The
Oberlin Evangelist
Holiness of Christians in the Present Life--No. 2
January 18, 1843
NATURE OF TRUE VIRTUE
Modernized by Cliff
Collins
“Owe no one anything except to love one another, for
he who loves another has fulfilled the law.
For the commandments, ‘you shall not commit adultery’, ‘you shall not
murder’, ‘you shall not steal’, ‘you shall not bear false witness’, ‘you shall
not covet’, and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this
saying, namely, ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’. Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore
love is the fulfillment of the law.”
(Rom 13: 8-10)
“For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in
this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Gal. 5:14)
In this lecture, I propose to show,
I. What does the word ‘love’ mean in today’s passages?
II. Love, or benevolence, is the sum of all virtue.
I. What does the word ‘love’ mean?
It is extremely important for us to understand what the Bible means by
the word ‘love’. Love is represented in
today’s passages, and throughout the Bible, as the substance of all religion,
and the only preparation for heaven.
What can be more important than love?
1. Let me say first, that the love that today’s passages require, is not
what we generally call natural affection or the love of our friends and
family. (1.) We can see this from the
fact that natural affection is involuntary.
It is true that we use our will when we act out this love, but when we talk about natural affection we
generally talk about strong constitutional impulses like those that parents
experience towards their children, by brothers and sisters towards one another,
and so forth. (2.) However, natural
affection is common to both saints and sinners, and certainly, we can’t
consider anything to be true religion that is common to both the ungodly and
the saints. (3.) In fact, even cruel
and insensitive people display this type of love.
2. This love is not a complacent love or esteem. Complacency is a very pleasant emotion, or
state of our feelings, that we experience when we see something that is
naturally pleasing to us. For example,
if you sit and watch a beautiful sunset, you will experience very pleasant
emotions. You will also experience
delight when you think about the way that God created you. The same thing happens when you think about
moral beauty. God has created us in
such a way, that whenever we think about a virtuous character, as long as it
does not conflict with our selfishness in any way; we delight in that virtuous
character. A pleasurable emotion will
naturally spring up.
Now this complacency, or esteem of virtuous character, is perfectly
involuntary, and therefore there is no virtue in it. This we know from our own consciousness. Consciousness, which I defined in my last
lecture, is our mind’s knowledge of its own existence, its own acts, and its
own states. Consciousness is also our
mind’s knowledge of the freedom or need for these acts and states. Therefore, through our consciousness, we
know that the complacency we have in the character of God or in the character
of any other virtuous being is involuntary.
We know that complacency is the natural and necessary result of our
mental constitution when we come into certain relationships with those people
we esteem and admire.
This complacency cannot be true virtue.
This love can’t be the love the Bible requires because we can only
exercise a complacent love towards the virtuous. However, we must exercise the love that the Bible requires
towards everybody. We are not required
to exercise complacency towards sinners, and it would clearly be unjust and
absurd if we were complacent towards sinners, since to delight in their sinful
character is wrong. But, our scriptures
today require universal love.
Therefore, the love that our scriptures require and complacency cannot
be the same.
Complacency is common to true saints.
But it is also common to the self-deceived and the impenitent. We ignore a lot of evil when we deny that
sinners have this feeling of complacency towards God and His law. The truth is, sinners know that they have
this feeling of complacency towards God and His law. Whenever sinners see God’s character apart from His relation to
them, they cannot avoid feelings of complacency. They naturally get feelings of complacency because of the way
that God has created them. The
wickedest devil in hell would experience feelings of complacency towards God,
if he could view the character of God apart from God’s relationship to
him. It is absurd to deny that anyone
would feel this way, for he must feel this way, because of the way God created
him.
Furthermore, even the worst people can be complacent concerning the
virtuous character of God. Someone once
told me about a certain infidel who would go into ecstasies thinking about the
character of God. He had never heard
anyone say that wicked people could have feelings of love for God. It was almost impossible to convince him
that he did not love God with a virtuous love.
Why? It is because even wicked
people are aware that they have these emotions of complacency towards God, and
they mistake their emotions of complacency for true love.
