The other evening at a social event supporting a pro-life law firm in Austin, Texas, I met a Roman Catholic lay woman from Mexico, who had lived in a Roman Catholic community dedicated to getting Christians all to "love one another." It occurred to me that the differences among denominations is not about our inability to love one another, but in our inability to confess the same faith. Faith and love are different. You need more than love. The Beatles crooned, "Love is all you need." This is so wrong and so right all at the same time. It is so wrong in the way that the Fab Four intended it. Like many children of the late twentieth century they thought that everything could be reduced to our love. Great plan. Not so good on the execution. In fact, in the reductionistic air of the time, love became merely sexual, so that self satisfaction and love were equated. We now live with the deadly and depraved results of that reductionism. Christianity battles against this simplistic reduction and pleads for the fullness of love and its beauty.

Unfortunately, much of Christianity has permitted this reduction to affect the content of the proclamation in the churches. The teaching and preaching have often been reduced to "Love one another." What religion does not enjoin love, and yet such an injunction does not make it Christianity. As pivotal as that injunction from our Lord might be, it orbits within a whole universe of divine meaning and teaching about God, who He is and what He does in Christ, His only Son. You cannot merely require love of people as a way of making them Christians. Love, Christ, and His teaching all belong inseparably together. That is why the love/doctrine dichotomy is a false one; another dubious gift of the late twentieth century. The truthful teaching of Jesus entails love and truthful love entails Jesus' teaching. The crowbar used to separate them will kill both.

Our love for God is preceded and embraced by the love of God toward sinners in Christ Jesus. "We love because he first loved us" (1Jn 4:19). All our love and all descriptions of it must arise from the person of God's eternal Son, Jesus. So 1 Corinthians 13, the great love chapter, is not so much a check-off list of things you have to do to be fully loving, but a description of the person and work of Christ. He is the agape love described in it. You can easily substitute Christ for "love" in the text and come out right every time. God is love (1Jn 4:16). Christ is love. His work is love. What He teaches is love. There is a fullness here not ever understood or even hinted at by the world. Our loving is nothing other than Christ's working in the world, for our love is comprehended in Him and in His love; and since He is love there is no difference between them. In Christ, then there is a harmony between the lover and the beloved, so that we are able to reflect Him to the world in our love. What is His is ours in the blessed exchange of righteousness; ours to give away as generously as He has given it to us. We are never cast upon our own meager resources when it comes to love.