What is Love: Incarnation vs. Capitulation
*This article first appeared in the Women in Apologetics monthly newsletter, December 2021 issue.
Recently I was talking to a churchgoing friend who was torn about how best to utilize her time and resources for God’s glory, specifically with regard to how to interact with non-Christians. “On the one hand,” she said, “we have the greatest commandments, to love God and to love people. On the other hand, we have the great commission to go out and make disciples of Jesus.”
“Since we can’t do both,” she continued, “shouldn’t we prioritize the commandment to love people over the commission to make disciples? I asked a few more questions and it became clear that my friend saw Jesus’ commandment to love people as being in conflict with his commission to make disciples.
Are they in conflict? Must we choose between loving others and making disciples? Where does this perceived conflict come from?
Where’s the “Conflict”?
When I asked my friend what it means to make disciples, she said it means telling people things they may not want to hear. It means telling them they aren’t enough and that they need a Savior, which can make people feel bad about themselves. It means telling them Jesus is the only way to salvation, which can be seen as exclusive and intolerant. She said it means declaring that “this way is right and that way is wrong”, which can lead to confrontation and even arguments. And she said it means using financial resources for missionaries, Bibles, and churches, which means less money for food, clothing, and medical clinics.
When I asked her what it looks like to love people, she said it means affirming them, building up their self-esteem, being kind, and using our resources to give food, clothing, shelter, and medical care to those in need.
Now, if your worldview is more informed by Netflix, Disney, romance novels, and seeker-sensitive religion than it is by the Bible, you may be thinking, “Wow, she has a really good point. The two orders really do seem to be in conflict! Which do we choose?” But if your worldview is grounded in the Word of God, then the problems in her thinking are more likely to be obvious.
A Cultural Definition of Love
As our culture has become more secular, more biblically illiterate, and more willing to hijack terminology for its own purposes, the word love has been one of many to receive a total makeover.
The secular culture has redefined love to mean “making people feel good”, “affirming others in whatever they do”, and “never judging”. People live and raise their children by mantras like, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” And companies make a fortune promoting unbiblical propositions like, “Just be kind”, “You do you”, and “Love yourself”.
Be nice…make people feel good in their depravity…smile and nod affirmingly at others as they cruise blindly toward eternal separation from Christ…and give them food and shelter to keep them comfortable along the way, even as the cost of their needs increases due to reckless and irresponsible choices. These embody the concept of love according to Western culture today.
But is this how God defines love?
God’s Definition of Love
In stark contrast to our culture's definition of love, a biblical definition of love means prioritizing for others what God has prioritized for them, NOT what they have prioritized for themselves. And what God prioritizes is entering into a relationship with himself, made possible through the incarnation of his Son, at the cost of all else.
As we read the Scriptures, we see that the prophets, the apostles, and especially Jesus himself often made people uncomfortable. They judged people’s behaviors, confronted them about their sin, and called them to repent of their ways.
Do you recognize these words?
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. (Matthew 23:15)
These are the words of Jesus himself – God incarnate, the second person of the trinity, the one who defines love, and the one who is love (1 John 4:8)! In this passage he goes on to denounce the Pharisees as whitewashed tombs, full of hypocrisy and lawlessness, serpents, and a brood of vipers who will be hard-pressed to escape being sentenced to hell. Similarly, Jesus denounced the people of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, judging them as worse than Sodom and warning them of impending judgment (Matthew 11:20-24).
While Jesus reserved his harshest words for religious leaders who were actively leading others away from the truth, throughout his ministry he warned people that they must repent or perish. He cautioned that those who give their lives to other priorities will one day be told, “Depart from me, all you workers of evil! For in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Luke 13:27-28).
I think we can plainly see that Jesus did not live by the principle, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.” He did not prioritize making people feel good about themselves, he did not prioritize the immediate eradication of poverty, and he did not even seem to concern himself much with being nice. In fact, it often seems as if he went out of his way to antagonize others and challenge their beliefs, such as when he healed people on the Sabbath rather than waiting a day to heal lifelong ailments (Luke 14:1-6; John 5:1-17).
In summary, when it comes to living according to our culture’s definition of love, Jesus gets a big, fat F. But Jesus wasn’t concerned with our culture’s standard of love. Jesus is the standard of love! So what does love really mean?
The Message of Truth and Hope
First of all, as we see throughout Jesus’ life, to love means to be willing to tell people the bad news that they need to hear. It means telling people the truth that they are sinners who fall short of the standards of God and deserve eternal punishment. No one has earned the right to live in God’s presence with God’s people on God’s New Earth apart from God’s grace. We all deserve separation from God for all eternity because we all have sinned against the eternal, righteous, holy Creator and King.
But because of Christmas, that’s not where the message ends. About 2025 years ago, Jesus willingly left his rightful place of perfect fellowship at the right hand of the Father, and came to earth as a man. He experienced every temptation as a man, was rejected even by those he came to save, was humiliated, and suffered the most excruciating death known to man. He suffered not only the death of crucifixion, but also the full wrath of God for every sin ever committed by God’s children – past, present, and future (Philippians 2).
After enduring that horrific death, he was wrapped in linens, covered in 75 lbs. of spices, and buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. On the third day, he rose from the dead, appearing first to some of his women followers, then to the twelve disciples, and then to more than five hundred others. He had paid for our sins and conquered death and now nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus!
Because Jesus took on flesh (incarnation) and yet did not surrender to the temptations of man (capitulation), we now have a way to be reconciled to God forever! A glorious eternity awaits us – filled with perfect fellowship, exciting adventures, and pleasures forevermore!
But before that time comes, we have a mission. We must follow in the footsteps of Jesus, being willing to voluntarily surrender certain comforts in order to share the message of truth and hope to a lost and dying world. We were promised that this mission will involve rejection from the world (2 Timothy 3:12). Sinners will not approve of us, but we need not concern ourselves with that because the world didn’t approve of Jesus in his day either (Matthew 10:24-25). Although rejection is hard, we must never give up, for these light and momentary struggles are creating for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Corinthians 4:17).
Incarnation vs. Capitulation
One of the great tragedies of our day is that Christians seem to have exchanged incarnation for capitulation. Rather than becoming all things to all people in order that all people may hear the truth and be saved (1 Corinthians 9:19-23), we are avoiding, and even altering the truth in order to become all things to all people. We have it completely backwards! One is incarnation; the other is capitulation. And there is no room for capitulation in the commission of God.
Some people capitulate to the culture because they want people to think well of Jesus, but no one was ever saved from their sins by thinking well of him. Others do it so that the world will think well of them! But God have mercy on those who keep the good news to themselves, or worse, share a different gospel, for the sake of the approval of man! For that person is no servant of Christ (Galatians 1:1-10). Whatever our motives, if we are not sharing the message of truth in order to make disciples, we are not loving others well.
The truth is that obeying the great commission to make disciples is a fulfillment of the great commandment to love others. Far from being in opposition, these two commands go hand in hand. We love people by telling them the truth! As ambassadors of Christ, sometimes we sacrifice and sometimes we suffer, but we always speak the truth, not out of arrogance or ill-will, but out of concern for image bearers, that they may know the truth and the truth will set them free.