3. The love required in today’s scripture is not fondness. Fondness is only an emotion. Fondness is involuntary. I don’t know what else to call this kind of
development of the mind towards God. People
often demonstrate a fondness towards God, the same kind of fondness that they
demonstrate towards others. They love
God because He loves them in the same way sinners love those who do good deeds
for them. They don’t distinguish
between this and true religion; but immediately after they demonstrate the
strongest fondness for God, they turn around and take advantage of a neighbor
in some business transaction, or demonstrate selfishness in one form or
another.
The truth is, fondness often exists with the most fiendish wickedness, as
well as with the highest irreverence.
People in this state of mind often seem, in talking about God, in their
prayers to Him, and in every way, to regard and treat God merely as an
equal. I have often thought about how
infinitely insulting their conduct must be to God.
This fondness exists with self-indulgence. Even in the midst of being fond, these people often demonstrate
that they are the perfect slaves of their appetites and passions. They are fond of this, and they are fond of
that, but do they love? They say they
love, but is their love true unselfish willful love? Is their love true religion?
Can anything be religion that puts no restraint on our appetites and passions,
or only curbs some of them, while it clings even more tenaciously to
others? Impossible!
4. The love that these passages talk about is not synonymous with
desire. People say they desire to love
God. They desire to love their neighbor
as themselves. No doubt, they do, but
there is no religion in this, because their desire is constitutional. Their desire has no moral character. Sinners have the desire to love and yet,
they still remain sinners. Everyone
knows that this desire can exist with the worst wickedness. Besides, since it is only desire, it can
exist forever and do no good. Suppose
God merely desired to create a universe and make it happy. Suppose God never went any further than simply
desiring it, what good would it have done?
Therefore, it will not do us any good to say to our neighbor “depart in
peace, be warmed and fed”, but you never give them any of those things that are
essential to his well-being. (See James
2:16) Unless we really will what we
desire, it will never do any good.
5. The love required in today’s passages is not just pity or compassion
for individuals. This is constitutional. People can be very compassionate in spite of
themselves. They say that Whitefield
often appealed to men with such power, in behalf of his orphanage, that he
induced many to give liberally who were previously determined not to give, and
who previously refused to let Whitefield influence them. The truth is, his mighty appeals aroused
their constitutional emotion of pity to such a degree that they had to give out
of self-defense. Whitefield worked them
up to such an agony that they gave, simply to relieve their emotional
pain. But, this kind of excitement was
so far from being virtuous, that perhaps those same people that Whitefield
induced to give money, called themselves a thousand fools for having done so,
after the excitement faded away.
6. Nor is the love required in today’s passages a delight in the
happiness of mankind. God has so created
us that we naturally delight in the happiness of others, whenever there is no
selfish reason to prevent it. This same
constitutional tendency produces a strong abhorrence of whatever is unjust and
harmful.
For example: Men's feelings of indignation naturally swell and boil when
they witness acts of injustice.
Suppose, in a court of law, a judge perverts justice, shamefully wrongs
the innocent, and acquits the guilty.
How would the spectators feel?
There was a case not too long ago, in one of our cities, where a man was
guilty of a flagrant outrage. When it
was brought before the court, the judge so insulted and abused the victim and
showed such a disposition to acquit the guilty party, that the indignation of
the spectators became so aroused that they could hardly be restrained from
grabbing that judge, and taking their vengeance out on him. And these were people who were not
religious. So, you see, people universally, whether virtuous or not, hate a
liar, they naturally hate the character of the devil. Who ever contemplated the character of the devil, as it really
is, without hating it?
In fact, people universally, whether virtuous or not, admire and delight
in virtuous characters. Take, for
example, the Jews in Christ’s time. They
admired and demonstrated their delight in the character of the prophets who
were persecuted and killed by the violence of their contemporaries. Now, how come? Well, they now saw the true character of those prophets, but
because these prophets were dead for so long, they weren’t around to annoy and
rebuke them. In this way, their
constitutional delight was naturally awakened.
But, at the same time, they were treating Christ the same way that their
fathers treated those prophets and for the same reason. So today, multitudes join in admiring and
praising such men as Whitefield, Wesley, and Jonathan Edwards, who, if they
were alive today, would have cried as loud as their contemporaries did “away
with them”. Now, why would they do
this? They would do this because the
relationship of the characters of these great men of God to the world has now
changed. They are dead, and they cannot
directly attack the selfishness of today’s scribes and Pharisees, as they did
while they were living.
