Rightly Ordered Affection and Hatred
This year the term ordo amoris made its way back into the common vernacular thanks to the Vice President of the United States. The concept of rightly ordered loves is attributed to Augustine of Hippo-
“St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.”
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
but its foundations can be found in Scripture (i.e. Galatians 6:10; 1 Timothy 5:8). This principle simply seeks to provide a biblical warrant for the various obligations and responsibilities the individual has in prioritizing love, resources, provision, efforts and so on. This begins with proximity, one’s own family, church, community for example, and expands outward. This is reflected even in the Great Commission that sees the work of the Apostles going from near to far. Acts 1:8 records, “ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” For a further explanation of this concept, see this helpful article-
What in the World is the Ordo Amoris? – TruthScript
One of the most common questions I receive as a pastor is, “What do you see as the biggest threat to the church?” In considering this question I recognize that there are many threats both from without and within, and few seem to agree on which are the most pressing. We certainly have enemies who would seek to undermine and destroy the kingdom of God on earth. These deadly enemies we must in fact hate righteously. As such, it is a worthy endeavor for us to consider what I am calling the ordo odios– rightly ordered hatreds.
The Ordo Odios
At first hearing we might think odious, a word we use when we consider something as distasteful or repulsive. Odios however, simply means “hatred” which shares a common root. Christians are often hesitant to use the word “hate” in our day and age, but we must remember to love God is to hate sin, and to love what God loves requires hatred towards that which God hates (Proverbs 6:16-19). We must indeed hate our sin, but what about the enemies of God? The man after God’s own heart King David writes in Psalm 139:22, “I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.” Is this verse not God-breathed and able to rebuke, exhort, and build up the man of God? How then do we heed and obey such examples?
We must first start from a place of humility, recognizing that our sin can often cloud our judgment and that even our righteous anger cannot in itself produce righteousness in others (see James 1). But like all virtuous pursuits, we must learn to submit even our hatreds under the feet of Christ that the Holy Spirit might subdue, sanctify and employ our zeal in a positive work for the kingdom. But this concept is important also because many Christians are not well equipped to isolate threats, enemies, and their own capacity to sin.
It seems to me that many debates, feuds, and splits in ministry occurring today are not over core theology, but rather over methodology, strategy, or prioritization of particular threats and enemies of God and his people. My hope is that we can set forth some principles to help us not only rightly order our response to these threats but grow in charity towards our brothers who may be called to focus on a different enemy, remembering Christ is victorious and we are the church militant performing cleanup duty in differing trenches in the same battle.
The Enemy Within: Threat Detection and Proximity
Just as prioritizing loves begin first in our own family, threats likewise start close to home, in the household and the household of faith. As we seek to rightly order our plan of attack, we must consider near and far threats. We must consider threats from within the Church as well as external assaults upon the Church. We will examine potential pitfalls in the prioritization process and what the underlying resolve and common solution must focus upon. And like all proper examination, we must begin with ourselves.
Sin, Death, and the Tyranny of the Devil
Ultimately there is one common underlying threat– sin. Sin, its resultant penalty of death, and the rampaging demonic influence of Satan himself are the first and greatest enemies. We must first recognize in any effort to isolate threats, evaluate enemies, and rightly order our hatreds, we must begin with the hatred of our own sin. In humility we must pray the Puritan prayer, “but for the grace of God, go I.” If we are to be of any use in battering the gates of hell, we must first submit to the battery of our own sin and pursue the mortification of it above all else. In putting to death our own sin, we position ourselves to be equipped to isolate, strategize, and intercept the various threats to our families, churches, communities, and even nations. I urge you brothers and sisters to be faithful in family worship, fighting the good fight of faith first in the home, to be good churchmen, pursuing edification and accountability from within the local body, submitting to biblical elders, and to be sharpened by the Word of God exposited and applied in your life. Any fight against the enemies of God should come from a place of unified strength in the body of Christ. Christ has prayed that his followers might be one even as he and his Father are one (John 17:21) and while we may diversify our focuses and strategies, we must be of one mind to fight as Christ’s men.
Let us first consider some near threats.
