WORD of the Week Series: Love



Early 19th Century Icon, Russian “Union of Love” (Sourced from Temple Gallery Catalogue Christmas 2004)



WORD of the Week: Love (Love in Truth)
A Scriptural and Patristic Understanding

“Let us not love in word or in speech, but in deed and in truth.” – 1 John 3:18


Introduction: Love Misunderstood in the Modern World

The modern age has stripped the word love of its sacred weight, reducing it to sentimentality, psychological affinity, or erotic desire devoid of ontological content. In political rhetoric, love becomes an empty slogan. In contemporary culture, it is commodified or psychologized. Yet Holy Scripture and the Church Fathers offer a radically different vision—love in truth (agapē en alētheia, ἀγάπη ἐν ἀληθείᾳ)—an existential and divine energy, a way of being proper only to God and those in communion with Him.

Scriptural Foundations: Love Is of God

In the New Testament, agapē is not an option but a divine imperative, a reflection of God’s own essence: “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God” (1 John 4:16). This love is not general affection but the very mode by which God discloses Himself to the world. Christ Himself identifies love as the greatest commandment, directing all human relationality to the two poles of ultimate communion: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart… and your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37–39).

St. Paul declares love the highest spiritual gift: “If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries… but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2). Yet even this must be grounded in truth: not all that calls itself love is from God. Thus, the Apostle speaks of “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15) and praying that our love “may abound more and more, with knowledge and discernment” (Phil. 1:9). Love divorced from truth becomes sentimentalism; truth without love becomes cruelty. The two belong together in a hypostatic union.

Patristic Witness: Love as Ontological Communion

The Church Fathers, especially from the Eastern tradition, speak of love not primarily as emotion, but as ontological communion—the binding together of persons in freedom, likeness, and grace. St. Ignatius of Antioch writes, “My love has been crucified,” identifying the Cross not as divine punishment but as the supreme manifestation of divine love in truth (Ep. to Romans, 7). For Ignatius, love in truth is kenotic, self-emptying, and martyrial.

St. Maximus the Confessor deepens this ontological insight, teaching that love is the natural motion of the soul toward the other and ultimately toward God. Hatred, by contrast, is an unnatural distortion. “He who loves God,” says Maximus, “cannot help but love every man as himself, even if he is grieved by the passions of others” (Centuries on Love, 1.13). In other words, true love transcends preference and affinity; it is grounded in the vision of the Other as eikon Theou—the image of God.

St. Gregory the Theologian teaches that love is the reason for the Incarnation: “It was necessary that God should be mingled with man… so that He might draw all to Himself through the mediation of love” (Oration 45). Divine love is never abstract. It assumes flesh, bears wounds, suffers injustice, and rises in glory. This incarnational dimension of love underscores its inseparability from truth—since Christ, the Truth (John 14:6), is Love incarnate.

Love as the Fulfillment of the Law and Prophets

St. John Chrysostom affirms that “love is the root of all good things,” but it is not lawless or subjective. It fulfills the Law precisely by transcending it. “He who loves fulfills the Law not by transgressing it, but by going beyond it—not eye for eye, but turning the other cheek” (Homilies on Romans, XIII). Love purifies the commandments, transforming them from obligation into desire.

This transformation is not automatic. St. Basil the Great distinguishes between love driven by fear (slavish), love driven by reward (mercenary), and love driven by beauty itself (filial and divine). Only the last is worthy of true Christians. It is this pure love—love in truth—that characterizes the saints, ascetics, and martyrs.

The Judgment of Love

The final judgment, as revealed in Matthew 25:31–46, is a judgment of love. Christ does not ask for creeds alone, but for love in truth—a love that clothes, feeds, visits, and honors the Other, because the Other is Christ. The fathers read this eschatological parable as the fulfillment of the Gospel’s central command: “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). Here again, love is not feeling but action, not rhetoric but theosis.

False Loves and the Counterfeit Gospel

St. Ephraim the Syrian warned against false love: the love of flattery, passion, or demonic sympathy. Likewise, St. Isaac the Syrian teaches that love must be purified of attachment, preference, and egoic motives. A love not rooted in truth, however sincere it may seem, becomes a snare. The fathers constantly caution us that the devil tempts even by counterfeit virtues, including distorted love.

Thus, love must be tested against the standard of Christ’s Cross. If it does not call one to purification, prayer, ascetic struggle, and communion with the Church, it is not divine love but a worldly mimicry. The patristic vision, therefore, guards love with vigilance—not to smother it, but to preserve its holy fire.

Conclusion: To Love Is to Exist in God

According to Christos Yannaras, “The one who loves is the one who truly exists.” Love, in this patristic sense, is not a moral add-on but the very form of hypostatic being. It is the energy of the Logos in and through all creation, drawing each toward its fulfillment in communion. To love in truth is not simply to do good, but to become what one is created to be: a vessel of divine life.

This is why the saints burn with love—they have become love. Love, when in truth, is not merely something we do. It is someone we become, in Christ, by grace, through synergy.

“Now abide faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” – 1 Corinthians 13:13

☦️



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