Well-Ordered Love – 5/4/25

If you’re not already there, would you turn to Matthew 12? If you need a Bible, there are Bibles under the seats in front of you.

Earlier this year, J.D. Vance, our Vice President, stirred up quite a controversy when he posted a Latin expression, “ordo amoris,” which means “order of love.” Now, he was using the ancient expression to defend the administration’s immigration policy. And of course, the reaction to the post was immediate and varied.

Some loved the fact that a man who was raised by a single mom, who at the time was an addict, would now throw out Latin expressions to defend the policies. Others were not as impressed, some saying things like, “Stay in your lane, pal,” as if, you know, a politician can’t quote a theologian. Others gave more extensive and reactive responses. But most people’s responses kind of fell in line with their view of immigration as a whole, not so much their view of the expression, “ordo amoris.”

And this is where we have to show a little discipline — we meaning me — and not go off into a big discussion of immigration, which would be important, but it’s not the point Jesus is making. What I’d like to do is show how does this expression, “ordo amoris,” relate to what Jesus is teaching us in Matthew 12.

What does “ordo amoris” mean? We have to actually go all the way back to the year 410 when the Visigoths sacked Rome. And a couple years later, in 413, Augustine began writing his massive, though at times, sorry, tedious masterpiece, “The City of God.” It actually took him fourteen years to write it. In Book 15, he writes about virtue being more than merely loving the right things, but loving in the proper order. And he gives an interesting example.

“When the miser prefers gold to justice, it is through no fault of the gold, [the problem isn’t with the gold] but of the man; and so with every created thing. For though it be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately.”

Now what does it mean to be “loved ordinately” or “loved inordinately”? He means loved in the proper order or improper order. And then he concludes with this being a brief definition of virtue is the proper ordering of love.

Let me give you a silly example. I told you this story years ago when it happened, but I had another incident recently that prompted my memory. And so, here we go.

Years ago I was getting ready to travel overseas on a mission trip, and I knew I had a couple all-night flights and really wanted some noise-canceling headphones. Love kids, just not in the middle of the night. I got these very cool noise-canceling headphones — and this is old enough to where they actually, it had a cord and it plugged into an iPod, if you remember those — and downloaded some mellow cello hymns to sleep by. Throughout the evening I had a great time talking, reading, eating. And then late into the night, I thought, it’s time to try to sleep.

I put on my headphones, turned on my mellow cello, and kicked back ready to sleep and out of the corner of my eye, I saw this guy coming down the aisle of the plane and his eyes suddenly closed and he started to fall. And he was just like a tree — “Timber!” — and he was coming down. And so I dove into the aisle, caught him, and lowered him to the floor. And then he came to and got up, and stumbled back to his seat. My professional medical analysis was he drank too much, but don’t know for sure.

But I got back in my seat and went to reconnect my headphones. But when I had lunged to get him, it ripped off the end of the cord. I’m sitting in my chair, ready to use my new noise-canceling headphones, and they’re useless. And the spirit said — clear as I could hear — to my heart, go punch him. No, that was my spirit, not the Spirit. The Holy Spirit said so clearly to me, as I’m holding this cord, people are more important than headphones, even new noise-canceling headphones.

And the Spirit of God was so kindly doing “ordo amoris” on me, reordering my love. It’s great to love your new headphones, but you don’t love them more than your neighbor in need. It’s great love your new Xbox. You don’t love your new Xbox more than your brother who you’re about to slug for standing in the way of the game. It is nice to have a new car, but you do not love your car more than your family member who just spilled coffee accidentally onto your new seat.

All of us understand “ordo amoris.” And the Spirit of God is kind enough to give us these opportunities to see if our loves are properly or improperly ordered. Also, due to our limited capacity to meet people’s needs, our finite amount of time and resources, we all function daily with a default “ordo amoris.” And “ordo amoris” is often described as a series of concentric circles moving from self to family to community, nation, world, and for believers, of course, all under the umbrella of the ultimate love of God.