Feminism and the Battle for the Household
Perhaps no greater threat exists in the world today, let alone the church, than the overarching reach of the assault on the family. Feminism, the emasculation of men, the disdaining of children and madness of LGBT ideology have wreaked havoc upon society. If we can all agree on one target, may it be this one. To restore order in our society, the rebuilding of the biblical family must be top of mind. So many of the threats to the church stem from this category and would rightly be put in order through simple and faithful obedience.
Leviticus 18:20-23 lays out prohibitions against the death spiral of the family. Namely it forbids adultery (v20), child sacrifice (v21), homosexuality (v22), and bestiality (v23) with the declaration that failure to abide by these statutes would result in God’s judgment upon them and the vomiting out of the people from the land. If we are to keep our country, we must first prioritize the family. In short order we must hate fornication, lust, adultery and emotional affairs that all lead to divorce. We must hate abortion, the Molech worship of our day in which even in my state of Idaho abortion remains legal and available to any willing to pursue it. We must hate the LGBT agenda and all its wicked influence upon our communities. We must hate the extension of sexual perversion even to stewarded creation.
And in hating these things we must then love the family as God designed. We must uphold and honor marriage, children, masculinity and femininity, and proper dominion in creation. Pursue these things, set an example for your neighbors and engage in the public square to evangelize and embolden resistance to debauchery in your city.
Judgment in the House of God
In the church proper we must hate and always be on guard for false teaching. We must defend against manmade philosophies and myths as Paul exhorts the Colossians, remembering that Christ has put the powers and principalities to open shame. Social justice, critical theory, and other liberal agendas must be expelled from the church. Distortions of the nature of God, antinomianism or legalism, and any and all assaults upon orthodoxy must be defended against.
Further, we must discern the difference between disagreement and heresy. We must resist over zealousness or other hyper focus and cage stage mentalities with regards to secondary doctrines. This is where good Christian brothers are prone to friendly fire. Zionism for example is a real threat to the effectiveness of the Church, and often a distraction from proper focus on the Gospel, but even the most hardcore dispensationalist is quite likely a genuine brother. How do we fight Zionistic drift in hermeneutics while not casting proponents outside the fold of God?
Apathy, cowardice, and faithlessness are further enemies of the church. We must hate our sins of omission with the institution of the Church. Far too few pastors are willing to lead their people into repentance of sin and spiritual accountability let alone engage in the culture war. We need men with spines and a will to obey God’s Word.
Assessing threats to doctrine can produce much disagreement. When is a belief heterodox or heretical? How do we assess motives? Can one hold a position biblically without sin while being accused of sin by others?
Watch Your Flank
It is apparent to me that one of the greatest tools and strategies of Satan is to flank the church while it is cannibalizing itself due to infighting, vainglory, and pride. All too often when momentum is ramping up, the headline breaks of a falling out between ministries or brothers on matters of orthodoxy or orthopraxy. Just as the gospel seems to be advancing and the culture seems poised to swing its pendulum to rightly ordered governance, boom, another pastor falls in sin, taking potshots at a brother on the way down.
Fighting over secondary doctrines, and a lack of charity allows the flank to be open to assaults from without the church, as well as deconstruction of faith and departures to Rome and the Eastern Orthodox or even Cults. Namely, when brothers and sisters rush to assume motive, assign blame, and constantly question the faith of one another we risk driving one another to real sin and embracing of extremities.
While the church should rightly order itself and divide over theological distinctives in gathering, we can and should pursue unity in primary issues of belief. The catholicity of the Church in creed is vital to the cooperative efforts of the Church against common threats.
So how do we keep open handed issues clear while assaulting the main enemy together? We must heed the word to outdo one another in showing honor (Romans 12:10) and consider others more righteous that ourselves (Philippians 2:3). If we are slow to speak and quick to hear (James 1:19) we greatly increase our odds of maintaining unity on the important things.
There are real threats to the church via ideologies, over corrections, and syncretism. And we must be willing to confront clear contradictions of Scripture. However, in our quest for purity, we must also remember that everyman thinks himself the balanced one. We need to be willing to be challenged and be willing to challenge one another with grace and respect.
