I grew up in 90’s Christian youth group culture, where the sentiment was to be “on fire” for God. We were to be all in. Totally devoted. Willing to sacrifice anything for our love for God. If you weren’t working on your salvation, you were backsliding: there was no remaining in neutral territory. If loving God was a crime, would you be willing to die for your faith?
A friend of mine, Rob Phillips, recently turned me on to Wesley’s Sermon 92, On Zeal. In it, John describes the type of religious zeal that leads to violence. A people so on fire for what they believe that they are willing to persecute and kill those who believe differently. Wesley argues that this is a misguided zeal, one where dogma has circumvented the primary call on the Christian to love. For Wesley, to be zealous for the Lord is to be zealous for love. And he doesn’t leave us to guess what that means.
The properties of true Christian love include humility, meekness, and patience. There is no room for bitterness, hatred, prejudice, bigotry or a spirit of persecution. He then describes a series of concentric circles to explain what love looks like in the Christian. “In a Christian believer love sits upon the throne, which is erected in the inmost soul; namely, love of God and man, which fills the whole heart, and reigns without a rival” (II.5). The next circle from the center contains what Wesley calls “the holy tempers,” or the attitude and mind of Christ. After our primary zeal for the love of God and neighbor, our zeal should be to grow in the qualities that made up the life of Jesus Christ (think Philippians 2:5-11). The next circles are the means of grace, first works of mercy and then works of piety. As we practice these we grow in our innermost zeal for the holy tempers and for true Christian love. The outer and most visible circle is to be zealous for the church universal, the fellowship of believers across space and time, as well as for the local church where one is a member. As we practice loving our siblings in Christ, it increases and expands all the innermost circles of love.
To clarify, the outermost circle is what is most visible to the outside world, and we are called to pursue each inner circle with greater zeal as we seek to grow in perfect love. Thus our zeal is for a personal growth, where the deeper we grow the further our love extends into the world. Our zeal is not to punish or convert people who do not think like us. Rather, our zeal is for a love rooted in humility and compassion.
I’ll confess it’s easy to have the other kind of zeal…that zeal that is quick to righteous anger, quick to certainty, quick to judgment. I am a more progressive Christian, and I find my “zeal” rising when I see Christians hating in the name of “love.” I want to cancel those Christians, to prove them wrong, to demonstrate once and for all that they aren’t actually following the truth. I find myself becoming bitter and resentful of them. And I know they’re thinking the same thing about me. How on earth are we supposed to be One as Jesus and the Father are One if we can’t have a zealous love for one another? It’s hard to love your enemy, but sometimes it’s even harder to love your sibling.
Nobody said this would be easy. Maybe this is exactly what it means to take up your cross and follow Jesus.