There is a quote making its rounds on my socials that states, “The test of Christianity is not loving Jesus, it’s loving Judas.”
It is a clever turn and change of expectations. It is the sort of thing that preachers love to do if we are creative enough to come up with it.
The quote points out the telos of the Christian life. Telos is a fancy word that means the target or the end or the goal. For my doctoral work, I have had a decent number of conversations with people about what they would say the telos of the Christian faith is. One might imagine that there are numerous ideas. Some say the goal of the faith is to get to heaven. Some say it is to repair or restore the world. Some say it is to have a relationship with God. Some say it is to conformed in the likeness of Christ others say it is to glorify God.
The United Methodist Church suggests a telos “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” The denomination recently splintered from the UMC (the Global Methodist Church) suggests a telos “to make disciples of Jesus Christ who worship passionately, love extravagantly, and witness boldly.”
According to theologian and scholar Roberta Bondi, the desert mothers and fathers taught the telos of the Christian life is love. The goal of the faith is love. More often we think that we do some loving action in the service of something else. That love is a means or a way to another goal. I love my child, so that they might… Or I extend love to someone else so they will… In this way, love is not the telos just the means or way we reach another telos.
When we treat love as a means to an end, then we run the risk of not loving in order to achieve the desired end. We might do unloving actions in order to achieve the telos of say, truth. But if love is the goal, then truth will bent for the sake of love. Not love for the sake of truth.
For instance, the famous scene in Les Misérables where a thief steals silverware from a bishop but then is caught. The authorities bring the thief back to the bishop so there may be a set of charges brought against the thief, but the bishop says the silverware was a gift from the priest. In fact the bishop then tells the authorities that the thief forgot the candlesticks.
In this famous illustration of grace, the truth was bent in the service of love. The bishop understands the telos is love, not truth. If the telos was truth then the bishop would have laid the charges against the thief, but this does not happen. The telos is not truth but love.
The quote from above points out the telos of love. The test of the Christian is our ability to love - especially the thief, betrayer, and enemy. If the goal was something else then we would only need to love Judas for the sake of something else greater.
But, as Paul says, the greatest of these things is love.
There is no greater telos.