This is the text from the free study guide for our free booklet, True Love and the Virtues.
A popular song from a few decades ago proclaims the greatest love of all to be loving yourself, and our culture is definitely dedicated to fostering this type of love. The problems that can come with this are clear to all, however, as increased self-absorption leads to increasing selfishness and then to all the isolation and hate we see today.
The key, the Bible tells us, is to stop turning our focus inward and instead open ourselves to the loving work of the loving God. Paul tells us that living by the Spirit, and in step with the Spirit, is a life of love and joy in which we develop such attributes as kindness and goodness for others (Gal 5:22–26); Peter even goes so far as to say living in God’s divine power can make us “participants in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:3, 4). To get to such a point, however, we begin by acknowledging how far we are from such love. Alcuin of York’s prayer of confession is therefore directed to “the fountain of all goodness,” asking God to empower us and clear our hearts and minds so that we can “put away all hurtful things.”
As Alcuin indicates, we can only dwell and share in divine love through the grace and power of God. When we do so, W.C.E. Newbolt says, we are powered by “the great machine of life,” which receives from God “the mighty flood of spiritual power” directing us ever onward into love. This isn’t self-focused self-interest, though, because “Love means…a giving out of self to God, to Man, to Nature.”
This is a vital point: the Christian life isn’t simply a rote, glum following of rules and upholding a moral code, but rather is a life of love. Paul, earlier in 1 Corinthians 13 than the passage in this booklet, even says that a life of profound church leadership and doctrinal teaching is nothing more than noise and personal worthlessness if it is lived without love (13:1–3). At the same time, a life of love is also a life of virtue. Augustine teaches that virtue is simply the perfect love of God, and therefore each of the primary virtues (formally called the Cardinal Virtues)—self-control, courage and perseverance, integrity, and wisdom—are attitudes and actions of love. God is thus both the source of virtue and the focus of a virtuous life. We can go on to say, John Chrysostom adds, that love is the creator of virtue. Love never ends (1 Cor 13:8), continually blessing us and empowering us to live in love with God and others.
We might think this all sounds very nice, but how do we actually live in love? How can I be loving when something—or even more, someone—angers me? Charles Spurgeon says, when we are “bent on the growling business,” we can imagine the Holy Spirit soothing us and continually whispering, “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” The priest Benjamin Jenks teaches families to pray together for patience, asking God to “teach and help us all to live in peace and to love in truth, following peace with all men and walking in love, as Christ loved us.”
