Covenant Loving for Right Relationships
Of all the lessons from Steve and I’s two years of theological training, the lesson on the Hebrew word chesed has always remained. We kind of laugh when we hear it, because it was SO frequently repeated in our training. But really the meaning of this word is so important to understand, I can see why our professor tried to drill it in to, not just our heads, but our hearts. God’s steadfast love for us. A way of love that is very non-fleeting, and how different it is from what love looks like in our everyday human attempts at defining and expressing love. And perhaps of all the lessons we learned, this one really IS the most important. Read on to hear Ron Simkins explore this word and how it can impact our relationships. –Melissa Logsdon, NCF Associate Pastor
In the first article on the relationships God wants for us, we looked at “righteousness.” This biblical word is perhaps better translated as “right relationships” at both the corporate/systemic level and at the individual/personal level. In the second, I suggested that “justice” in the biblical materials is often linked with “righteousness” and has the content of “using whatever power we have—position, talents, abilities, gifts, status, resources, and social connections—to work toward the ‘right relationships’ that God wants for us.”
Today, let’s explore one of the biblical words often translated “love” or “loving kindness.” The Hebrew Bible has a word for love that is much like the English word for love. Ahav can mean anything from loving food, to sexual lust with no commitment, to deeply felt romantic caring for a human, to love for God, or God’s love for us. But there is another word—chesed—that is always a deeply relational word. It is this word that describes what must accompany “righteousness” and “justice” if we are going to move toward the relationships God wants for us. Among the various English translations of chesed are “steadfast love,” “mercy,” “faithful love,” “love,” and “covenant-love” (See Psalm 118 for examples.)
Chesed was a key word in the Hebrew Bible. The concept of “covenant-love” then came into the Greek New Testament as agape. As noted with the words “righteousness” and “justice,” there really is not a single English word that can carry the weight of this word in the biblical writings. Chesed/Agape might best be translated “covenant love,” but the word “covenant” isn’t used much in our time. So, a good content translation of the meaning of chesed/agape would be “stubborn commitment to want, and then act toward, what will bring about good for the other person.”
God wants us to relate to those close to us with a stubborn commitment to act in ways that will bring about good for them. Jesus says that God wants us to even relate to our fellow humans who are our enemies by wanting good for them and acting toward good for them. And, God wants us to relate to God by wanting and acting in ways that will bring about good for God.
You might ask, “Does that mean that I need to have warm and fuzzy feelings toward the other person in order to act with chesed/agape?” No! In fact, our decision to act with chesed/agape is often most powerful in those times when we are frustrated, hurt, angry, or disappointed.
Perhaps you are thinking, “That is all well and good, but how am I to know what is really ‘good’ or ‘best’ for the other person?” Great question! Sometimes the other person doesn’t know what would be good, or doesn’t even want what would be best. Sometimes I don’t know what action would press toward “the good” for the other person. Certainly, we won’t always get it right, and at times will need forgiveness for forgetting. Sometimes we will need forgiveness for failing even when we have tried our best. But, wouldn’t the world be a better place if more of us had God’s stubborn covenant-love goal for our relationships?
Jim Croegaert recently reminded me that Pope Francis has been speaking quite a lot recently about discernment. Francis reminds us that to do covenant-loving well means asking God to fill us with more of God’s Spirit so that we can make choices in which God’s Spirit empowers our “head, heart, and hands” with better understanding of what is “really good” in each set of circumstances—both in personal relationships and in our systemic/corporate relationships.
Pray with me: God help us want what is really good for other humans—those we like and those we do not like. Help us want what is really good for you God. Then help us discern as best we can with the help of your Spirit what is the real good in a given situation and how to act toward that good at the personal and the systemic level. Please forgive us when we fail, but don’t let us forget the goal. Help us become more and more like Jesus in our relationship to other humans and to you.
Next time: Relationships of “Righteousness,” “Justice,” and “Covenant-Loving” means learning to “LISTEN” better to God and to our fellow humans.
–Ron Simkins, NCF Pastor Emeritus