It all comes down to love
A life of love
Paul makes a list designed to take our breath away, and then to humble us. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, if I have faith to move mountains, if I give away everything I own and even hand over my body to be burned — but have not love, he says, it profits me nothing. The most extraordinary spiritual achievements imaginable, without love, add up to zero.
This is the great clarifier, and a fitting place for the inward journey to arrive. We can be tempted to measure spiritual progress by experiences, knowledge, gifts, or sacrifices — by everything except the one thing that finally matters. Paul sweeps it all aside. The point of it all, the proof of it all, the profit of it all, is love. Without love, even the heights are nothing.
Jesus said the same in his own way: by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Not by your spiritual experiences, not by your knowledge, not by your gifts — by your love. The entire journey through the castle, all the deep rooms and high union, is finally for this: that you would become a person who loves. A life of love is where the whole thing was always heading.
“If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don't have love, it profits me nothing.”
— Paul, to the Corinthians — 1 Corinthians 13:3 (WEB)
Measure your whole spiritual life by love — the one yardstick that finally counts — for without it even the heights are nothing, and with it the journey has reached its end.
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
We keep weighing our spiritual life on the wrong scales — how vivid the encounters, how much we know, how costly the things we have given up — and the soul reads heavy on every gauge but the one that counts. The interior work is to set all those weights aside and trust Paul's single measure: that the long journey through the deep rooms was only ever for this, to make us people who love, the one mark by which the world tells whose we are.
This week, audit your spiritual life by Paul's measure: set aside the experiences, knowledge, and gifts you are tempted to count, and ask whether you are actually becoming more loving. Then take one concrete step to love someone, the proof the whole journey was for.
The enemy is glad to let you score your progress by experiences and gifts and knowledge — anything but love — so you can feel advanced while staying unloving and miss the only measure that counts. A life of love undoes the whole deception, for it is the proof and the purpose of the journey and the unmistakable sign that a soul belongs to Jesus.
We are endlessly tempted to measure our spiritual life by the wrong yardsticks — by the intensity of our experiences, the depth of our knowledge, the impressiveness of our gifts, the scale of our sacrifices. Paul takes every one of those yardsticks, even the most heroic, and reduces it to nothing without the one thing that counts. The measure is not any of those. The measure is love.
This is where the whole inward journey finally lands, and the test it must finally pass. All the deep rooms, all the union, all the contemplation — if they have not made you a more loving person, they have profited nothing. And if they have, then everything else, however modest, has been worth it. The world will know you belong to Jesus not by your spiritual résumé but by your love. So ask the only question that finally matters: has the journey been making me a person who loves?
- By what yardsticks am I tempted to measure my spiritual life?
- Has the journey actually been making me a more loving person?
- Would the world know I belong to Jesus by my love?
Lord, I measure my spiritual life by experiences and knowledge and gifts, by everything but love. Yet without love it all profits nothing. Let the whole journey land here: make me a person who loves, that the world may know I am yours. Amen.