We can see this same principle demonstrated concerning human
freedom. For example: Several years
ago, during the struggle of the Greeks for their freedom, a lot of enthusiasm
prevailed. Many people were eager to go
and help them. The government could
hardly control the waves of excitement in their favor. But, those very same people, who were so
enthusiastic in behalf of the Greeks, would now oppose any effort to remove
slavery from this country! Now why is
this true? Because, God created us in
such a way, that when no selfish reason exists to prevent it, we naturally
delight in happiness, and we naturally sympathize with the suffering. However, there is no virtue in this. Mere natural emotion can comfortably exist
with the highest wickedness.
7. The love required in today’s passages is not simply good will towards
particular individuals. “Do not even
sinners love those that love them”?
(Luke 6:32) They love their
friends and supporters, and so do fallen spirits for all I know, but there is
no true love in this.
8. Therefore, this love must be an unselfish act of the will. This love is willing the good of everything
that exists. The attributes of
unselfish love are,
(1.) Unselfish love is voluntary.
True love belongs to our will, and not to our emotions.
(2.) Another attribute of this love is that it is unselfish. By this, I mean that the good of everything
that exists is not willed for the sake of the influence that comes back to
self, but it is willed for its own sake.
Unselfish love recognizes the good of everything that exists as valuable
all by itself, and we must will good for that reason. The willing terminates on the good that we will. It is because it is good that we will it.
(3.) Universality is another attribute of true love. True love goes out towards everyone. It knows no exceptions. Wherever there is someone capable of
happiness, true love wills his happiness according to our view of how important
that happiness to our neighbor is for its own sake. God’s love is just like this.
God’s love is universal. His
love embraces, in His infinite heart, all living things from the highest archangel
to the sparrow that falls to the ground.
He views and really wills the happiness of every being as a good. Indeed, universality is essential to the
very nature of true love, for if we will good because of its own importance,
true love, of course, will cover every good that we know about.
(4.) Another attribute of love is unity. True love is a simple principle. Unity means that true love involves the whole heart. It is an unmixed general choice, because the good of everything that exists is a unity. It is a single goal, and true love chooses this one goal.
(5.) Benevolence is a choice as distinguished from a conscious
decision. The choice of a goal always
means there must be conscious decisions to accomplish that goal, but these
conscious decisions have no character in themselves, and all virtue or vice
belongs to the choice or intention that they are designed to execute. We know this by our consciousness.
(6.) True love is a choice as distinguished from a desire, an emotion, or
a feeling. I mentioned in a recent
lecture, that we are aware that all the states of our soul, all our desires,
emotions, and passions, no matter what they are, are involuntary, and therefore,
they have no moral character. Therefore,
true love cannot consist in desires, emotions, or feelings, either wholly or
partly.
(7.) Another attribute of love is that it is active and efficient. This love, because it is a willful choice,
must be efficient. Any choice must lead
to conscious decisions. For example,
suppose I intend to go to the post-office as soon as possible. As long as this choice remains, it must
produce all the conscious decisions necessary to execute that choice. The very nature of my choice is that it is
active and efficient.
(8.) Aggressiveness is another attribute of love. Of course, if true love is willing the good of everything that exists, it wills the destruction of whatever prevents that good, and continually makes encroachments in every direction on every form of wickedness, no matter how fortified or entrenched that wickedness is. This form of love not only aggressively opposes such sins as licentiousness, intemperance, and profanity, but it also opposes every form of selfishness no matter how popular it may be.
(9.) True love is a disposition, or an ultimate intention. An ultimate intention is the choice of a
goal. This love chooses the highest
good of everything that exists, and because it is our ultimate choice, as I
illustrated in my last lecture; it is, therefore, a disposition to promote good
to the utmost.
(10.) This love is supreme to God, of course. True love is willing the good of everything that exists for its
own sake. That means that love is
willing what is in the best interests of every being, according to how
important we see that it is, for everyone agrees that the correct definition of
virtue is that virtue is a disposition to regard things according to their
perceived relative value. Now everyone
must see that the happiness of God is the greatest good in the universe, and
therefore true love must will God’s good more than anything else must.
(11.) This love must be the same for every member of the human race. Now, I am not saying that the happiness of
each individual is equal to the happiness of every other individual or that the
happiness of each person is equally valuable.
