While we should do good to all, Scripture commands us to first prioritize care for fellow believers, especially those in the household of faith (Galatians 6:10). The church is a family, and love within the family takes precedence.  John teaches that anyone who claims to love God while neglecting his brother is a liar because love for God must be demonstrated first through care for those we can see (1 John 4:20). 

Why should we concern ourselves with global missions when there is so much pressing ministry to do at home?

This question, recently thrust into the public eye, has drawn both criticism and praise. But it is not a new question. 

The new vice president came under fire yesterday for claiming that Christian theology teaches a hierarchy of duties; that love for one’s own family or nation precedes love for faraway peoples or places. 

What do we make of this claim? Does this simply represent a Roman Catholic ethical tradition about which Scripture is silent? Or worse yet, does it represent a sort of ethnonationalism that is counter to the missionary impulse? 

Augustine and the Order of Loves

In City of God, Augustine sets forward the idea of the order of loves (ordo amoris): 

“But if the Creator is truly loved—that is, if he himself is loved, and not something else in place of him—then he cannot be wrongly loved. We must, however, observe right order even in our love for the very love by which we love that which is worthy to be loved, so that there may be in us that virtue which enables us to live well. Hence, it seems to me that a brief and true definition of virtue is ‘rightly ordered love.’” (City of God, XV.22) 

C.S. Lewis interacts with this idea in his writings as well. In one letter, he reflected upon what these rightly ordered loves look like in practice: 

“To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.” (Letters of C.S. Lewis) 

These quotes all illustrate the logical idea that the Christian duty of love necessarily expresses itself in a hierarchical fashion; for instance, the way I, as a Christian man, love my wife and my children necessarily looks different from the way I am obligated to show love to all women or all children in Jesus’ name. Moral proximity matters; we are not infinite but are creatures limited by time and space. 

Moral proximity matters; we are not infinite but are creatures limited by time and space.

But this does not directly answer the question of whether this is biblical. Does Scripture lead us to think of love as ordered? 

The Bible’s Assumptions

The Bible does in fact assume that the duties of love are heightened with respect to those in our immediate sphere, not lessened, and those who fail to love those closest to them according to their duty are judged more harshly. Consider just eight examples: 

The Ten Commandments are structured in a concentric order: first, our duty to God, then our duty to parents, then our duty to others (see Exodus 20). Honoring father and mother comes immediately after commands about worship. Rightly ordered human relationships flow from rightly ordered worship. 

Jesus taught that we must first love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31). 

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