By Jerald and Sandra Tanner

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Karl Menninger, one of the world’s greatest psychiatrists, once stated that “love is the medicine for the sickness of the world.” Jesus certainly recognized this fact, for in the book of John we find that He made this statement to His disciples:

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
(John 13:34-35)

The scriptures tell us that God is love and that when we are “born again” our hearts are filled with love:

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
(1 John 4:7-8)

In verse 20 of the same chapter the Apostle John stated:

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

In Ephesians 3:19 we are told that the love of Christ “passeth knowledge.”

The psychiatrist Karl Menninger made these observations concerning the importance of love:

. . . for the brief period that we love (others than ourselves) we live—which corresponds with astonishing precision to numerous sayings attributed to Jesus and Plato. (Man Against Himself, pages 62-63)

Nothing inhibits love so much as self-love . . . just as self-directed aggressions are harmful because of their immediate consequences, so the self-direction of love is harmful through its secondary consequences, the consequences of the emotional starvation resulting. . . . Thus again psychoanalytic science comes to the support of an intuitive observation of a great religious leader who said, “He who seeketh his own life shall lose it but whosoever loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” We need only read in place of “for my sake” an expression meaning the investment of love in others, which is presumably what Jesus meant. (Ibid., pages 381-382)

The Apostle Paul maintained that love was the most important thing:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 
Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 
it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
(1 Corinthians 13:1-6, Revised Standard Version)

Myron Augsburger wrote:

True love cannot be expressed for things, for things only serve personal ends and affection for things is turned inward and is closed and selfish. Love for a person is outgoing and genuine as it cares to share relationship rather than to use the person. . . . Only the born-again person knows the transformation of divine love through the indwelling Spirit, and can express a measure of love that Jesus commanded toward both friends and enemies. . . .

The evidence that one has been delivered from the selfishness of sin is the expression of Christian love. (Plus Living, pages 25-27)

J. B. Phillips stated:

It is plain from the Gospels that Christ regarded the self-loving, self-regarding, self-seeking spirit as the direct antithesis of real living. His two fundamental rules for life were that the “love-energy,” instead of being turned in on itself, should go out first to God and then to other people. “If any man will come after me,” he said, “let him deny himself” . . . Now the moment a man does this . . . he finds himself in touch with something more real than he has known before. . . . In other words, the moment he begins really to love, he finds himself in touch with the life of God. (And, of course, if God is love, this is only to be expected.) He now knows beyond any doubting that this is real, happy, constructive living. He knows now that the teaching of Christ is not a merely human code of behaviour, but part of the stuff of reality. (Your God Is Too Small, pages 84-85)

Thomas a Kempis wrote: “Know that the love of yourself is more hurtful to you than anything else in the world” (Of the Imitation of Christ, page 42). Because the love of self is “more hurtful” to us than anything else, the Lord tells us to deny ourselves: “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and fellow me” (Matthew 16:24). In John 12:25 Jesus said:

He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

Raymound L. Cramer made these observations:

Another effective method for helping the neurotic is in involving him in something outside himself. Jesus taught this principle—who would save his life would lose it. An individual wrapped up in himself is like a circle revolving inward. Losing his life in interest of others, turning the circle outward, giving himself away has the advantage of distracting the neurotic from his own worries and giving him something worthwhile to live for. Being loved by others is pleasant, but it may become boring, while loving the other person is absorbing and creative. (The Psychology of Jesus and Mental Health, page 126)

The phrase, “save his life,” refers to saving it for a selfish purpose, utilizing ability in terms of self-gratification—a self-possessed, self-centered life. Jesus was not talking here about some distant future, but physical, down-to-earth, everyday living. He claimed that anyone who used his life in this way would lose it. The word “lose” means to become empty, void, useless and destructive. That which is capable of being useful becomes a source of insecurity, greed, and a vehicle of hostility if it is used for selfish purposes. Fear and anxiety result when man tries to hang onto his life. He loses what he is trying to save—life itself. (Ibid., page 139)

Many people will not become Christians because they fear that the Lord will ask them to give up too much. The truth is, however, that the Lord only asks us to give up the things that will hurt us or make us unhappy in the long run. We are told that true happiness comes only when we submit ourselves to the Lord and that there is only misery in self-love.

For a more complete treatment of this subject and what it really means to be a Christian we recommend our book A Look At Christianity.

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