.
Humanity, living in a fallen world, twisted the teaching of Jesus and opposes the two great commandments against each other. We need to resist the temptation to give priority to the first commandment and make the second contingent on circumstances and subject to human inclinations. As Craig Bubeck (2013, p. 55) said, “The gospel is all about God’s love, our inability to love (sin), and God’s sacrificial remedy (Love incarnate).” So, Len Evans had reason to complain that the horizontal thrust of Jesus’ second commandment was being laid aside using the priority of the first commandment as an excuse.
Since God is love, love is defined by God and not the other way around (1 John 4:16). God does not want his agape love to be returned but to be passed on to others. This is how we show that we love God who we cannot see (1 John 4:19-21).
A more pertinent issue for us was Evan’s attempt to ground his theology of the love commandment in the atonement. The love message does not find fertile ground to thrive in the penal substitution theory, the dominant theory in evangelical churches.
Steve Chalke (2008,p. 40) raised this issue more recently commenting: “If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil.” Chalke warned that the penal substitution theory undermines Jesus’ love message and therefore weakens the preaching of the gospel itself. At the very least, the penal substitution theory is a hindrance to the church’s preaching of the atonement. An atonement theory that portrays God as unloving in any way fails to support the love commandment and, therefore, the gospel.
Evans argued that the Son came to set people free from sin, which he understood to be both their separation from God and separation between people. He said the subject of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is the unity of the body of Christ and how God sent his Son to reunite his people (Eph 1:3-10). Evans interpreted Paul in Eph 2:13-14 to mean Christ’s blood brings people together, as well as to God. In loving others, Christians encounter the power of the cross in human relationships on a daily basis. The power is seen, for example, when love conquers malice. Evans appeared to be moving towards a subjective atonement model when he said, “This atoning love was not exhausted at Calvary but it was set free in the energy of His Spirit to our generation through us.” (Evans, 1978, pp. 130-131). The problem for Evans was that he needed a viable and acceptable atonement model as a foundation for his message.
The Lumen Christi model is more amenable to the love commandment of Jesus because the model is grounded in God’s covenant and steadfast love (Ps 106:45). The subjective responses in Christ and his followers of faith, hope and love engendered by God’s covenant, result in the objective actions of sacrifice and service. God is love (1 John 4:16), and he is good. Len Evans (1978, p. 78) said in quoting 1 John 1:7, “I am persuaded that ‘light’ is the correspondent analogy for ‘love’.” So, Evans would have found more fertile ground for the love message in the Lumen Christi atonement model. Indeed, Rom 12:21 which is a key verse in Lumen Christi, features in Evan’s “Love List” of Scripture passages supporting the love commandment (Evans, 1978, pp. 137-142).
The Father openly declared his love for the Son at Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration and there is no reason to suggest this ever changed. Love is not even conditional on obedience. This is seen in examples of human sin where relatives of imprisoned criminals continue to love, visit and support the offender in spite of their crimes. Likewise, God the Father would not have stopped loving God the Son for a moment, even if Jesus was in some way associated with human sin.
The Son shared the Father’s vision to save humanity. The crucifixion was the work of humanity, and no one should suggest that God was responsible for its violence. Peter told the crowd assembled on the day of Pentecost that they were to blame for Jesus’ crucifixion (Acts 2:23). God did not need the crucifixion of Jesus to save his people. The enemy contrived the circumstances to coerce Jesus into either exploiting his relationship with his Father or else endure the shame and agony of execution. Jesus sacrificed himself because he loved people and trusted his Father to redeem them. God showed restraint in allowing this injustice to pass because of his love for the world. The Father’s love for the Son impelled him to overcome the evil of the crucifixion by raising and exalting Jesus. Thus, the cross displays God’s love for both his Son and humanity.
But it was more than a display. The message about the cross is the power of God to those who are being saved (1 Cor 1:18). Light shines in the darkness and good overcomes evil, but punishment does not overcome sin. The wages of sin is still death. The Father’s love for Jesus and his followers caused him to respond to the sin against Christ by exalting him to the highest place from where Jesus prays to God to save his friends. God’s covenant of love drives the Lumen Christi model. The people of the covenant are citizens of God’s kingdom, a kingdom characterised by God’s attributes of grace and love.
The apostle John understood the passion of Christ as an expression of love. In 1 John 3:16 he said, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” John’s conclusion that Christians ought to live the same way implies self-sacrifice in itself does not pay for sins. Jesus’ life of obedience revealed to the world that God is love. Christ gave himself as an atoning sacrifice because of love (1 John 4:10), not retribution.
Believers living by Jesus’ love message provide compelling evidence of the gospel’s power to transform lives and build relationships. If the mark of a Christian is love (John 13:34-35) as taught by church discipleship courses, no part of Christian theology, including that of the atonement, should diminish this truth. Faith in Jesus brings people into God’s kingdom, and the sanctified life of love for others characterises life in God’s kingdom. Participation in Christ by faith does not of itself get one saved. It is a precondition for salvation, which is by grace alone, through Christ alone. The purpose of salvation is to restore relationships, both horizontal and vertical.
Len Evans showed that Jesus’ love message is pervasive in Scripture. He knew it should be supported by atonement theology but he did not find that support. As Bubeck (2013, p. 54) wrote of atonement, “It's not so much a matter of appeasing an angry God as restoring within us the capacity to love.” The Lumen Christi model is grounded in the love message of Jesus where light overcoming darkness (John 1:5) corresponds to love overcoming a multitude of sins (1 Pet 4:8).
There is a reluctance amongst some Christians to whole heartedly embrace Jesus’ love message because they are unwilling to let go of an overly literal interpretation of the wrath of God in Scripture. But the Lord would not want his children to relate to him through fear.
Tony Lane (2001, pp. 138-139), contrariwise, thought the church in the west has a sentimental idea of the love of God and is quiet regarding God’s wrath, which he considers rightly coheres with the empirical reality of a world full of suffering. Love and wrath are often thought of as opposites, but Lane proposed the opposite of love is indifference (p. 159). So, he conjectured that God’s wrath is an aspect of God’s love. But, it is inconceivable that God would destroy people out of his love for them.
The agape love of God is selfless. Len Evans maintained that the opposite of agape love is not hatred or indifference, but selfishness. Of course, human selfishness may result in hatred and violence. Wrath as an emotion is only attributed to God from the perspective of a sinful person. God is love by nature. “God’s wrath” is the experience of sinful humanity when evil disrupts and damages a creation intended as God’s home with his family.
We should not pit the attributes of God against each other. God’s holiness and love are not opposed to one another or part of a hierarchy of attributes. Although God’s holiness keeps human sinfulness at a distance, God’s love reaches out to save sinners. So, the love of God, and hence the love commandment, is indeed germane to the atonement. The traditional atonement theories are all deficient in not giving priority to the love of God.