The happiness of a person is more valuable than the happiness of an
animal. Therefore, it would be unjust to regard them as equal. Likewise, some people are more valuable than
other people. For example, the life of
George Washington was more valuable than the life of a private soldier;
therefore, if one of those two people had to be sacrificed, the person to sacrifice
should be the least valuable. But, what
I am trying to say is that the good of every being should be regarded according
to its relative value, as far as you understand it.
(12.) This love also considers the good of enemies, as
well as friends. The Savior insists
that this is essential to virtue.
9. Most everyone agrees that we can call this kind of love benevolence,
and most people agree that God can only reasonably command a love that is
willful or voluntary. Everyone knows in
their own hearts that no other kind of love is voluntary. We all realize that we indirectly produce
our emotions. For example if a parent
wants to become emotional about his family, he must focus his attention on his
family. The result will be that he will
automatically develop emotions about them, and his emotions will take the type
of whatever aspect he views them in.
And, as long as he focuses his attention on his family, he cannot but
have feelings for them. The same is
true with every form of love except true unselfish love. We produce and perpetuate hatred in the same
way. Let’s say that an individual
really gets his feelings hurt by someone else, and he can’t get his mind off
that situation. The more he focuses on
it, the more he feels emotions of hatred or indignation, so that, when someone
urges him to give it up, he says he can’t.
And, it is true because, as long as he keeps his eye on that particular
thing, as long as his mind broods over it, he can’t. However, he can turn his attention away from that situation and thus
indirectly remove his feelings of hatred or indignation.
10. The love that is required in today’s passages must be benevolence
since God requires that we should exercise this love towards every living
creature. This is clear from what we
have already said.
11. God’s love for sinners must be benevolence. His love for sinners could not be a complacent love; for, God
can’t feel complacent towards sinners, He must abhor their character. It was love then, that made the Atonement,
and all the provisions of salvation.
12. No other kind of love would do any real good. Without pure unselfish love, God would never
have made the Atonement, nor would He have done anything else to secure the
salvation of sinners. Without love, no
one here on earth would seek the salvation of the lost. Because of the nature of things, true
unselfish willful love is the only kind of love that can be universal. After all, this love consists in willing the
good of the whole universe for its own sake.
13. True love is naturally and universally obligatory, and therefore it
must be virtue. The good of everything
that exists is valuable all by itself, and therefore to will good to our
neighbor must be virtue. Only a fool
could deny this. If you deny this, you
must deny that we must treat things as they are, or according to their nature.
14. Therefore, the law of God must require that we love God with all our
hearts, and our neighbor as ourselves.
God’s law would be unjust if it did not require true love. It would be completely unjust if it did not
require all moral beings to act according to the nature and relationships of
things.
15. God never has to require anything else from anyone, since everything
that is possible for us to do follows on the heels pure love. This follows from the fact that true love
consists in a choice. If I will to love
God with all my heart, my willing will naturally secure the corresponding
conscious decisions, muscular movements, desires, and feelings. Anything my willing cannot secure is
impossible for me to do or receive. To
produce the right emotions, all I have to do is to fix my attention on the
right objects. Therefore, if I will
right, I will automatically be right.
Don’t we al know in our hearts, that this is what happens when we
exercise our will?
16. In short, God cannot justly require anything more or less than
this. Every moral being in the universe
knows intuitively that God requires nothing less. Ask anybody you want to, if everyone shouldn’t be required to
will the universal good of everything that exists, and if he understands what
you are trying to say, he will immediately cry out, “yes”, “yes”, from the
deepest recesses of his soul. Everyone
naturally knows that God can’t require him to do anything more. Whenever someone says that God can require
us to do something beyond the power of our will, our nature cries out against
that statement as false. This is right
and nothing else is right.
II. True unselfish love, or benevolence is the whole of virtue.
1. We have seen that this love is a disposition or an intention.
2. We know that an intention automatically produces corresponding states
and acts.
3. Virtue cannot consist in outward acts alone. Nor can virtue consist in mental acts that are automatically
produced, that is, you have no choice in the matter. Dreams are a good example, so are automatic reactions. Therefore, virtue must consist in love; and
the Bible teaches this in many ways.
