Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health, Donald S. Whitney.*
Question 3 – Are You More Loving?

As written at John 13:34-35, Jesus said that love is the clearest mark of a Christian. “By this all will know you are my disciples.” The author states that if we are growing in our love for others – especially in our love for Christians – then we are growing as a Christian.

The chapter offers a number of scriptures on the importance of love being the mark of Christians that are worth meditating upon:

·       John 15:12,17;

·       Romans 12:10, 13:8;

·       1 Corinthians 16:14; Galatians 5:14; Ephesians 5:2

·       1 Thessalonians 4:9; Hebrews 10:24, 13:1

·       James 2:8; 1 Peter 1:22, 4:8

·       1 John 3:11,23; 1 John 4:21; 2 John 5

Love is the badge and character of Christianity; without growth in the most important Christian distinctive – love – then we are “nothing”. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

When love grows colder, our sin increasingly manifests itself and we look more unlike Jesus. We lose patience, we are prone to be unkind, envious of others; when we are challenged about our lack of love, we quickly list all of the personal sacrifices and other proofs of our love (1 Corinthians 13:4). As our hearts harden or we become bitter, we become less courteous, we begin to look at our “rights” as more important than others’ and their needs, we are more easily angered, and more inclined to find fault in others, keeping score of their offenses (1 Corinthians 13:5).

So what kind of love are we to have? The author picks a scenario of loving family – nothing means more to them than their children; loving family means spending holidays together, sharing meals and other acts of intimacy; loving friends means being devoted to one another, and as the family circle and friendships grow, our love grows as well – correct?

The author answers: The Bible alone – not our own hearts – should be our standard both to define love and to describe it in practice (compare Jeremiah 17:9). We often classify as love what the King James Version of the Bible calls “natural affection (Romans 1:31 and 2 Timothy 3:3 KJV). In normal circumstances, parents love their children, family members love each other, and people love their friends and are good neighbors; this is true of both Christians and non-Christians. This is because God made humankind in such a way as to be able to naturally love certain people. Sometimes it seems to us that true love is at its height when we find others attractive and they are pleasing to us. Yet our love and happiness is regulated by whether the person continues to please us. There is also a “quid pro quo” kind of love. When our love is reciprocated, then, surely, that is true love, right? Yet with all of the emotion that may be expressed in those kinds of love, we cannot measure our growth in Christlikeness by these kinds of love.

The Greek language has different words for different kinds of “love” illustrated in part above: philia – deep friendship; eros – a romantic or carnal love; ludus – playful love; pragma – a longstanding affection; storge – a familial love; philautia – love of self; and agapé love – sacrificial love. Jesus, during His humanity, would have had a storge love for his family, a philia love for His friends – natural affections. However, when He gave the command to love one another, the word for love that He uses is agapé – a sacrificial love. It was that kind of love that brought Him to earth and placed Him on the cross. He did not come just to heal short-lived bodies, but to save sinners who are held captive by sin and its resulting forever death. By Jesus’ death on the cross we experience the love of God unto eternal life. One of the most loving things we can do for anyone is to give them the words that can lead to immortality in a radiantly glorious body, to not just speak the words, but sacrificially do the deed (1 John 3:18).

Growing in love, becoming more loving, we will want to examine whether our agapé love for other Christians is growing stronger (1 John 3:14). Secondly, has our love for the lost grown? Jesus’ experience with the rich young ruler, allowing him to admit that despite all the ‘perfect’ keeping of the commandments, he fell short of loving God and loving others. Jesus did not compromise His salvation message—He made it clear that the man must first forsake his ‘god’ – i.e., his possessions, and put Christ first. The author poses questions (paraphrased): Do we share the gospel message with the lost in a way that they can hear it; do we season our message with the salt of love? The more we begin to look like Jesus, the more we manifest the fruit of the Spirit and the more loving we will be to everyone, even our ‘enemies’ (Luke 6:27,32) Thirdly, when we examine our love for family, do we see observable growth, or are we living like enemies with our family members? Do we use harsh, harmful words, do we belittle one another, do we beat on one another either physically or psychologically? Do we become easily offended or put off when we cannot have our way? Do we act with gratitude to one another, and would our family members readily say, without compulsion, that we love them more and more?

The Bible says that the motive of Christian love at its best includes something that nonbelievers are incapable of knowing, as found at Romans 5:5, which tells us that “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Love begins with God; to love like Christ is to reverse every instinct in our fallen natures. The author, quoting Maurice Roberts in his article “The Supreme Grace of Christian Love,” published in The Banner of Truth, February 1989, relates that true Christlike love is against the grain of nature. Under the amazing power of grace in us through the Spirit, what our humanity cannot do, true Christians must do. Mr. Roberts notes in his article that he’s known Christians for whom the emphasis of their lives is growing in orthodoxy and knowledge; love is only relative. He further says that while God’s love is a gift to us through the Holy Spirit, it is not a spiritual gift like the gifts described in Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 – given to some and not to others. All true Christians receive God’s gift of love; we are accountable to Him in how we use it and grow in it. Do we pursue being more loving (1 John 4:8), meditating on this gift of God described in the scriptures noted above and any others we may find in the Bible on God’s love? Do we love like our Father loves? Does our love look like we belong to God the Father? Do we delight in imitating God (1 John 4:7; Ephesians 5:1-2)? Are we willing to identify those relationships where we most need to grow in love and to take the initiative in showing love in those relationships, not expecting anything in return? If we are choosing to imitate Christ, then we must be the initiator. Jesus did that.

*The foregoing represents my personal reflections on a study by Dr. Donald S. Whitney, Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health. (2001. By Donald S. Whitney. NAVPRESS. ISBN 978-1-61747-187-2) Quotations and excerpts are from that source, unless otherwise identified. For the 2023 Lenten season I provided these thoughts to my local congregation's Bible study group. The questions are not, however, constrained by a particular liturgical season, holiday, or age group: these are questions every Christian may find useful in fulfilling God's command at 2 Corinthians 13:5, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test!" The church at Corinth looked a lot like many of our churches today.