Through the Flaming Sword

When the Quaker movement chose the Religious Society of Friends for its formal name, we placed love at the heart of our identity as a people of God. We took the name from a passage in the fifteenth chapter of the gospel of John, a passage that is bookended by the commandment to love:

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because i have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commandments so that you may love one another.

I am sure that Jesus had deep feelings of love for his disciples, but the love he is commanding here is not primarily a feeling; it is a commandment, and you cannot command feelings. The love he is talking about is something you do, not so much something you feel; it is treating each other right, even when you don’t feel like it.

And this kind of active love bears fruit, fruit that lasts.