One way we can maintain unity is in combining our efforts against mutual enemies. We can sort out doctrinal disagreements after we work together to end child sacrifice and mutilation of children in our nation for starters.
External Threats to the Church
Islam, Talmudism, Darwinism/Atheism or other pagan religions, multiculturalism, abortion, rampant immigration, Communism, Marxism, cults…the list only will grow if given more time to consider. All of these are threats. But which are greater? Is the scale the same universally? Are some greater threats in particular regions or Christian traditions? All of these questions require discernment and charity to answer faithfully. What they all have in common however is that each threat is a mission field in addition to being an enemy of God. Thankfully, as my former pastor put it, one of God’s favorite means of destroying his enemies is to make them sons and daughters. Put another way, we cannot speak about hatred without considering love. We are called to love our enemies and to bless those who persecute the church. Yes, amen, absolutely. How does one love his enemy? Pursuing conversion? Restraining his wickedness? Informing him of just and righteous law that he might see his need of a savior? Yes, to all.
We must assess these threats and take action. But surely, we will not all agree on how to order them, let alone the strategy with which to defeat them.
As noted previously, we are in the same war, albeit perhaps in different trenches: Can we have different passions and even different methodologies without ostracizing one another? I believe we can. Scripture gives us the proper paradigm to do so. Paul describes the church as a body made up of varying but important parts. We must be careful to remember there can be only one head, Jesus Christ, but that a body comprised of only any one part would be useless.
12 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.
1 Corinthians 12:12-27
13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.
14 For the body is not one member, but many.
15 If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?
16 And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?
17 If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?
18 But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.
19 And if they were all one member, where were the body?
20 But now are they many members, yet but one body.
21 And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.
22 Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary:
23 And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness.
24 For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked.
25 That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.
26 And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.
27 Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
If the church is one body with individual members, we have to trust one another to exercise wisdom and discernment in ordering our hatreds and intercepting methodologies in counterattack. Further, we must encourage one another to abide by biblical principles in doing so. I urge you, however, beware of demanding what scripture does not.
Christus Victor
As one of my churchmen is fond of reminding me, Christ our King served as JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller) when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. Genesis 19:24 states, “Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the LORD out of the heavens.” His interpretation of this passage is likely on point, that Christ the Son brought the heat from his Father in the heavens against the wicked cities. The serpent crushing king has been defeating the seed of that dragon from the start. Christ gets the victory. The kingship of Christ therefore must be our foundation. As such, HOW we fight matters.
Pearl clutching, the Jesus Juke and Pietism
The temptation of the gospel centered crowd is to always agree on mission, but never missiology. It is to always point to Christ but never aim Christ at any particular sin or target. Many avoid conflict and challenging fights by invoking the term gospel, appealing to Christ-centeredness, or through pietistic withdrawal syndrome wherein the fruit of the Gospel is left impotent and without tangible impact in the real world. These are further threats to the church.
But nevertheless, how we fight does in fact matter. We are the king’s men, and as such we must fight with honor, adhering to the code Jesus lays out in his word. Actual sinful conduct in the name of being “based” ought to be called out in love. The lack so self-control with the tongue, fear of man, flippancy, lack of prudence and temperance in our conduct– all these must be redeemed by Christ. We must fight as he would have us fight.
Make no mistake, this is war, and we must know what time it is. We dare not however pursue victory at all costs, carnal means employed, damn the consequences, we will repent after we’ve won. We must be willing to fight, and to hate that which is damnable, but we must do so maintaining our integrity and growing honor for Christ’s name. So, consider the threats, take aim, sharpen your sword, gird up your loins, and actually take the field of battle. Your household needs you; your church needs you; your city needs you. Shepherd your family, strengthen the church, and be a voice in the community with a strong arm to take action against the evil in your midst. But do so with virtue and an embodying of the fruit of the Spirit. The Lord will bless such pursuits.
Submission and Satisfaction
At the end of the day, we must remind ourselves of the 1 Corinthians 15 claim that Christ will submit all things under his feet, remembering that we were once an enemy. Christ has subdued us, so submit to him, be shaped by him and his word, and take up the sword. We have work to do.
25 For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.
1 CorinthIANS 15:25-28
26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
27 For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him.
28 And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.