Our transformation into Christ-likeness involves the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives so that they are more closely patterned after the loving obedience to the Father which was the hallmark of Jesus' walk on earth.
Obeying the commands of Jesus and learning what it means to love
At the Last Supper, Jesus explained his decision to go to the cross by saying 'the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me' (John 14:30). He went on to make an explicit link between his obedience to the Father and our obedience to him: 'If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love' (John 15:10).
But what exactly did Jesus command? On the night of the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples three times, 'Love each other as I have loved you.'[17] If Jesus has commanded us to love one another, do we need any more guidance than that? Is there any need to take account of how love was to be expressed in the community of Israel in the Old Testament?
We need to look at the Old Testament to help us to discern what the loving action would be. Is it loving to give money to a homeless drunk? Is it okay if a man sets up home with his stepmother, provided her relationship with his father is already over? Is it loving to offer people work which is well-paid but involves extremely long hours? How do we answer these questions and others like them?
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We also have problems because thinking about love alone does not give us much concrete guidance about what is right and wrong. The idea that love is all you need for decision-making gives rise to the sort of thinking that says 'provided it feels right, and so long as nobody is obviously and immediately getting hurt, anything goes.' This is a serious mistake, illustrated by statistics which show that just 8 per cent of married couples split up within five years of the birth of a child, compared with 25 per cent of those who marry after birth and 52 per cent of cohabitees.[18] The children get hurt, but so do the couples themselves, parents, relatives, friends, and future partners. The public commitment and community support involved in a marriage make a significant difference.
Finally, sinful human beings have an enormous capacity for self-delusion and to find rationalisations when they fall prey to temptation. If Christians today do not learn from Israel and from the New Testament churches how to develop biblical ethical standards, they will inevitably end up with worldly standards. Unless Christians reflect seriously on what the Bible shows us about God's standards the Church is unlikely to be able to maintain a distinctively Christian morality for very long.
The relevance of the Torah as a practical guide to loving one another
For Christians, following Jesus is what matters. The priority of Jesus over the Torah and the Prophets was shown to his disciples in the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:5). In working out how to love in practice, the first place to look is to look to Jesus. As Tom Wright puts it: 'the creator God has unveiled his genuine model for humanity in Jesus the Messiah, and there are certain ways of behaving which just won't fit.'[19] But in looking to Jesus, we need to reflect especially carefully on what he taught us about the Torah.
