John Chrysostom said that no human word can depict true Christian love at its true worth. After all, it has not an earthly origin, but a heavenly one. Holy angels also cannot fully examine such love, since it comes from the mind of the Lord.
Definition
Christian love is not just an ordinary feeling. It represents life itself, permeated with noble deeds pleasing to God. This phenomenon is a manifestation of the highest benevolence towards every creature of God. A person who has this type of love is able to demonstrate this benevolence at the level of both external behavior and concrete deeds. Christian love for one's neighbor is first of all actions, not empty words.
For example, Ignaty Brianchaninov sternly warns: if a person believes that he loves the Almighty, but in reality an unpleasant disposition lives in his soul at least for someone, then heabides in the most woeful self-delusion. The presence of grace is out of the question here. Now we can say that Christian love is a synonym for benevolence or mercy. John Chrysostom also speaks of its importance: “If all mercy on earth is destroyed, then all living things will perish and be destroyed.” Indeed, if the remnants of mercy on our planet are destroyed, then humanity will destroy itself through wars and hatred.
The original meaning of the word
The early meaning of the Christian word "love" is also of interest. In the days when the New Testament was written, the word "love" was denoted by different words. These are "storge", "fileo", "eros" and "agape". These words were designations for four kinds of love. The word "eros" was translated as "physical love". "Storge" means the love of parents for children or love between relatives. "Phileo" was used to denote tender feelings between a young man and a girl. But only agape was used as the Christian word for love. It is used to describe God's love. This love that has no boundaries, that is able to sacrifice itself for the sake of the person she cherishes.
God's love for man
If a person loves sincerely, he cannot be hurt or belittled by the fact that he is not reciprocated. After all, he loves not in order to get something in return. Given loveincomparably higher than other types.
God loved people so much that He sacrificed Himself. It was love that prompted Christ to give his life for people. Christian love for one's neighbor is expressed in being ready to lay down one's life for brothers and sisters. If a person loves his neighbor, but does not receive reciprocity, this cannot hurt him or offend him. Their response does not matter at all, and it is not capable of quenching agape love. The meaning of Christian love is self-sacrifice, renunciation of one's own interests. Agape is a powerful force that manifests itself in action. This is not an empty feeling that is expressed only in words.
Different from romantic love
The highest love that comes from God is not at all a romantic experience or falling in love. Moreover, we are not talking about sexual desire. In the true sense, the word love can only be called Christian love. She is a reflection of the divine in people. At the same time, the holy fathers also write that a romantic feeling, just like sexual desire, is not alien to human nature. After all, initially the Lord created man as one. But the fall led to the fact that human nature has undergone distortion, perversion. And once the unified nature broke up into separately acting components - this is the mind, heart and body.
Some Christian scholars suggest that up to that point, Christian love, romantic, and also the sphere of physical intimacy weretraits of the same love. However, in order to describe a person corrupted by sin, it is necessary to separate these terms. In Christian marriage there is God's harmony - it has spiritual, emotional, and bodily.
Agape in the family
Christian love allows you to cultivate real responsibility, as well as a sense of duty. Only in the presence of these qualities is it possible to overcome many difficulties in relationships between people. The family is an environment in which a personality can fully manifest itself both in a positive sense and in a negative one. Therefore, Christian love as the basis of family life is not just a feeling for an illusory person, whose image is created by the imagination even before marriage, or by the partner himself (using all kinds of acting talents).
The highest feeling, agape love, allows you to accept the other in his true form. The family is such an organism in which those individuals who were initially alien to each other must eventually become a single whole. Love in the Christian sense is inherently the opposite of the popular belief about the existence of "second halves." On the contrary, in a Christian marriage, people are not afraid to face their own shortcomings and forgive the shortcomings of another. Ultimately, this leads to true understanding.
The ordinary feat of family life
The sacrament in which God Himself blesses a man and a woman is usually called a wedding. It should be noted that the words "wedding" and "crown" are the same root. But in this case, what crowns are we talking about?The Holy Fathers emphasize: about martyr's crowns. The requirements of the Lord regarding family obligations (for example, the ban on divorce) seemed so heavy to the apostles that some of them exclaimed in their hearts: if a person’s duties towards his wife are so strict, then it’s better not to marry at all. However, Christian experience shows that true joy can be brought not by simple things, but by those for which it is worth working hard.
The temporality of worldly feeling
Ordinary worldly love is extremely transient. As soon as a person deviates from the ideal that was created in his head before marriage or even the beginning of a relationship, this love will turn into hatred and contempt. This feeling is of a carnal, human nature. It is fleeting and can quickly turn into its opposite. Often in recent decades, people diverge due to the fact that "they did not agree on the characters." Behind these seemingly ordinary words is an elementary inability to solve the difficulties that inevitably arise in any relationship. In fact, worldly people do not know how to forgive, sacrifice, or talk to another person. Love is a Christian virtue that requires all this from a person. And to forgive or sacrifice something in practice is extremely difficult.
