Love as the core?

[Michael16]

I’ve been reading Saint Paul’s writings and I came across the Without love I am nothing passages. I’ve been wondering: Is love the emotional and ethical core of Christianity?

 

[Maximilian75]

Absolutely! yes!

 

[Wingz]

“8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
“12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us”
1 John 4:8-12

These two verses from 1 John 4 tell us that God is love and that those who love know God as God lives inside them.

So yes, love is the ethical core of Christianity as Jesus teaches that above all of the commandments we should love God, and love others as we love ourselves.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
-Matthew 22:36-40

I don’t know what emotional core means but I suppose love is the emotional core of Christianity as well.

 

[midori]

Remember that he’s using the “caritas” kind of love, which we translate as “charity.”

There’s a piece in The Dialogue of Catherine of Siena that goes:

I would have you know that every virtue of yours and every vice is put into action by means of your neighbors. If you hate [Jesus], you harm your neighbors and yourself as well (for you are your chief neighbor), and the harm is both general and particular.

I say general because it is your duty to love your neighbors as your own self. In love you ought to help them spiritually with prayer and counsel and assist them spiritually and materially in their need-- at least with your good will if you have nothing else. If you do not love [Jesus] you do not love your neighbors, nor will you help those you do not love. But it is yourself you harm most, because you deprive yourself of grace. And you harm your neighbors by depriving them of the prayer and loving desires you should be offering to [Jesus] on their behalf. Every help you give them ought to come from the affection you bear them for love of [Jesus].

In the same way, every evil is done by means of your neighbors, for you cannot love them if you do not love [Jesus]. This lack of charity for [Jesus] and your neighbors is the source of all evils, for if you are not doing good you are necessarily doing evil. And to whom is this evil shown and done? First of all to yourself and then to your neighbors-- not to [Jesus], for you cannot harm [Jesus] insofar as [he] counts whatever you do to them as being done to [him]. You do yourself the harm of sin itself, depriving yourself of grace, and there is nothing worse you can do. You harm your neighbors by not giving them the pleasure of the love and charity you owe them, the love with which you ought to be helping them by offering [Jesus] your prayer and holy desire on their behalf. Such is the general help that you ought to give to every reasoning creature.

 

[fhansen]

I’ve been reading Saint Paul’s writings and I came across the Without love I am nothing passages. I’ve been wondering: Is love the emotional and ethical core of Christianity?

Absolutely! The Protestants have it all wrong; we’re not saved by faith alone, we’re saved by love alone! And this is why the Greatest Commandments are what they are, and this is why the Catechism quotes St John of the Cross regarding the basis of our judgment: "At the evening of life we shall be judged on our love."

And everything Jesus said and did, including His passion, death, and resurrection, was motivated or driven by love.

"Love fulfills the Law." Rom 13:10
"The only thing that counts is faith working through love." Gal 5:6
"God is love. " 1 John 4:8

 

[RandomAlias]

Jesus commands us to love, and our love guides us in our thoughts and actions, but our love is only one side of the story. We must also contemplate God’s love in order to understand him and our relationship with him. It was with love beyond our comprehension that he created us, that he desires to be with us eternally, and that he sent his Son to make that possible. To answer the question posed in the thread title, yes, love is the core. It is the core of our existence, our ethics, our relationships, and our eternal destiny.