THE development of love has to be one of the prime concerns of all who seriously want to follow Christ. Yet how many of us are clear enough in our own minds about what Christian love really is, and make the development of it a conscious goal in our lives?
It's very easy to be vague about Christian love, to exercise it in an indeterminate manner, and to acquire the notion that it's nothing more than "doing good." Obviously "doing good" comes into it, but it's nowhere near the whole story. In fact "doing good" is more of a by-product of Christian love, the result of it rather than the object of it.
This is why Paul could say that "love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom.13:10). Adultery, murder, theft, false wit-nessing, covetousness, and all other such wrongs, simply don't happen when people have love (which is a paraphrase of Rom.13:9). Doing good occurs instead. Doing good happens when we give attention to who we are rather than what we do.
One of the most important things to learn about love is that it has more to do with being than doing. It concerns what we are rather more that what we do. The fruit of the Spirit, which I believe is love, is something which grows and ripens in our character and personality, bringing about a gradual inner transformation. It is not developed by our deeds; it is developed by the Spirit through our delight and meditation in the Spirit Word.
How easy it is for us to get things back-to-front and imagine that it's by all our doing that we will eventually evolve the right sort of Christ-like characters for ourselves. It's not so. The simple truth is that the transformation of our characters from within must come first, and then the deeds will take care of themselves. Getting it the wrong way round and putting deeds first will produce the sort of imitation fruit of the Spirit that the world produces with all its good deeds. God does not approve it because it's phoney fruit.
The Apostle Paul teaches us in his famous chapter on love (1 Cor.13) that we can do all manner of wondrous things in the service of God and our fellow man, but these will count for nothing if we don't first have love—that is, if we don't put ourselves internally right first. Love is more about being than doing! The error of getting it back-to-front manifests itself in at least three different but similar types of unfulfillment.
Why is it that some believers find themselves overburdened by trying to live the Truth? Life in the Truth is the most satisfying and fulfilling way of life available to anyone living on this planet, as we said at the outset of this book. Yet some people work flat out at "doing" the Truth with very little satisfaction, as their weariness will betray, (barring the dubious satisfaction of grumbling about all those who aren't so overloaded!). A law of diminishing returns sets in. Too much time and effort spent in doing and not enough attention given to being (to what we are inside) can make life go spiritually flat, like old Coca Cola. The joy of doing will eventually wear thin if the joy of being hasn't preceded it.
Then again, there are some believers who have the opposite but equally unsatisfying problem. Theirs is not the problem of being unfulfilled by a demanding work schedule; theirs is the problem of being defeated even before they start. They have a fixation on the doing, and there seems to be such an unclimbable mountain of things for them to do that they give up at square one.
It's all too much, they think. They can never hope to do it all—or as much as person B, C and D are doing—so why bother? They have seen doing as the most important thing in Christian life and they have backed away from it, feeling inadequate to do as much as they feel they ought to do, or as much as they see others doing. If only they would concentrate on being and not doing, the problem would go away.
The third type of unfulfilled believer is closely related to the last. He or she would certainly find it hard to say, hand on heart, that their life in the Truth is the most satisfying and fulfilling way of life. I'm talking about those who are the spiritually becalmed.
When you're on a sailing boat which is becalmed, you're stuck out in mid-sea with no wind in your sails. And if you don't have a motor, you have a problem. You're not going anywhere. You just drift with the tide. The situation could get life-threatening.
Believers can become spiritually becalmed. In this state all their years in the Truth seem to have produced very little by way of spiritual progress. They had such grand aspirations when they started out on the spiritual journey, but they have grossly underachieved.
Probably most believers feel a bit like that from time to time (and rightly so, because self-satisfaction in the spiritual life is the fast lane to stagnation), but the believers I have in mind are the chronically dissatisfied. They're stuck. They can't get started any more, and they don't see any way of getting themselves started. Here again, the problem is usually too much attention to external achievement and too little on internal development.
It's the mistake of believing that only when they do well will they be well. So they give up trying, because every time they try, they get all fired up and busy in the Truth, then their efforts peter out. Now they're not sure where they're going—if anywhere. Becalmed is the word for them.
Maybe you recognize yourself as a joyless worker, or a non-starter, or one of the great becalmed. Or maybe you know there's something wrong with the way you are spiritually but just can't figure out what it is. In all cases I suggest you check to see if you have a being/doing problem. Are you aiming to be all that you can through delight and meditation in the Word?—or are you aiming to do all you can, and wondering why you don't seem to change for the better?
Remember also, that busyness can sometimes be a way of hiding from ourselves. We can fill our lives with things to do so that we don't have to face ourselves and notice that we're not being what we need to be. Occupation can mean avoidance. It's a reason why some people can't handle retirement from work. To cease from work is to come face to face with self. And if work is all they are, then they are nothing when the work stops, so they need to put off retirement for as long as possible. You might fear slowing down on work in the Truth for the same reason. You mistakenly believe that you are what you do. So, if you don't, you aren't!
The solution, as I've said, is to relegate doing into second place, and put being in first place. Cultivate the fruit of the Spirit and allow your spiritual activities to develop naturally from that. This is putting things in the correct order.
Alas, the pressures we put upon one another are in some degree to blame for our back-to-front thinking. There is a great temptation to eye-service in the Truth. How gratifying it is to do lots of the tasks that can be seen by our Christian colleagues! How easy it is to concentrate our efforts on high profile tasks to the detriment of our inner spiritual growth.
Not that we should shun leading Bible study groups, going on missionary travels, or other observable work, but rather that such work needs to be an extension of who we are in the Truth, not our preoccupation. All our work in the Truth is done as a good and natural outlet for our enthusiasm when we delight and meditate in the Word.
In fact, when we get being and doing in the right order, we don't even think of what we do in the Truth as work. We become totally free from the rat-race of spiritual performance. We will be doing what comes naturally, and enjoying it. And when we stand before Christ and he welcomes us into his kingdom, saying how he'd been hungry and we'd fed him, thirsty and we'd given him drink, naked and we'd clothed him, sick and visited him... and so on, we'll scratch our heads and say, "When, Lord, did we ever do all that?" We won't remember. It all came naturally from a Christ-like mind, from a mind in which the fruit of the Spirit had been nurtured. Those who have put doing before being are rejected. They will argue that they have done all manner of wonderful things in Christ's name. They've got a list as long as your arm. But Christ will say only, "Depart from me..."(Matt.25:31-46).
Being is more important. This is what the fruit of the Spirit is all about. It's about the development of our inner lives through the development of love. The doing will take care of itself.