BY DOUGLAS COOPER

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:35, NRSV).

E CAME TO TEACH the world love.

The Old Testament taught that human beings were created in the image of God. Jesus Christ came with the astounding truth that God not only made men and women in His image, but is willing to continue the process in us each day of our lives!

To the Master, the ultimate purpose of spiritual growth was to become one with God, to learn to be unconditionally loving as He is, to love nonexploitatively.

Plainly and simply, the Messiah came to teach us that God is love and that we were created for love. His message: You and I may constantly grow toward God's character of love. "God is love, but how do you rate?" That was His startling challenge to the religious people of His day.

It was not an easy challenge the Messiah gave. In fact, it represents the single most demanding call in the history of human thought. It is a call to enter into a lifetime of spiritual growth and compassionate service to others. He is asking you to devote yourself passionately to loving others.

More than any other characteristic, compassion will be the identification mark of His followers. Unconditional love is to be the grand distinguishing feature of the Christian.

Jesus came primarily to exalt love. He called it the "new commandment." To Him, the most important thing in His life was to give love. He came to teach you and me that the most important thing in our life is to learn to give love.

Not Fluff
There is a great deal of talk about spirituality today. Everyone seems to be on a quest to find it. People are looking in some strange places for it, and there is confusion about what it is. In reality, spirituality is just another word for love. Nonexploitative love. Love that is made to happen in the real world of families, churches, and businesses, in the office, on the Internet. You find that love best by looking to Jesus, the Master Teacher of unconditional love.

Spirituality is about living constantly in an attitude of love. It is about using words that reflect gentleness and kindness. It is about living in an attitude of forgiveness, practicing a kind of before-giveness. It is about letting go of getting even, letting go of anger, letting go of fear. It is about doing acts of loving, compassionate, caring service. Spirituality without these elements is just fluff. It is nonsense. Love is, after all, "the only rational act."¹

Mother Teresa understood this. She devoted her life to walking in the footsteps of Jesus. Her legacy to the world is a practical, nitty-gritty kind of spirituality. It puts to shame the pious, ethereal, intellectual, or philosophical religiosity-the religions of dogma and pretense that are such abominable counterfeits of the real thing. Peggy Noonan said of her: "You have to be a pretty tough character to organize a universe that exists to help people whom other people aren't interested in helping. . . . She was tough."²

Loving people. This is the hardest work in the world. And one of the reasons it's so hard is that you cannot love anyone else any better than you can love yourself. And our love to God has a vital relationship to our love for people.

Think about the person who has hurt you the worst. Perhaps an abusive parent or spouse? the employer who fired you unfairly? your ex-husband or ex-wife? Yes, it is true: Your personal growth, your spiritual and emotional health, your love for God, everything that's truly important in your inner life is limited by how well you can love that particular person. That's why healing and forgiveness are so important. Because until they happen, your ability to love and to mature spiritually is shackled by your fear, your anger, your pain.

When Christ proclaimed that the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of love, could actually be formed within you and me, the Master was telling us we are expected to grow toward deeper levels of forgiveness, more and more responsibility, greater and greater consciousness, higher and higher effectiveness, deeper and deeper compassion.

There is a great deal of talk about consciousness today in Eastern religions, in transpersonal psychology, and in the New Age movement. That is good as long as we remember one thing: The ultimate form of consciousness is living in a state of unconditional love. You are fully conscious when the central focus of your life is about doing acts of loving service for others. Maximum consciousness results in maximum compassion.

You want to find consciousness? Once again, your best source is Jesus. He was the most conscious person who ever lived. He was the most enlightened. He was also the most loving and the most spiritual. He was continually conscious of the presence of God within Him, conscious of the Spirit of love living in His heart.

The Master's immersion in the divine love, His oneness with the Father, was so essential to Him that He literally could not live without it. When the personal connection He had with God was interrupted at the cross, He died of a broken heart.

Try not to breathe for a moment. Just hold your breath as long as you possibly can. Until your lungs start to scream for air. The need you feel for that next breath is an example of the need the Master felt for the personal presence of God in Him and with Him every moment. He was so close to God, so dependent on the Father, so completely surrendered to God's will that His connection with God was life itself for Him. To have the Spirit of love within Him constantly was as natural and necessary to Him as breathing.

To Show Us How
More than anything else, Jesus came to let us experience this kind of love through Himself and to teach it to us. He came to help us become what we were originally created for: to be what He was, an expression of God's love in human flesh.

"Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. . . . Love isn't seen with the physical eyes or heard with the physical ears. The physical sense can't perceive it; it's perceived through another kind of vision. . . . Christians call it the vision of the Holy Spirit, others the Higher Self. . . . Love requires a different kind of knowing and thinking. Love is the intuitive knowledge of our hearts."³

Jesus came to kindle this holy sleeping fire in all of us. He came to fill us with the passion and power of love.
The ministry of the Messiah focused not so much on doctrines as on relationships. His test of discipleship was love. It is so sadly ironic that Christian denominations have come to stand for so many different things in the minds of those who observe them from the outside.

Some churches are known best for their theology of fire and brimstone, some for the importance they attach to the prophecies of the book of Revelation, some for their ardent proselytizing, some for their dietary restrictions, some for the day on which they worship, some for their stand on abortion, some for speaking in tongues. Yet the Savior made clear what should be the identifying mark of His people: "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

Ella Rydzewski has noted the startling fact that no religion or denomination in the world is specifically known for its love of people. She says: "Someday one group will make agape [unconditional] love part of a committed lifestyle. Corporate love will be a fundamental belief, and they will be the remnant people. Where remnant people prevail, Bosnias and Rwandas cannot happen. Such people believe that their true identity lies in belonging to Christ rather than to a tribe, race, or ethnic group."⁴

How Others See Us
The Master came to model a whole new dimension in human relationships. He showed us once and for all that true spirituality, true consciousness, is loving awareness of others. His teaching and example raise deep questions about all our relationships. How do your children feel about themselves when they are in your company? Are they honored as persons? Are they truly seen? Are they heard? Are they listened to with your heart as well as your ears? Are they validated? Are their thoughts and feelings allowed to be their own, to be acknowledged, without being ignored, disparaged, discounted, or ridiculed? In your eyes, in the set of your face, can they read your esteem for them? Do they see that they are more important to you than your work? your friends? your hobbies? Do you realize that your children spell love "T-I-M-E"?

How do those who work for you feel about themselves when they are with you? Are they diminished or emotionally and spiritually nourished when in your company? How do the people who cut your hair or check your groceries feel about themselves after they have spent a few minutes with you?

The Master knew that if His life made no difference in the way people treated each other, His mission would be in vain.

If your religion, your spiritual quest, your attempt to find consciousness and enlightenment, does not lead you ever deeper into unconditional love, if it does not lead you into a deeper awareness and compassion for other people, if it does not continually inspire you to acts of loving service to other human beings, it is a farce. It's a waste of your time.

Because Jesus Christ came to the world, we are beginning to understand, at last, the supremacy of love.

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¹ Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p. 52.
² Peggy Noonan, "Woman of the World," Reader's Digest, December 1997, p. 124.
³ Williamson, Marianne, Return to Love (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992), pp. xvii, xix.
⁴ Rydzewski, Ella, "Corporate Love," Adventist Review, Feb. 16, 1995, p. 5. (Italics supplied.)

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Douglas Cooper has served as pastor, hospital chaplain, family counselor, commercial pilot, and flight instructor, and in a multitude of other capacities and assignments. He lives in Angwin, California.