What is the New Testament all about? If I were to ask this question to my three-year-old son during our family Bible time, he’d answer, “God,” followed by “Jesus.” He’s usually right! And he wouldn’t be wrong in this case, either. There are many good candidates for the central idea of the New Testament. God, Jesus, the Spirit, the gospel, the kingdom, the church, fulfillment, salvation, grace, faith, and love all come to mind. A true theme statement for the New Testament, however, would include many of these concepts.
But what if we narrow our scope to the ethic of the New Testament? An ethic is a set of moral principles. That’s much easier to capture in a single word. No better candidate exists than love.
Table of Contents
- The Primacy of Love
- The Meaning of Love
- The Commands to Love
- The Objects of Love
- The Source of Love
- An Appeal to Love
The Primacy of Love
Several texts position love at the center of the New Testament’s ethic.
John 13
Jesus gives his disciples a new command: we must love one another as Jesus has loved us. As Jesus was known by love, so, too, must we be. Love is the defining characteristic of followers of Jesus.
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
John 13:34–35
1 Corinthians 13
Paul ranks love as the greatest of the triad of faith, hope, and love in the famous love chapter.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13
1 Corinthians 16:14
Paul also identifies love as the governing virtue for all of life.
Do everything in love.
1 Corinthians 16:14
Romans 13 and Galatians 5
In Romans and Galatians Paul sees the command to love others as summing up and fulfilling everything the Mosaic Law required.
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
Romans 13:8–10
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
Galatians 5:13–15
Fruit of the Spirit
Paul also lists love as the first evidence of the Spirit’s presence.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
Galatians 5:22–26 (Cf. Romans 5:5)
Colossians 3
Paul calls Christians to put on love “over all” (ἐπὶ πᾶσιν) the other virtues.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Colossians 3:12–14
1 Peter 4
Peter places love at the top of the list of Christian duties.
The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. 8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. 11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
1 Peter 4:7–11
So, love for others clearly plays a special role in the church’s ethic. It’s the primary visible marker of the true people of God and evidence of the presence of the Spirit. It’s the summation and culmination of the law. It’s our highest duty to one another. It’s the new way of life for God’s people.1
The Meaning of Love
But what does love look like? How do we know if we have it, if we’re doing it?
Like Father, Like Son
We’re commanded to love like the Father loves and like the Son loves. There’s no better way to learn what this love looks like than to study the explicit and implicit expressions of divine love throughout the Bible.
The Bible is a story of God’s love for God’s people for God’s glory, so there’s no way to do justice to such a critical theme in this short post. I’ll suggest just a few defining texts.
The Father’s Love
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, 17 encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.
2 Thessalonians 2:16–17: 16
The Son’s Love
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20
Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Ephesians 5:1–2
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
Ephesians 5:25–27
The Spirit as Love
The Spirit’s relationship to love takes a different form. He’s not the subject of love so much as he is its source.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
Galatians 5:22–26
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Romans 5:1–5
See also Romans 15:30; 2 Corinthians 6:6; Philippians 2:1; Colossians 1:8.
Nothing is more central to divine love than giving, and not just any giving but sacrificial self-giving.
1 John draws on this understanding of self-giving divine love and makes an explicit connection to what our love for others should look it:
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
1 John 3:16–18
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
1 John 4:7–12
The chain of love looks like this: the Father loves the Son, who together love us, who are called to love others.
The Golden Rule
Jesus describes love without using the word in what is commonly known as the Golden Rule:
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 7:12
That he’s defining love is clear from (a) how treatment of self is the reference point for treatment of others and (b) its relationship to the law. Both of these are true of love and the Golden Rule, as you can see in this table:
| Love | Golden Rule |
|---|---|
| “love your neighbor as yourself” | “do to others what you would have them do to you” |
| “love is the fulfillment of the law” | “this sums up the Law and the Prophets” |
Because we instinctively love ourselves (Lev 19:18, 34; Mat 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31, 33; Luke 10:27; Rom 13:9; Gal 5:14; Eph 5:28, 33; Jam 2:8; cf. 1 Sam 18:1, 3; 20:17), treating others as we’d like to be treated provides a simple way of understanding what love looks like—one that even children can understand.
