Can’t You Just Love Everyone?

“Love one another.” This is one of the undeniable imperatives of Christianity. God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). We must love one another (1 John 4:11). By this love all men know that we are Christ’s disciples (John 13:35). Love fulfills the law (Romans 13:10). So why not just love one another? Why build walls, make distinctions, establish boundaries, and draw lines? Why confront sins? Why not welcome all equally? Can’t you just love everyone?

The impulse and the argument “just to love everyone” is superficially attractive, even apparently compelling. However, the argument uses Bible language the way Satan does — selectively and deceptively. When tempting Christ, the devil selectively quoted Scripture but twisted the whole sense (cf. Matthew 4:5–7; Psalm 91:11–12). It is possible to use Bible language while ignoring the context, imposing a different meaning on the words and drawing false conclusions based on faulty assumptions. This regularly happens with the meaning of love.

Does it really matter? Yes. Churches are disrupted and even destroyed by the confusion created by such shallow reading and reasoning. The language of love is thoroughly scriptural, but we need to handle our Bibles carefully. We need to understand the true definition and the proper direction and order of love.

Love Defined and Established

Think of love’s definition and foundation. Love does not appear in a vacuum, a sort of glowing, amorphous cloud of feeling which we can press into any mold. Rather, God defines it carefully. God’s love sets the standard for our love:

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:9–11)

God’s love, which we reflect and replicate by the Spirit’s power, is not a generic niceness but a determined act of the divine will, directed toward the utterly unlovely. It does not at all diminish or dilute the reality of sin. It faces sin’s pollution, punishment, and power head-on, fully honoring divine justice as well as divine mercy. It is love manifested in sacrifice, love determined to do heavenly good to its object, to make the unlovely lovely through whatever righteous means necessary.

Christian people show a similar Godlike and Christlike love toward one another. Anticipating his sacrifice, our Lord says,

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34)

Christlike love for other believers is a mark of a true disciple. Because God in Christ sets the standard for what love looks like, we cannot collapse Christian love into mere sentimentality, a kind of anodyne sweetness that overlooks or dismisses sin and downplays righteousness.

Love Directed and Ordered

Think also of love’s direction and order. Our love for our brothers demonstrates our love for God himself (1 John 4:20–21). Our Lord goes to the cross for his beloved people out of love to his Father. The structure of the greatest commandment reveals both direction and order: First, love the Lord your God entirely, and second, love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37–40; Mark 12:29–31). While not denying a proper love of affinity, Christ calls us to a crowning love of supremacy: We are to love Christ more than father or mother, son or daughter (Matthew 10:37). Love for our nearest and dearest might even be considered hatred in comparison to the love that we have for him (Luke 14:26)!

We must not, then, think of love first in its horizontal dimension toward men. Love must first be directed vertically toward God, in response to his love to us, before it spills over horizontally toward others. “Love” toward men at the expense of love toward God is not love. True love honors the High and Holy One first and foremost.

“True love honors the High and Holy One first and foremost.”

The definition and the order of love are established and expressed with primary reference to the triune God. He shows us what love really is, and he shows us where love goes first. Such love does not ignore sin, neglect truth, diminish holiness, or disdain obedience. Such love does not turn a blind eye to such things as slander, pride, sexual immorality and perversion, the murder of infants and old people, blasphemy and cursing, or disobedience to parents (Romans 1:28–32; 2 Timothy 3:1–5). Such love does not grow impatient with distinctions, dismissing or despising that which God prizes and declares precious. The world says, “If you love me, you will let me do what I want.” The church says, “If you love me, you will help me do what God wants.”

‘Cruelty to Souls’

When Christians forget the proper direction and order of love, or allow the world’s definitions of love to infiltrate and dominate, the church is quickly compromised and soon crippled. Charles Spurgeon put it simply: “Charity to error is cruelty to souls” (The Interpreter: Spurgeon’s Devotional Bible, 760). Expanding on this, he said,

Pleas of charity to error are arguments for the murder of souls. Life and death hang upon the question of truth or falsehood; if lies be propagated, or truth be clouded, the watchmen of the Lord will have to give in their account for permitting it. (The Sword and the Trowel, 177)

Does that sound extreme? It should not. Love, falsely defined and directed, is offended by the gospel call to leave one’s sin and follow Christ (Romans 6:1–4). False love says that you can keep your sin and claim Christ (2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1). It says that the church need not be strictly defined by Christian belief and behavior but calls for inclusion without discrimination (Revelation 2:14–16). It labels as unloving the battle to keep sin out of our hearts and our churches (1 Corinthians 5:9–11). Under the guise of catholicity, it demands compromise. This is not love, but weakness and wateriness masquerading as kindness and compassion.

Carnal versions of Christian love undermine the gospel of salvation from sin, hinder the preaching of that gospel, twist the definition of a Christian, pervert the nature of the church, corrupt the purity of Christian belief and behavior, and hamstring our fight with sin. False notions of love will bring in not charity and integrity but disregard and deceit, not carefulness and watchfulness but negligence and indulgence. It is the pastor who does not want to offend the person living in a sinful relationship, the church which overlooks false teaching circulated by its members, the friend who fearfully condones a sinful path, the preacher who only speaks about sin generally and never specifically or who opens the door to heaven for everyone and nails shut the door to hell.

Rescuing Love

True love does not ignore or overlook sin. It acknowledges it, faces it, and pursues forgiveness by way of repentance (1 Peter 4:8; James 5:20). Love honors righteousness as much as peace, truth as much as mercy (Psalm 85:10). It aims not to affirm a sinner in his sin but to recover the sinner from the error of his ways. It aims not to shrug off the trespasses and backslidings of God’s people, but rather to overcome them and see the child of God restored. It does not leave a saint drifting on the current of the age but helps each one to run with endurance and joy the race set before them, looking to Jesus as the author and finisher of faith (Hebrews 12:1–2).

Our Lord could be the friend of sinners not because he indulged their sin but because he confronted it and saved them from it. Love cleansed the temple of God, driving out those who made it a house of merchandise (John 2:14–17). Love told a misguided Pharisee that he needed to be born again (John 3:1–8). Love spoke to an immoral Samaritan woman about the water of life (John 4:1–26). Love confronted the Pharisees over their hypocrisy, which led men to hell (Matthew 23:15). Love carried the good shepherd to the cross to lay down his life for his sheep (John 10:11; Galatians 2:20). Love waited to call Lazarus from the grave so that God would be glorified and faith strengthened (John 11:1–44). Love stooped down to wash the feet of the disciples (John 13:1–17). Love went to the cross and died for sinners (Romans 5:6–8; Galatians 2:20). Love did not affirm or ignore sin but went among sinners to bring them out: “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). Love incarnate did not leave men in their sin but laid down his life to deliver them from it.

Can’t you just love everyone? Of course! Love must form and inform Christ’s church. However, the love that characterizes the church is a true love for God and his people, a love defined and established, directed and ordered, by the Lord himself in his word. Christlike love does not produce a toothless tolerance of anyone and anything but rather a holy zeal for the glory of the Lord and the good of all people.