Perfect Love

The following is in response to a friend who struggles with the passivity of not loving actively. Active love risks sin, risks being overtaken by the passions, but at least it does something. It tries. It does not succumb to an opposite passion of laziness or "apathy". To do nothing because of fear of sin is just as bad, if not worse, than to love boldly and risk a fall.

Yes, that active vs. passive thing. Well, it always occurs to me that passive and passion have the same root meaning. :)

The key, I think, is in what you said about love. Yes, perfect love casts out fear. The key is love. My big revelation lately is that I have to relearn how to love. All my old loves are highly imperfect loves. Christ’s love is perfect. His love is the kind I need.

To relate perfect vs. imperfect love to the passions… what I have found is that imperfect love means I have to struggle, to fight. A "passion" is basically an imperfect love, a "passionate" love, one that, while it IS love and good because it is love, is slightly disorderly or disproportionate. In and of itself it is not sin. Take my love for my husband, for example, or my kids — my existing love for them, as it is right now, which I have even apart from Christ. It’s human love. It’s good! It IS love. However, it is a "passionate" love in that it causes me to have to struggle. Because it is not PERFECT love, there is fear also, and that means I can be tempted. There can be jealousy, insecurity, anger, selfishness, impatience, all these "things" (off-kilter emotions, goals that aren’t quite right, personality conflicts, etc). The door is ajar, and the devil can enter in. It doesn’t mean the devil wins, but it means I have to fight him. And of course I’ll lose sometimes.

I have asked God to help me learn perfect love, esp. for all the people and things, including my studies and interests and so forth, that I love now imperfectly. I ask so that I am not swayed so completely by my passions, so that I can learn not to fear, so that I won’t have to struggle so hard against sin — and lose so badly sometimes, and hurt the people that I love! That is what is so painful.

There is no fear in perfect love because there is no room for the devil to work. It is not a fight. It is pure. One can see how it casts out fear. It operates with the love of God, in complete trust. This kind of love is not "passionate" in the sense that it is not disorderly, disproportionate, off-kilter, prone to emotions that cause me to have to struggle. It is "passive" in the sense that it is GOD’s love. It is totally open and unafraid. You see and love Christ in the other person, and you become Christ (Christ-like) to that person. Or… maybe it is totally and completely active love. If it is the love we have through participation in God’s energies, this is His "action," His dynamis, His energeia, His "activities".

It’s funny you should quote that particular verse. I hadn’t remembered it, but it speaks volumes.

So, to get back to your point…. I would say that yes, one can be "passionate" and love. And one then fights against sin. And this is acceptable. To give up the fight when one loves imperfectly is highly, highly dangerous. I’m not sure a person ever reaches perfect love in this lifetime, so that means there will always be that fight. But in the ideal, there can be dispassion and perfect love which is fearless and victorious and sinless. I think Christ does want to teach us this kind of love.

I would say that Christ Himself had both kinds of love, including the "passionate" kind, because that is part of fallen human nature, which He takes up. He is tempted by the devil. He feels things. He can get angry or afraid. He feels weakness. He hungers and thirsts. He is human! So He fights, but He does WIN. Unlike us, He doesn’t sin. He can be tempted, but He is without sin.

Christ also has perfect love, the kind that casts out fear. This is the love He has from His Father. He gets this from prayer, and from His own divine nature. He uses this to heal and to show who He really is. Perfect love is divine. God IS love.

So Christ is both. He has both kinds of love — by nature. We, by nature, have passionate love. And so we struggle not to sin. But we are also called to live in Christ. And there is the call to purity, to perfect love, to theosis, to sharing in God’s love.

Practically speaking, I think the perfect kind is always a gift from God. He decides how much we’ll have to fight. Basically we have to fight until He gives us perfect love — that is, Himself. We love passionately, and we fight against sin. We fight until we are so tired that we can’t fight any more. And then God has compassion (<— there’s another word with the same root <g>) on us and raises us up.