We get a glimpse of this kind of thing being worked out in passages like 1 Timothy 5:8, for example.

“But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

Now this is Paul working out “ordo amoris.”  When you’re in Jesus, the love of Christ has been poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit, and that fruit of the Spirit is going to come out. And what Paul is saying is if it doesn’t come out to the people closest to you, you have to wonder if it’s in there. Are you even a believer?

All of us have a lot of growth to do, don’t misunderstand. But he’s saying, you have some basic responsibilities to the people near you, and if the love of God is not coming out to them, then you’re like a runner. You call yourself a runner, you say I’m a runner, and your friend says, well, have you run a marathon? No, not yet. Have your run a 10k? No. Have you run a 5k? No. Have you run to your mailbox? I’m working on it. Well, you might not want to call yourself a runner.

And that’s what Paul is saying. If you say I’m a Christian, I am a follower of Jesus, the love of God is transforming my life, but you’re not even loving the people closest to you, what’s going on there? Here’s another example. Galatians 6:10.

“So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, [it’s the heart of a Christian] and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

So, Paul again, little “ordo amoris.” You say you love everyone, which is beautiful. How about starting with the family of God? The people you’re most closely related to through Jesus. John Calvin writes in his “Institutes,”

“I do not deny, that the more closely any person is united to us, the greater claim he has to the assistance of our kind office. For the condition of humanity requires, that men should perform more acts of kindness to each other, in proportion to the closeness of the bonds by which they are connected, whether of relationship, or acquaintance, or vicinity.”

And that vicinity word is really important because there are people who take “ordo amoris” as an excuse, if you will, to circle the wagons. And I’m just going to look out for people just like me, closest to me. That’s not what “ordo amoris” means. And that’s not what Jesus taught us, for example, in Luke 10, the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Here was a man who had a near neighbor in a ditch who desperately needed help. And yet he had no family, or religious, or ethnic connection to that person, but the call of Christ is to be a neighbor, not just based on ethnicity or some kind of bigotry, but based on charity, Christian love.

This is vital so that we don’t become like Linus in the Peanuts comic strip.

“I love mankind….It’s people I can’t stand!”

Or as Oliver O’Donovan writes,

“To love everybody in the world equally is to love nobody very much.”

Or, as Father Zossima, quoting an elderly doctor who is speaking in bitter jest in “The Brothers Karamazov,”

“The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity…. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one, because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually, the more I love humanity.”

Now that is a picture of disordered love. And one of the things the kingdom of Jesus does is to reorder our loves. And we’ve seen glimpses of this as we’ve worked our way through Matthew. Let me remind you of a couple of examples. First, the one that Allan mentioned earlier, Matthew 5:43,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”

Here is a neighbor who is hostile, unkind, and we might tend to think, oh yeah, I love people who love me. No, Jesus is saying, my followers don’t just love people who love them. Or here’s another one, Matthew 10:37,

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life from my sake will find it.”

When your love is a self-created love that leads to a self-created life, Jesus says you’re going to lose your life. Jesus is realigning our loves. And he comes back to this theme with a different twist in Matthew 12:46. And the scene unfolds in three stages. Look at stage number one:

A family interruption

Verse 46, “While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him.”

Jesus is teaching, he’s in a house, you’ll see if you look down a couple verses to verse one of chapter 13. And we learn from Luke 8:19, the house is mashed with people. Jesus’s family is outside of the house, and they want to speak to him. They can’t wiggle their way through the crowd, so they send a message relayed into the home to Jesus, “We’re out here, and we want to talk to you.”

At the time, his family consisted of his mother, (we believe Joseph has probably died), several stepbrothers and stepsisters. Matthew is going to introduce us to some of them in the next chapter at the end, 13:55, when Jesus is teaching in his hometown of Nazareth and the people ask,

“Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? Are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?’

