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What is Loyalty?
Published March 30, 2023
In my Bible reading this year, I’ve been struck by the concept of loyalty. Maybe it’s because I’m a millennial, or because I’m reacting to my very loyal, Dutch heritage—but I’ve struggled to appreciate loyalty as a virtue in my life. What I’m realizing, however, is that loyalty isn’t boring, or blind. And my lack of appreciation for it doesn’t signal those things in others, but a lack of biblical character in me.
God’s Loyalty
Loyalty is a word often used in the Bible. But depending on the translation you use, you may not see it clearly, because the frequent Hebrew word “Hesed” is often translated as other things, like “steadfast love,” “loving kindness” or “kindness.”
And yet Hesed can rightly and concretely be translated as “loyalty.” In fact, The Hebrew Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament provides “joint obligation between two parties” or “loyalty” as the primary definition for Hesed. I like the translation “loyalty.” I like it because it captures the concrete essence of that phrase “steadfast love” in everyday language. Steadfast love is a loyal love. A love that’s committed to another person’s good through thick or thin. A love beautifully translated in the Jesus Story Book Bible by Sally Lloyd Jones as “God’s never-stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love.”
God’s love for us is a Hesed love—a loyal love. On Mount Sinai, he declared about himself: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love [loyalty] and faithfulness…” (Exod. 34:6) Moreover, it’s the steadfast love of God revealed for us in the Bible, and chiefly in Jesus’s death on the cross to save sinners that leads the apostle John to write “God is love” in 1 John 4:8 and 4:16. Who is God? At root, he is a loyal God.
Our Loyalty
But what we sometimes miss in our Bible reading—what I missed—is that God isn’t just loyal, he loves it when we are loyal too. Solomon understood this. And in the beginning of the book of Proverbs, he instructs his sons that the path of true wisdom and goodness is not to live selfishly for our own gain, but to live generously and loyally to others, as God has been generous and loyal to us.
“Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.” (Proverbs 3:3)
One of the texts that has been on my mind where we see this clearly is in Micah 6:8: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, (loyalty) and to walk humbly with your God?”
I think God is showing us in this passage that loyalty is the glue at the center of the Christian life. Without it, we cannot live horizontally towards others in true justice. And without it, we cannot live vertically towards God in true humility.
Need for Loyalty
As I’ve been reflecting on loyalty, I’ve been struck by how significant an opportunity the church has today to live differently in this world as loyal people. We will be powerful witnesses of the love we’ve received, in as much as we grow in loyal love ourselves. And I don’t think I can overstate how desperately our culture needs loyalty. Because day by day, year by year, we aren’t becoming more loyal, but less.
- Technology moves us toward insulation and isolation as we are satisfied to live privately, entertained in our homes, interacting in our chosen echo-chambers.
- Global markets move us toward finding jobs that suit us best, pay us most, and allow us to live in what cities we find most desirable.
- Abandoning biblical sexual values combined with applying technology to our dating lives, leads us to think of human souls as commodities to be used up for my benefit, and discarded when I’m no longer satisfied.
Conclusion
In this culture, the loyalty of God for sinners, through the person and work of Jesus Christ is good news for us to receive. But it’s also good news that, by God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to live.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily held by everyone at Christ City Church.