Bible examples
The human mind, which is inherently dispassionate, is opposed to the heart. All sorts of passions predominantly seethe in him (not only in the sense of sin, but also in the form of emotions, violent feelings). romanticlove is the area that touches the heart. And this God-given feeling turned out to be subject to all sorts of distortions. In the Bible, for example, the feeling between Zechariah and Elizabeth is filled with sincerity and selflessness. They can be an example of Christian love. The relationship between Samson and Delilah is saturated with deceit and manipulation. The second option has been very popular lately. Many people are feeling deeply unhappy right now. They cannot arrange their personal lives or at least build any long-term relationship. At the same time, they fall in love endlessly, but their condition is akin to a disease.
The true face of selfishness
In Orthodoxy, this disease is well known. It is called pride, and its consequence is exaggerated egoism. When a person does nothing but wait for attention to his person, he will constantly demand satisfaction from another. He will never be enough. And in the end he will turn into Pushkin's old woman with nothing. Such people, who are unfamiliar with Christian love, are not free inwardly. They have no source of light and goodness.
Basis of Christianity
Love is the foundation of the Christian life. The daily life of every follower of Christ is filled with this great gift. The Apostle John the Theologian writes about Christian love:
Beloved! let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God's love for us has been revealed in what God has sent into the worldHis only begotten Son, that we may receive life through Him. This is love, that we did not love God, but He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
This kind of love is a gift of the Holy Spirit. This is the gift without which neither the Christian life nor faith is possible. Divine love makes it possible to create the Church as a unified existence of human souls in the image of the Indivisible Trinity. The Church, write the holy fathers, is an image of the Trinity. The gift of the Lord's love makes it possible to create the inner side of the Church as the mystical Body of Christ. Much has been said about Christian love. Summarizing, we can say: it is the basis of the life of not only a Christian. As a spiritual entity, love is also the soul of life in all things. Without love, the mind is dead, and even righteousness is fearful. True Christian righteousness lies in mercy. Compassion, mercy and true love permeate all the deeds of Christ, from His Incarnation to the death on the Cross.
Mercy
Love as the basis of morality in Christian ethics is the driving force that governs all human actions. A follower of Christ is guided in his affairs by mercy and morality. His deeds are dictated by a higher sense, and therefore they cannot contradict the biblical canons of morality. Gracious love makes people partners in the love of God. If everyday feeling is addressed only to those who arouse sympathy, then God's love allows you to be merciful to unbearable people. In this feelingevery person needs. However, not everyone is able or willing to take it.
The integrity of the phenomenon
Charity does not in itself cancel other natural types of love. They can even bear good fruit - but only if they are based on Christian love. Any manifestation of an ordinary feeling, in which there is no sin, can turn into a manifestation of a gift or a need. As for mercy, it is the most secret work. A person should not deliberately notice and emphasize it. The holy fathers say: it is good when a parent starts playing with a child who has previously disobeyed. This will show the child that he was forgiven. But true mercy allows you to set the soul in such a way that a person voluntarily wants to start the game.
It is necessary to develop in yourself the mercy, which is characterized by need. After all, in every person there is necessarily an unbearably disgusting trait. And if a person has the impression that one can live on earth without Christian love, which is mercy, then this means that he has not yet joined the Christian way of life.
Domestic theologian K. Silchenkov examined in detail the main commandment of Christianity. It can be considered as one of the universal ethical models. Christ gave people a new commandment, and also explained its novelty, showing His disciples an example of true love. It is this highest example that speaks not only of the commandment as such, but also of the moral ideal.
Love, according to the teachings of the Apostle Paul, is a union of perfection. She isrepresents the main of the virtues, and is also an indicator of belonging to the followers of Christ. Violation of the law of love is the unleashing of war, quarrels and conflicts, insincerity.
Where agape originates
In mutual love, Christians received from their Teacher the sign of belonging to the new Kingdom. It is impossible to touch it with the hands, but it loudly appeals to the inner feeling. At the same time, Christian love for each other is only the first and necessary condition for love for all people.
In mutual love for each other, Christians should draw strength for mercy towards other people, in the outside world, where love is already a more complex and unusual thing.
Like any feeling in a person, Christian love for its all-round development requires appropriate favorable conditions, a special environment. The society of the faithful, in which relationships are built on love, is such an environment. Being in such a life-giving environment, a person gets the opportunity not to be limited by brotherly love. He learns to give it to everyone to whom it can apply - this is exactly the Christian love. This topic is very broad and multifaceted. But “agape” begins precisely with everyday life, with the most ordinary manifestations of mercy.
Philosophical research
Max Scheler considered in detail the concept of the highest divine love, in contrast to the idea of it in various worldview systems,developed by the beginning of the 20th century. As far as Christian love is concerned, it is distinguished by activity. It begins at the point where the demands for the restoration of justice at the level of current legislation end. Many contemporary thinkers share the view that complacency is becoming redundant as more and more legal demands arise.
However, this view is contrary to the beliefs of Christian morality. This is clearly illustrated by cases of the transfer of guardianship of the poor from the competence of the church to state structures. Such cases were also described by Scheler. Such actions are not connected with the idea of sacrifice, Christian compassion.
Such views ignore the fact that Christian love always addresses that part of a person that is directly connected with the spiritual, with participation in the Kingdom of Heaven. Such views led the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to decide to identify the Christian thought of love with a completely different idea.