Now we know from John 7:5, his brothers did not believe at this time that he was the Messiah. So they seem to be very concerned that he is constantly ministering at the expense of his own well-being. Look at Mark 3:20.

“Then he went home, [Jesus went home] and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, ‘He is out of his mind.’”

His family might have diagnosed him as in a manic episode needing an intervention in order to be deprogrammed. And humanly speaking, it makes sense. Think about what Jesus has claimed just in chapter 12.

He has claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath. That means Sabbath was initiated at creation and he is Lord of it.

He has claimed to be greater than Jonah, representing all the Old Testament prophets.

He has claimed to be greater than Solomon, representing all the old testament kings. Greater!

Do you see why he either needs to be institutionalized or worshiped? Jesus gave us no other option.

Now, we’re in an interruption, but I need to interrupt the interruption to deal with a textual question, and then we’ll come right back to the interruption.

The textual question, you might have noticed, the ESV, if you’re using an ESV or if you use the Bible under the seat in front of you, Verse 47 is missing. Now, I’m not super great at math, but I noticed, hey, when you go from 46 to 48, we’re missing something. And you will notice, if you go down to the footnote, it will have verse 47 in the footnote.

“Someone told him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, asking to speak to you.’”

Why is it not included in the ESV? It’s in the KJV. It’s in the NIV. It is not in the ESV. And part of the reason for that is the way ESV translators make decisions. They go for the oldest manuscripts, and some of the oldest manuscript, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, do not include this verse. Should it be included? And I would argue yes. Two reasons.

1. It makes most sense for it to be there.

You will notice verse 48 is assuming verse 47. Jesus is responding to the messenger mentioned in verse 47.

2. The cause for the error seems to be obvious.

If you look at the end of verse 46, it ends with the word “to speak,” lalesai in Greek. And if you look at the end at verse 47, it ends with “to speak.” You can see why a careful scribe, putting his finger on “to speak” and then writing — they didn’t have computers printing then, or AI. You had to handwrite — then his eyes skip from “lalesai” at the end of verse 46, somehow to “lalesai” at the end of verse 47, thereby missing verse 47. Seems to be what happened.

Now, should this shake our confidence in the text of scripture? I don’t think it should, for a couple reasons.

1. It’s the original manuscripts that are inerrant, not the copies.

2. We have so many copies.

There’s no other ancient document that comes even close. There are over 5,700 and counting copies. And most variants, like this one, are obvious and insignificant. There’s no key doctrine affected by any variant. A lot more we could say about that, but we’ve interrupted our interruption long enough.

Let’s go back to the interruption. Jesus is teaching, house is packed, messenger interrupts, your family’s out there, they want to talk to you.

2. Jesus responds to the interruption with a question.

A family question. Verse 48,

“But he replied to the man who told him, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’”

Now, in asking this question, he is not disowning his family. He loves his family. And you’ll see that even on the cross, Jesus remembers his mother, made sure she was cared for, however, here he is defining the family of God.

3. We move from an interruption, to a question, to a definition.

A definition, a family definition. And this is big, verse 49.

“And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers!’”

He points to his followers and defines them as his family, verse 50. And then he adds,

“For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Now, he is not saying that if you do the will of God enough, you will earn this relationship as part of my family. Not it. He is saying that one of the ways you will know someone is part of Jesus’s family is they will do the will of the Father. You’re not earning it, you’re revealing you are related to Jesus. It’s a family likeness.

What do we conclude from this short interaction? Here it is.

Well-ordered love enables relationships to flourish appropriately.

Appropriately. This seems to be what Jesus is getting at when he was interrupted by his natural family. His family is seeking to leverage their connection to derail his calling. And we’re assuming that based on other passages of Scripture. But it doesn’t seem like they just brought his lunchbox, you know, to feed him a meal. There’s more going on there.

And Jesus responds with a picture of “ordo amoris,” well-ordered love. He’s not hating on his family, but he also will not be manipulated by them. Our natural families are vital, not ultimate. They cannot save us. As John said in John 1:11,

“He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of will of man, but of God.”

