The Bible and Anarchy (P1): Love

I’ll start off by saying that the biblical teaching or Christianity is not anarchic in the purest sense of the word. We have an Arch or a King, our Messiah promised from times of old.

(Isaiah 9:6-7) For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Now it’s important to note that this kingdom is not the type of kingdom we’re accustomed to. This kingdom is fundamentally different.

(John 18:36) Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

This is a kingdom of peace and our King is the Prince of Peace. What might be more perplexing is the fact that this kingdom has laws and commandments. This thought alone might be enough to make any anarchist cringe, but if the reader will stick around they might be surprised. The greatest of all of these commandments is love.

(Matthew 22:34-40) But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he (Jesus) said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Not only is this the greatest commandment but it’s the entirety of the law. The apostle Paul explains this to us.

(Romans 13:8-10) Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Christian love is not an ill-defined sappy emotion. Love is clear and active. Love keeps the law and does no harm to its neighbor. Paul references directly the Ten Commandments to teach us about love. This is not to say that emotion doesn’t accompany love, it surely does. A plethora of beautiful emotions can arise from any relationship when people love one another. This is just telling us how we ought to love. One may say that they don’t need to be told how to love, but don’t the Socialists believe that their nonsensical system is loving? Don’t they cry out that we need to love and help the poor? The problem is that they don’t know what love is. Love does not steal from one to give to another. Love will sacrifice from what it owns to be generous if it is compelled to do so. Now if you the reader are familiar with the philosophy of liberty I doubt I need to convince you that governments are by default not very loving. However we now have a standard by which to test these entities to see how they add up. Do governments steal, murder, or lie? In fact if they couldn’t continue their massive campaign of theft known as taxation could they even exist?