Today's readings place two extraordinary passages side by side — one declaring that love is the very substance of God, the other forbidding every form of spiritual hierarchy among people. Read psychologically rather than devotionally, these texts pose a radical question: what if love is not an emotion we produce but an objective force we obstruct, and what if the chief obstruction is the very self that insists on being superior, being the teacher, being the one who knows? These reflections explore that territory beyond any doctrinal boundary.
First reading
From the first letter of John — 1 John 4:7-16
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love has its origin in God, and all who love have been born of God and truly know him.
Whoever does not love has no knowledge of God, for God is love.
God's love was made visible among us in this: he sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.
Here is what love means — not that we reached out to God, but that he reached out to us, sending his Son as the sacrifice that atones for our sins.
Dear friends, if God has loved us so deeply, then we too are called to love one another.
No one has ever gazed upon God. Yet if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is brought to fullness within us.
This is how we recognize that we abide in him and he in us: he has shared with us his own Spirit.
We ourselves have witnessed and declare that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
All who confess that Jesus is the Son of God — God abides in them, and they abide in God.
We have come to know and to trust the love that God holds for us. God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in God, and God lives in that person.
Gospel
From the Gospel of Matthew — Matthew 23:8-12
Do not let yourselves be called Rabbi, for you have one teacher — the Christ — and all of you are brothers and sisters.
And call no one on earth your father, for you have one Father, the one who dwells in heaven.
Nor should you be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ.
Rather, the greatest among you must become the servant of all.
For whoever lifts himself up will be brought low, and whoever lowers himself will be lifted high.
— Interpretation —
The readings appointed for today, the 28th of August, place before us two passages that at first seem to address different subjects — one cosmic, the other social. John tells us that God is love. Christ, in Matthew’s Gospel, tells us not to call anyone Rabbi, father, or master. One appears to be a statement about the nature of the divine; the other appears to be an instruction about conduct. Yet when we look more carefully, they are the same teaching seen from two angles — one from above, one from below.
Let us begin with John’s extraordinary statement: “God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in God, and God lives in that person” (1 John 4:16). We are so familiar with this phrase — God is love — that we no longer hear it. It has become a kind of religious decoration, embroidered on cushions, painted on walls. But pause and consider what is actually being said. John does not say that God has love, or that God shows love, or that God commands love. He says God is love. Love is not an attribute of God; it is the substance, the very being. This is a statement about the nature of reality itself.
Now, from the standpoint of inner meaning, this has a specific psychological implication. If love is not something we manufacture but something we participate in — something already present, already luminous, already flowing — then the question changes entirely. The question is no longer “How do I love?” but “What in me prevents the passage of love?” This is a complete reversal. The first question assumes I must do something. The second assumes something is already being done, and I am blocking it.
And here we come to the Gospel reading, which tells us precisely what blocks it.
Christ says: “Do not let yourselves be called Rabbi… call no one on earth your father… nor should you be called masters” (Matthew 23:8–10). Taken literally, this passage creates endless confusion — people twist themselves into knots deciding whether to call a priest “Father” or a professor “Teacher.” But this is not a passage about social etiquette. It is a passage about the inner structure of the mechanical self.
The mechanical self — what Nicoll, drawing on Fourth Way language, calls the “first man” — organizes everything into hierarchies of superiority and inferiority. This is its fundamental mode of operation. It is always asking: Am I above or below? Am I the teacher or the student? Am I the authority or the subordinate? This ceaseless inner ranking is not merely vanity; it is the very architecture of the sleeping mind. It is how the natural man, as Paul uses the term (1 Corinthians 2:14), structures all experience. And it is precisely this architecture that prevents the passage of love.
Consider this carefully. When I inwardly place myself above another person — when I become, in my own estimation, the Rabbi, the Father, the Master — something happens. A wall goes up. Love, which by its nature flows between equals, is blocked. I can no longer see the other person. I see only my own elevation reflected in their diminishment. And this is equally true when I place myself below — when I grovel, when I resent, when I worship the personality of another. In both cases, the vertical axis of comparison replaces the horizontal axis of communion.
Christ’s instruction is therefore not about humility as we commonly understand it — a kind of forced lowering. It is about the dissolution of the entire apparatus of comparison. “All of you are brothers and sisters” (Matthew 23:8). This is not a sentimental statement. It is a description of a specific inner state in which the ranking mechanism has fallen silent. And in that silence, love — which was always present, which is the substance of reality itself — can finally pass through.
John says: “No one has ever gazed upon God. Yet if we love one another, God abides in us” (1 John 4:12). God cannot be seen directly, as an object. But God can be experienced as the force that moves between people when the barriers of self-importance and self-abasement are removed. The love is not ours. It belongs to the level above us. We do not create it; we permit it.
“Whoever lifts himself up will be brought low, and whoever lowers himself will be lifted high” (Matthew 23:12). This is not a moral warning about future punishment. It describes a law operating now, in this instant. The moment I elevate myself inwardly, I descend — I fall into the mechanical self, into comparison, into sleep. The moment I relinquish that elevation, something else enters. Something already luminous. Something that was waiting.
The servant of all is not someone who performs servility. The servant of all is someone in whom the obstruction has become transparent, so that what is higher can flow downward through them into the world. This is the New Man — not a superior being, but a permeable one.
Photo by Cristian Palmer on Unsplash
Scripture: Unified English Version — an original rendering synthesized from the King James and World English Bible translations