Nobody enters the family of God by flesh, but by faith. And when our loves are properly ordered, our relationships don’t shrivel up. They actually begin to thrive.

Let me just give you one example from the family of Jesus. I love the story of James. He seems to have been with his brothers when they thought Jesus was crazy. Jesus reordered their loves and then post-resurrection, James was one of the key leaders in the church. He loved, and yes, worshiped Jesus.

C.S. Lewis illustrates this in one of his personal letters. He develops “ordo amoris” more in the abolition of man, but here is a personal letter.

“To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”

That is so important, because some of us have this idea, I’ve got to shove down my love for family so that I can shove up my love for God. Lewis is saying, no, no, no. Love God. Adore him. Let him align your loves, and you will actually see your other relationships thrive.

Well-ordered love enables relationships to flourish appropriately.

And this is true in the church as well. Let me just give a couple examples. One is 1 Timothy 3:4-5, talking about an elder, church leader.

“He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?”

Now Paul could argue, listen, you need to ignore your kids, ignore your wife, and focus completely on the church, and then you’ll be a good church leader. Is that what he’s saying?

He’s actually saying the opposite. He’s saying we want leaders who have well-ordered loves. They’re living and loving at home. So therefore, they will more likely be living and loving well at church. And he’s illustrating this inseparable connection between spiritual and natural families. If my relationships in one sphere are not well ordered, for example, if I’m worshiping my kids at home, I’m not going to be able to lead well in another sphere.

And tragically, I know stories like this where a missionary, out of love for the nations, goes to the other side of the world preaching the love of Jesus to people he doesn’t even know. And yet all the while treating his wife like trash and his kids. “Ordo amoris” would say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You don’t understand what love is. Not that you shouldn’t go to the other side of the world and love the nations, but if that love is real, it will start at home.

Same with a pastor. If a pastor says, “Oh, I love the church,” and mistreats his wife and kids, he’s lying. Gregg ten Elshof expands this, and I think brilliantly. He says,

“Learn how to be a good daughter, and you will know how to negotiate the dynamics of being a good employee.”

He’s not saying these things are the same. He’s saying you will learn skills. You will learn, you will have a well-ordered love that will manifest itself in other relationships.

“Learn to be a good father, and you will know how to a good supervisor. Learn to be a good younger sibling, and you will know how to receive instruction from a teacher while maintaining a healthy degree of autonomy.”

I love that. “Ordo amoris.”

What happens if you happen to be raised in a culture like the United States of America, which has been for several decades intentionally dismantling the family and deifying the individual? Elshof asks this question.

“What do you get when you invite folks steeped in the contemporary Western posture toward family to apply what they’re already doing in the context of family to their Christian communities — when you invite them to be extended family for one another? Perhaps you get an association of folks who think of themselves in largely autonomous and individualistic terms and who slide in and out of connection with different churches over the years depending on where their life’s pursuits, interests, and preferences take them.”

What is he saying? He’s saying the radical individualism of our culture is the air we breathe, and it begins to shape the way we do marriage, the way that we do family, and that begins to shape the way we think about church.

What do these key passages that call us to be brothers and sisters mean to us in a culture that’s dismantling families? Elshof is lamenting the way disordered natural families can lead to disordored spiritual families. The church is aping the family, which is aping the culture. So we’re not being transformed into the image of Christ, we’re being conformed to the image of the culture.

Now having said all that, I’m not saying this is easy. I remember when my kids were younger, lamenting to my wife several times, does God want me to be — I know this is pretty whiny — does God want me to be a good husband, or a good father, or a good friend, or a good neighbor, or a good pastor? Choose one.

Do you ever feel that way? I can’t juggle all of this. I wake up some days just knowing, “Who am I going to disappoint today?” And so while I’m talking about this reordering, it is not easy, it’s not instant, it’s certainly not naturally possible. But Jesus has taught us earlier in Matthew, where we need to begin. Matthew 6:33.