(1.) Today’s passages teach us that love fulfills the law, and that one
statement sums up the whole law, which is, you shall love your neighbor as
yourself.
(2.) This love is the spirit of the whole law as revealed by Christ when
he said, “You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all
your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself”. (Mark 12:30-31)
(3.) This love is the spirit of every precept of the Bible. The Bible says, “if there is first a willing mind, it is accepted according to
what one has, and not according to what he does not have”, (2 Cor 8:12) that
is, a right intention obeys the very spirit of the Bible. If we intend right, our will is accepted as
the deed. Suppose my intention is to do
all the good I possibly can, but I am confined to a sick bed so that I can
accomplish very little. In spite of
this fact, I am still virtuous. On the
other hand, the Bible teaches us that if people intend wrong, their moral
character is the same as their intention, no matter what they do. Even if good should result from their
actions, they cannot be thanked or rewarded, because they did not intend to do
good.
REMARKS
1. Now, you may think that the Bible represents our words, thoughts, and
our outward actions as virtuous. Please
let me respond to this:
(1.) Strictly speaking, the Bible represents all virtue as consisting in
love, and the Bible cannot be inconsistent with itself.
(2.) Words, thoughts, and outward actions are and can only be virtuous in
the sense that they are manifestations of true unselfish love.
(3.) We could say the same thing about those words, thoughts, and actions
that we call wicked. The Bible says,
“The plowing of the wicked is sin”.
(Prov 21:4) We look at words,
thoughts, and actions as being holy or sinful because they usually indicate the
state of our will. A word! What is a word? It is a breath, a movement of the atmosphere on the eardrum. Can this have moral character all by itself? No, but it may be an indication of the state
of mind that person is in who uses that word.
2. Do you see the infinite importance of understanding that true love
must always manifest itself? Because
true love consists in choosing to love God and your neighbor, it is naturally
impossible that this love should not manifest itself.
3. Do you see the stupidity of any religion that does not manifest itself
in efforts to do good? Such religion is
mere hypocrisy. It may be a form of
happiness, but it certainly isn’t true religion.
4. All the attributes of true Christian character must belong to our
will, just as all of God’s moral attributes are only forms of His love. God’s moral attributes are not forms of His
emotion, but of His will. God’s justice
in sending the wicked to hell is as much a form of love, as is His mercy in
taking the virtuous to heaven. He does
both for the same reason, because the general good of His created universe
equally demands both. The same is true
with everything that the true Christian does.
5. How false and dangerous are the usual definitions of these
attributes! For example: People talk
about love as if it is a mere feeling.
Hence, sometimes people represent religion like they are smothered embers,
hardly visible, barely existing; at other times, they view religion like a
slight glow, which they try to fan until it breaks out into flames. However, the love the Bible requires isn’t
like this, since the love these people talk about are only feelings of
love. Even if these feelings come from
a true love for God, these feelings are only the natural and constitutional
result of religion. These feelings are
not religion all by themselves.
People talk about repentance as if it simply means feeling sorry for your
sins. But the truth is, true repentance
does not consist in feelings at all.
Repentance is a change of mind.
When we have made up our mind to do one thing, and then we change our
mind and do the opposite, we say, “I changed my mind”! This is the simple idea of repentance. It is an act of our will, and sorrow follows
it as a result. In the same way, people
think that faith is a conviction of our mind.
But this can’t be faith, because the Bible everywhere represents faith
as a virtue, and because faith is virtuous it must therefore, be an act of our
will, and not some kind of mere belief.
Faith is committing our soul to God.
The Bible says Christ did not commit Himself to certain people, for He
knew what was in them, that is, He did not trust or exercise faith in
them. (John 2:24) The word that we translate here as commit,
is the same word that the Bible uses for faith. Peter says, “Therefore let those who suffer according to the will
of God commit their souls to Him in doing good, as to a faithful Creator”. (1 Peter 4:19) When a person’s mind apprehends the true meaning of the
characteristics and relationships of Christ to the world, they often mistake
this for faith. However, the devil can
have that much faith. This kind of
faith is, is only a mere perception of truth by our mind. Now this perception of truth by our mind is,
as a condition, indispensable to our faith, but it is no more faith itself than
an act of our mind is an act of our will.
