Chapter 8: To know God is to love others. Our love for mankind seeks the common good, but to seek the common good sometimes means we must suffer as a martyr. At other times, it requires us to teach by both word and deed. This is love: to love God and to love our neighbor. This love carries us to indescribable heights. Furthermore, love covers a multitude of sins. Love bears all things and suffers all things. Love joins us to God and enables us to do everything harmoniously.
The chosen ones of God were perfected in love. Apart from love, nothing is well-pleasing to God. Who is fit to be found in it except those whom God counts worthy? The Apostle Paul says, "If I give my body and have not love, I am a sounding piece of brass and a tinkling cymbal." 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. If I simply confess the Lord out of fear or an expectation of reward, I am an ordinary man. I may use the Lord's name, but I don't really know Him, for there are people who love only with their lips.
There are even those who give their bodies to be burned, but Paul says, "If I give all my goods to the poor, but not out of love, I am nothing." 1 Corinthians 13:3. For I have given with thought of reward, either from the one I have helped or from the Lord. Paul further says, "If I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but I am not faithful to the Lord because of love, I am nothing." 1 Corinthians 13:3. Love hates sin. Love does not permit sin.
Yet, if a man with love falls into any sin because of the interference of the adversary, he will imitate David. Like David, he will sing, "I will confess unto the Lord, and it will please Him more than a young bull that has horns and hoofs. Let the poor see it and be glad. For He says, 'Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Lord. Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.'" Psalms 50:13-15. For the sacrifice of God is a broken spirit.
Psalms 51:17. As it is written, "God is love." 1 John 4:8. And He is good. Love works no injury to one's neighbor. Romans 13:10. It never injures or exacts revenge. In short, it does good to all according to the image of God. So love is the fulfillment of the law. Romans 13:10. For example, love fulfills the commands not to commit adultery and not to covet your neighbor's wife. In the past, those sins were prohibited through fear, but now we obey them out of love.
All the generations from Adam to the present day are gone, but those who have been perfected in love through the grace of God hold the place of the godly. And the godly shall be manifested when the kingdom of Christ comes. Even though two deeds may be identical, they can differ in quality depending on the motive behind them. For it makes a difference whether a deed is done out of fear or out of love. Appropriately, then, the reward is different depending on the motive.
The reward that awaits the one who is intimate with God is that which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and mind has not conceived. 1 Corinthians 2:9. But the reward awaiting the one who has merely exercised elementary faith is the promise to receive a hundredfold that which he has left. Matthew 19:29. It's still a magnificent reward, but it's a reward that humans can comprehend. In contrast, the reward that awaits the one who is intimate with God is beyond human comprehension.
I remember a certain man who considered himself to be a teacher. Once he expounded on the words, "But I say unto you, he that looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery." Matthew 5:28. His explanation of this passage was that Jesus was not condemning the bare desire for a woman. Rather, as he explained, what Jesus condemned was actually imagining having sexual relations with another woman. I disagree.
His explanation reminds me of the judicial decision of Bocchoris the Just, which historians have written about. A certain young man felt passionate love for a prostitute, so he persuaded her to come to him the next day. And he agreed he would pay her a stipulated amount for doing so. However, that night he dreamed of having relations with her, and the dream satisfied his desire. So when the prostitute came to him the next day, as agreed, he turned her away.
Later, however, she learned of what had taken place in his dream, and she demanded payment from him, but he refused. So they both went before the judge. Hearing the story, the judge ordered the young man to take out his purse and hold it out in the sunlight. He then told the prostitute that she could grab the shadow as payment. In other words, he ordered the young man to give the semblance of payment in exchange for the semblance of an embrace.
But Jesus condemns more than just imagining having relations with a woman. For to fantasize is to already commit an act of lust. Rather, Jesus goes further. He condemns any man who looks on the beauty of a woman with carnal and sinful admiration. However, it's a different matter to look on beauty with chaste love. Chaste love does not admire the beauty of the flesh; it admires the beauty of the spirit. With such love, a person sees the body only as an image.
His admiration carries him to the artist himself, to true beauty.