1 Corinthians 13
1 Corinthians 13 gives the most popular and detailed description of love:
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:1–13
This diagram makes it easier to see what love (a) is and (b) does and (c) isn’t and (d) doesn’t do.
Believers should spend much time soaking in and praying over this beautiful picture of love.
Love in 1 & 2 John
1 John also shows us what love looks like.
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
1 John 3:14–18
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
1 John 5 ties love for others to love for God and keeping his commands.
This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands.
1 John 5:2–3
2 John also connects love with obedience and love for God with love for others.
And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.
2 John 6
John connects loving God and loving others in a complementary relationship: loving others = obedience to God’s commands = loving God.
The Commands to Love
Love dominates the explicit and implicit commands of the New Testament. The two primary Greek root groups occur 426 times: ἀγαπάω (320×) and φίλος (106×) and dominate John’s Gospel and first letter especially.
These select texts provide a sampling of the calls to love others.
Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.
Leviticus 19:18
The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
Leviticus 19:34
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5:43–48
Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:37–40
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Luke 6:32–36
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
John 15:9–17
Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.
Romans 12:10
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Galatians 5:13–14
Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.
Ephesians 4:2
May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.
1 Thessalonians 3:12
Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.
1 Thessalonians 4:9
We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing.
2 Thessalonians 1:3
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hebrews 10:24–25
Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters.
Hebrews 13:1
If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. 9 But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.
James 2:8–9
Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.
1 Peter 1:22
Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.
1 Peter 3:8
Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.
1 John 2:10
This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister. 11 For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.
1 John 3:10–11
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death.
1 John 3:14
And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.
1 John 3:23
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
1 John 4:7
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
1 John 4:11–12
And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another.
2 John 5
The Objects of Love
This love should be most clearly seen within the church among Jesus’ followers, but it should also be seen in the radical way we love those who don’t love us back (Mat 5:43–48). Read my post “Does Matthew 5:48 Require Sinless Perfection?” to learn more about this radical, perfect love of the Father.
While we’re called to love everyone, there seems to be degrees of importance. Harmonizing them all might look something like this:
- God (Matthew 22:38)
- Your spouse (Ephesians 5:25, 28, 33; Colossians 3:19; Titus 2:4)
- Your own household (1 Timothy 5:8b)
- Your own family (1 Timothy 5:8a)2
- The community of believers (John 13:34–35; Romans 12:10; 13:8; Ephesians 4:2; Galatians 6:10b; 1 John 5:2)
- Your neighbors (Matthew 5:43; 22:39; 13:9; 5:14; 2:8)
- All people (Galatians 6:10a) including your enemies (Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:35)
Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
1 Timothy 5:8
Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
Galatians 6:10 (Cf. 1 Timothy 4:10)
The Source of Love
This love isn’t something we muster up. It comes through the gracious gospel of Jesus by the indwelling Spirit through the Word.
While effort is involved, we don’t produce love merely by trying harder. Rather, the Spirit produces love in us as we’re walking, filled, controlled, and led by him, which happens as we’re dependent on him and filled with his Word. That grace comes to us as we meditate on the God who is love, whose gospel is love.
The greater our understanding of God’s gracious forgiveness and love to us, the greater our love will be for him and for others.
“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” 43 Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said. 44 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
Luke 7:41–47
The more we mediate on Christ’s work for us, the more we’ll be motivated to love others as he’s loved us.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
1 John 3:16
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:10–11
We love because he first loved us.
1 John 4:19
An Appeal to Love
If there’s one thing the church needs to be putting on display in these days of political and cultural division and strife, it’s Jesus’ new command to love one another as Jesus has loved us (and as we love ourselves). Brothers and sisters, let us love one another with this supernatural, Spirit-wrought love that lets everyone know we’re disciples of Jesus.
Interested in learning more about love? Check out my follow-up post “How Do Love for God and Love for Others Relate? The Two Greatest Commands as One?” and my earlier post “Does Matthew 5:48 Require Sinless Perfection?”