In the same way, many people represent humility as a sense of guilt and
unworthiness. Now, if this is true
humility, Satan must be humble, and so must every convicted sinner be humble,
because every sinful creature has some sense of guilt and unworthiness. But, humility is a willingness to allow
others to know and esteem you according to your true character. Concerning the attributes of Christian
character, I pray that these illustrations will show you how dangerous these errors
are that are so prevalent today.
6. There is no such thing as a religion that is never exercised. People often talk as though they really have
some true religion in their lives, although they are aware that they don’t
exercise any true religion at all. They
are sure their religion is good enough, but it is not operating right now. Now this is a terrible mistake.
7. How many people are living on feelings and imaginations, and yet they
remain perfectly selfish?
8. The only kind of preaching that will satisfy many people today, is the kind of preaching that fans into existence certain happy emotions. There are churches today that are full of religious gourmets. Whenever anyone preaches in such a way that it lays bare the roots of selfishness and exposes its secret workings, they are not fed. They cry out, “this is not the gospel, let us have the gospel”. But, what do they mean by the gospel? Why, to them, the gospel is simply those truths that create and fan their emotions into flames. Those people who need to be searched the most, are often the ones who are the most unwilling to endure the probe. They make their religion consist in emotions, and if you take these emotions away, what do they have left? And so, they cling to their emotions with a death grasp. Now let me say that these emotions do not have one particle of religion in them, and those who only want those truths that fan those emotions into existence are mere religious gourmets, and their view of the gospel is sheer fantasy. If the world were full of kind of religion, the world wouldn’t be any better off having it.
9. Religion is the cause of happiness but is not identical with
happiness. Happiness is a state of our
soul and so it is involuntary, while true religion is the manifestation of
unselfish love and therefore it acts powerfully.
10. Men may work in God’s vineyard without having true love or
benevolence, but they cannot be benevolent without works. Many people wake up occasionally, and they
run around, hold special meetings, and the do as much as they can work
themselves into a right state of feeling by force of mere friction. But, they can never receive a right spirit
this way, and everything they do becomes mere legalism. I am not trying to condemn revival meetings,
nor special efforts to promote religion, but I do condemn engaging in these
things legally. But, although people
may work without true Christian love, it is also certain that if they have true
Christian love they will work. It is
impossible that true Christian love should be inactive.
11. If all virtue consists in our ultimate intention, then it must be
that we can be aware of our spiritual state.
We certainly can know what we are aiming at. We can know what our goal, or our purpose in life is. If our consciousness does not reveal to us,
whether we are serving God or serving our selves, it cannot reveal anything
about our character. If our character
is determined by whether we serve God or ourselves, which is our ultimate
intention, and if we cannot know whether we serve God or ourselves, then we
can’t know anything whatever about our own character.
12. We can now see what we are to seek after in our hours of
self-examination. We should examine
ourselves, not to find out how we feel, but to determine what our purpose in
life is. What is the reason why God
placed us where we are on earth?
13. How worthless is religion without love. Those who have a loveless religion are continually lashed up by
conscience to perform their duty. Their
conscience stands like a taskmaster with a whip in his hand. It points to their duty, and says “you must
do it or else”. Their heart shrinks
back from doing it, but still, they must do it or they will have to endure a
worse evil. Their hesitating souls drag
them up by resolutions to fulfill the letter of the law, while there is no
passive agreement in their spirit, and thus they substitute a miserable slavery
for the cheerful obedience of their hearts.
14. I must close by saying that true love naturally fills our mind with
peace and joy. God made us to be
vessels of love, and whenever we are filled with love, we are in harmony with
our selves, with God, and with the Universe.
We will, just as God wills, and therefore, we naturally and cheerfully
act out His will. This is our
choice. We become like some heavenly
instrument whose chords are touched by some angelic hand that makes special
music for the ear of God. However, on
the other hand, a selfish person, from the very nature of his or her mind, must
be a wretched person. His reason and
his conscience constantly tells him that he must love God, love God’s universe,
love the world and love the Church.
But, he never wills according to what his reason tells him he should do,
and thus a constant battle rages within him.
His mind is like an untuned instrument, harsh and grating. Instead of harmony, it only produces
discord, and makes music that is only good enough to mingle with the wailings
of the damned.