Let me ask you a question! Is it more important to live a life that is holy and set apart for God, one that displays a model of purity for the sake of being a light to the world and a prophetic witness? Or is it more important to display the tender, kind, and compassionate love of God to people around you—people that you meet and people that you know? I feel a bifurcation of these perspectives has been touted for the purpose of setting a stark line between the right and the wrong camp. It is as though these ideas are opposed perspectives that are unable to be reconciled to one another. The question can be oversimplified in this way. Is it more important to love, or to live holy and righteous? It is a great tragedy when this becomes the case. When the call to love gets divorced, and we must choose between God and those made in His image.
Now, this question may seem to be simplified if presented in terms of loving God and loving others. On its face, we would say unequivocally that we are called to love God above all. Yet God does not seem to distinguish between these in the same way that makes the most sense to me. No, He does the harder thing, which is to call us to see the world and our perceived reality from a higher perspective. In Isaiah 58, we find the prophet Isaiah speaking a word from God to His special and set-apart people. A people whom He brought out of Egypt with great power in order to establish a people for Himself who would show the world the way of righteousness. And this is what God has to say to those people.
Isaiah 58:1–3
“Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.
And
Isaiah 58:6–7
“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?”
We see on display in these passages a glimpse of God's perspective on the question at hand. Isaiah articulates a complaint that Israel had, which does a very good job of illuminating a Christian worldview that falls short of the gospel. Their complaint is that they have worshiped God and done acts which express love for God, and yet He has not seemed to reward it. The people of Israel are seeking a two-way relationship where everything is between them and God. They fast and God rewards; they humble themselves and God blesses them. They are working to live by the belief that loving God is the thing that matters the most. A righteous life is between the individual and God alone.
My Western, individualistic perspective screams that this is correct. I cannot in good conscience say that it is fully wrong, but I can say that it is overly simplistic. If not, why else are they being rebuked? Isaiah continues his writing by saying that a true fast that God delights in is one where people love and take care of the needs of other people. God's word of rebuke to Israel is that they were not loving God because they were not loving each other. This message is consistent through the entirety of Scripture. It is not only alluded to but explicitly stated as well.
1 John 4:20–21
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Additionally, in three of the Gospels, Jesus pairs loving God and loving others. Though He is only asked to answer the question, “what is the most important commandment,” He answers by pairing the two together. The people of Israel were seeking blessing and favor from God by displaying a love for Him without caring for others. God ended His rebuke with a promise for Israel: that if they would do right by and love one another, He would bless them.
Isaiah 58:8–11
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.
A life set apart for God is not measured by how untouched it remains, but by how faithfully it reflects Him.