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

What does that mean? When I wake up in the morning and get on my face and cry out, Lord,

“Hallowed be your name,”

Father,

“Your kingdom,”

not mine,

“Your kingdom come.”

Not just my family kingdom or my personal kingdom, your kingdom.

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Please give me my daily bread.”

I need what I don’t have. Forgive me, because I am going to fail, as I forgive others who are going to fail me.

“And lead me not into temptation, but deliver me. For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.”

And you soon learn this is not a formula, but our Father does give us what we need. As I look back now over many decades of praying that prayer and longing to love well and still stumbling often and failing supremely, but yet the Lord is reordering loves.

He is taking a group of people… As I was thinking about our church this week and thinking about how we have so many people who come from super healthy families, and so many who come from super unhealthy families, and some who come from, many who come from no families, and single, and married, and divorced, and widows, and people struggling with every kind of disordered love you can imagine.

And as I was thinking about that, I was praying about, well, what would that have looked like in the early church when God’s people gathered each Lord’s Day. You have people coming into the church who are slaves, who were beaten the day before, and people coming in to the church who are free. And people coming who are  who are temple prostitutes, homosexual, and heterosexual, and exploring what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?

People who are orphans, single moms, single dads, spouses who have been abused, unhappy married couples, many, many who came to Christ but their spouses want nothing to do with Jesus. Men and women in polyamorous marriages trying to figure out, what does it mean to follow Jesus? What do I do about this spouse and this spouse? And all these kids.

And there’s not a quick fix, but as we seek first his kingdom, all these things begin to be added to us, wisdom we don’t have in and of ourselves. And for many who think, oh, that’s great of you to talk about loving well. I’ve never seen it. Many who would be in the church would say, I have never seen a husband and a wife who loved each other and love their kids. Never. And so how do I learn to live this way?

And this would have been a common question in the early church and even today. And the answer to that question isn’t going to come in a classroom or even in a sermon, although we need to teach, but the answer is going to come as God puts us in a family of faith where we learn together, fail together, repent together, put up with each other together. And if we’ll remain long enough in these life group relationships, accountability, ministry partners, marriages, family, if we remain long enough in these relationships, Jesus will reorder our loves.

How does he do it? Well, we put our eyes on him, whether we’ve had an example or not. 1 John 4:7.

“[Loved ones] Beloved, let us love one another [how do I do that?] for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God”

There it is, part of God’s family.

“And knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest”

Now we know what it looks like — made manifest.

“Among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

The cross is the ultimate love reboot. That no matter what our family experience has been, horrific or wonderful or anything in between, we, as the family of God, run to Jesus to feed on his love and then be fueled to love from him.

And this is why we want to respond to this word by remembering what Jesus has done for us. We call this the Lord’s Supper. And as Jesus was preparing to go to the cross, he gathered his little family of broken, failing, about-to-deny him followers, and he said to them, eat this meal with me so that you can remember in the future what love looks like.

In a moment I’m going to pray, and then people are going to come. And they’ll pass out a little piece of broken bread and a cup. And if you are a believer in Jesus, please join with us, participate. If you’re not a believer, feel free to just pass the plate along, but use this time to turn to him, please.

Let’s pray. Father, it is one thing to talk about our loves being reordered. It’s another thing when they are being reordered. It can be painful.

And so it is my prayer with Paul that our love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment so that we can approve what is excellent, so that you will fill us with the fruit of righteousness.

We pray that as we gaze on Jesus, who made your love manifest, in washing away our sin and turning us from enemies to family, deepen our love. Please continue to use our brothers and sisters to reorder our love, even during the difficult conflicts.

And we pray that as a church, as we began today, that you would widen our love. That we would not be people who use something like the ordo amoris to circle the wagons, but to widen our love to our neighbors, to our enemies, and ultimately to the nations. Grow us deeper and wider in love as a church. We pray in Jesus’s name, amen.