As both a church leader and a missions leader, I often hear Christians ask how to set the right priorities in life.
Is “family first” really biblical? How much love for country is healthy? And how do we know when we are being faithful at home while still caring about people across cultures and borders?
For centuries, Christians have used the ordo amoris—the “order of love”—to help answer questions like these. Augustine taught that because we cannot personally help everyone, we should give special care to the people God has placed closest to us. But this is not just Augustine’s idea. It reflects the pattern we see in Scripture: love God above all, love the people nearest to you faithfully, and let that love reach outward to others.
That means faithfulness at home and concern for the nations are not competing callings. Christians are called to love well in every place God has put them, from the home to the church to the ends of the earth. The question is how those loves fit together. To answer that, we need to begin with the pattern we see in the New Testament.
The New Testament Pattern
The shadowy image of love and order in the Old Testament comes into sharp focus in the New.
Even in his youth, the Lord Jesus displayed perfect love first for his Father, exemplary loyalty to his parents, and true regard for others (Luke 2:49–52). What he lived as a boy, he also taught as a man. In his ministry, Jesus, with surgical precision, evades the snares of dishonest questioners and declares man’s highest duty: to love God above all, and then to love one’s neighbor (Mark 12:38–40).
In the tradition of the prophets, he rebukes the Jewish ruling class for placing pleasure above piety (Mark 7:9–13, John 12:43), trading true piety for pretended devotion (Matthew 23:2–36), and neglecting to show charity to neighbors in need (Luke 10:30–37).
Some skeptical readers of Scripture may be tempted to thus see in Jesus an ally for the progressive cause, tearing down old hierarchies and replacing the parochial religion of the Jews with an open-minded, globalizing, universalist faith. In other words, they would be tempted to see in Jesus a case of grace eradicating nature. Such a conclusion would not be technically without warrant; Jesus indeed subverts the hypocritical religious authorities of his day, predicts the convulsive removal of the Judaic order, and preaches a gospel of grace freely offered to all the nations.
Yet amid these overtures, Jesus does not abolish the Old Testament’s characteristic particularity—its high regard for ordered loves, including heritage and homeland—but refines and expands it for the people of God from all nations in the coming ages. He anticipates the day when temple worship in Jerusalem would give way to worship in spirit and truth across the world, yet acknowledges that salvation is from the Jews (John 4:21–24, 22). He calls his followers to love even their enemies as sons of the Father, yet affirms that the faithful will indeed face enemies (Matthew 5:43–48). He sends out many disciples on mission to proclaim the kingdom, yet condemns the Pharisees for crossing land and sea to make converts while neglecting true religion (Luke 10:1–24, Matthew 23:15). He calls his followers to hate father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even their own lives for his sake, yet rebukes the scribes and Pharisees for their Corban tradition that allowed them to withhold support from their parents under the guise of piety (Luke 14:26, Mark 7:9–13). He dies for the sins of the world, yet with his final breaths gives instructions concerning the care of his mother (John 19:26–27). Raised from death, he warns Mary Magdalene not to cling to him in light of his impending ascension, yet calls his disciples “brothers” and his Father their Father (John 20:17). And gathered with his disciples before his ascension, Jesus announces his global dominion and commissions them to make disciples of all nations, yet affirms that this will be accomplished through baptizing and teaching individuals (Matthew 28:18–20).
The New Testament continues, after the gospels, to outline a theology of charity that preserves both the universal and particular. The apostles carry out their vast global mission by preaching the gospel in distinct localities and planting churches as local manifestations of the invisible church.1 These particular communities then receive instruction concerning the way they are to obey the commands of Christ, all hinging upon the central duty of Christian love, in a manner suited for each of life’s distinct spheres. While in Christ all distinctions of sex, class, or race are ultimately inconsequential with respect to eternal things (Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11), the household codes in the general epistles nevertheless treat love as giving rise to differing obligations of husband to wife (Ephesians 5:25–33, Colossians 3:19, 1 Peter 3:7), wife to husband (Ephesians 5:22–24, 33; Colossians 3:18; 1 Peter 3:1–6), parents to children (Ephesians 6:4, Colossians 3:21), children to parents (Ephesians 6:1–3, Colossians 3:20), masters to slaves (Ephesians 6:9, Colossians 4:1), and slaves to masters (Ephesians 6:5–8, Colossians 3:22–25, 1 Peter 2:18–25). The Christian is commanded to properly love each of these near relations rightly, in contrast with wicked unbelievers who lack natural affections (Romans 1:29–31, 2 Timothy 3:1–5). Further, in Galatians we read that the Christian is obligated to do good to his fellow believer before he is obligated to the pagan or unbeliever (Galatians 6:10)—a standard no doubt in tension with modern egalitarian sensibilities, yet without which Christian solidarity collapses.
The pastoral epistles also demonstrate a subsidiarity of duties with respect to Christian love. Paul tells Timothy that the elders and deacons he appoints in Ephesus must manage their own households well before they are qualified to rule in the household of God (1 Timothy 3:4–5, 12). Titus likewise receives instructions to appoint as elders in Crete only men who are faithful to their wives and whose children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination (Titus 1:6).
These requirements are not unique to church officers but reflect the duty of all believers. Men who do not provide for their own households, regardless of any other acts of charity, are in grave sin and are worse than unbelievers (1 Timothy 5:8); families are obligated to care for their widows before the church assumes responsibility (5:4); widows must have a reputation of service to the saints before receiving church support (5:9–10); and younger widows are encouraged to marry, bear children, and manage their households (5:11–14).
Thus, both testaments, while not explicitly using the term “order of love,” assume such an order in two respects: first, by teaching that God is the supreme object of love; and second, by treating love of fellow men as both secondary to love for God and as enacted by human beings in distinct ways depending upon proximity and relation. These observations accord not only with Scripture but with our natural understanding—what we might call “common sense.” We will see that even those outside the faith have recognized this premise.
Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from the second chapter of Alex Kocman’s book Ordered to Love: Recovering the Order of Affections from the Home to the Ends of the Earth (Cape Coral: Founders Press, 2026).
- London Baptist Confession of Faith 1689, ch. 26, sec. 2, in The London Baptist Confession with Original Preface, Baptist Catechism, and Appendix on Baptism (Pensacola, FL: Chapel Library, 2016), https://www.chapellibrary.org/pdf/books/lbcw.pdf. ↩︎
