No, "love God, love others" is not the Christian message

It has become fashionable to distil the essence of Christianity into a catchphrase that appears on Instagram bios, as captions to stock images, or as laptop stickers: love God, love others.

It is thus a provocative and puzzling title for an article that will most assuredly assert that people must love God and others. Yet the provocation and puzzlement is intentional – the message of Christianity is not to love God and others, as though it was the centrepiece of the Christian religion. Rather, this adage is situated within a broader context that is both bleaker and more hopeful than most imagine.

Sum of the law

We see the concept behind the adage in the passage of the question of the greatest commandment:

Matthew 22:34-40 (ESV)

Thus, we see that “love God, love others” is really a pithy restatement of what Christ said:

1. To love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind;

2. To love your neighbour as yourself.

Yet these two commandments themselves together form a summary too. Christ says that “on these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (v 40). In other words, on these two commandments depend the entire Old Testament, more specifically, the Old Testament’s high point in the Ten Commandments, otherwise known as the moral law. I replicate it (paraphrased) here:

1. You shall have no other gods before Me.

2. You shall not make for yourself any graven image.

3. You shall not take the name of God in vain.

4. You shall remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

5. You shall honour your father and mother.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness.

10. You shall not covet.

The first four commandments pertain to our obligations to God, summed in the command “to love God with all our heart, soul and mind”. The second six pertain to our obligations to Man, summed in the command “to love our neighbours as ourselves” (Rom 13:9). Why do we not take God’s name in vain? Because we love Him with all our heart, soul and mind. Why do we not steal our neighbour’s property? Because we love him as ourselves.

Thus, to tell people that they must “love God, love others”, is to tell them that they must obey all Ten Commandments, that they must obey the law.

Impossible obedience

Yet, the Scriptures make it manifestly clear that no one obeys the law and there is none righteous (Rom 3:9-11). We recall the Sermon on the Mount, where Christ did not just reiterate the law, but raised it to the standard that it should have always been: to lust is to be an adulterer (Matt 5:27-30), to be unjustly angry is to be a murderer (Matt 5:21-26). We also look at sobering statements that the transgression of one command is the transgression of the whole law (Jas 2:10), for the law reflects the indivisible nature of God and is thus indivisible. As long as I have looked on a woman with lust, coveted an object of someone, spoken untruthfully, or looked to something other than God for my delight (all of which I have done), I stand guilty of breaking the entire law of God, guilty of not loving God and others.

God renders to each according to his works (Rom 2:6) and shows no partiality towards Man (Rom 2:11). Thus, to the one who obeys and is righteous, He rewards, but to the one who disobeys and is unrighteous, He condemns (Rom 2:6-11).

Therefore, the situation facing all men is bleaker than most people imagine. When people are told that the essence of Christianity is to love God and others, an impossible burden is placed on their shoulders, for there is none who will love God and love others the way he is supposed to. For we are dead in our trespasses (Eph 2:1), alienated from and hostile towards God (Col 1:21-22), unable to receive God (John 14:17), defiled in our minds (Tit 1:15).

A better message

If the Christian message is to “love God, love others”, then there is no hope and the Christian faith ought to be abandoned to collapse on itself under the weight of crippling despair and immense bleakness. But it is not.

The message is this: that God so loved us that while we were still lawbreakers, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8). In His life, Christ obeyed the law to its fullest, loving God with all His heart, soul and mind, and loved others as Himself, thereby meriting for His people all the obedience they need. In His death, Christ took the penalty for our lawbreaking on Himself, thereby propitiating for the sins of His people.

The Christian message

The Christian message then, is simply, the gospel: Jesus Christ crucified. It is not “love God, love others”, for that is simply the law that condemned all men. The gospel promises that Christ has kept the law for us and when I in faith trust Him, all the obedience I need to stand justified before God is imputed to me; once for all, the obedient for the disobedient (1 Pet 3:18).

In Christ, I have all the obedience I need and no condemnation for my disobedience. Christ loved God and others on my behalf, and died for the times when I did not love God and others.

To be sure, we must love God and others, for Christ’s work did not abolish the law (Matt 5:17) – we are still bound to obey it by loving (Rom 13:8), as the law is now put into our hearts (Jer 31:33). Yet we are freed in that the law no longer requires our obedience as a condition for salvation – Jesus Christ is our obedience. Only when our hearts behold the magnitude of what God has done for us through Christ, are they opened in wonder at the love of God demonstrated in His Son (Rom 5:8), that we might love Him rightly. His love for us feeds into our reciprocal love for Him; He loved first and our love is merely a response to the immutable and eternal love He has towards us (1 Jhn 4:19). It also feeds into our love and honour for others as well (1 Pet 2:17).

We do not tell people to love God and others. Rather, we tell them that though they must, they cannot, and the only hope they have is to flee to the feet of Christ and lay hold of His cross, crying out unto the Lord to save them (Joel 2:32; Rom 10:13). The solution to disobedience is not to attempt further obedience, but to look to the one who has obeyed on our behalf.

So no, “love God, love others”, though true as the manifestation of the Christian ethic, is not the message of the religion. The message is this: Christ crucified and raised again for lawbreakers – believe in Him and be saved, all ye sinners poor and needy.

I wrote a follow-up to this article over here.