Augustine was one of the most influential and brilliant theologians in church history. He lived around 400 A.D. on the north coast of Africa when it was dominated by Roman rule. His contributions to theology and his leadership in the church were incredibly important.

When Augustine was young, he was struck by how many people were discontent, without joy, and lacked fulfillment. Even those who indulged in pleasure, consumed entertainment, and had endless wealth were joyless and hollow. He realized something: human beings have their priorities out of order and they love the wrong things.

This became Augustine’s core definition of sin in his classic work Confessions: sin comes from wrongly ordered love. When we elevate the wrong things (or the right things in the wrong amount or at the wrong time) to the prime place in our heart, we are committing idolatry. Augustine taught that living a life of virtue is the process of rightly ordering our loves.

Tim Keller commented on Augustine’s theology in his book Making Sense of God:

Augustine taught that we are most fundamentally shaped not as much by what we believe, or think, or even do, but by what we love. “For when we ask whether somebody is a good person, we are not asking what he believes or hopes for, but what he loves.” For Augustine, what we call human virtues are nothing more than forms of love. Courage is loving your neighbor’s well-being more than your own safety. Honesty is loving your neighbor’s interests more than your own, even when the truth will put you at a disadvantage. And because Jesus himself said that all God’s law comes down to loving God and your neighbor (Matthew 22:36–40), Augustine believed all sin was ultimately a lack of love.

Augustine did not see our problems as stemming only from a lack of love. He also observed that the heart’s loves have an order to them, and that we often love less important things more and the more important things less. Therefore, the unhappiness and disorder of our lives are caused by the disorder of our loves. 

A just and good person “is also a person who has [rightly] ordered his love, so that he does not love what it is wrong to love, or fail to love what should be loved, or love too much what should be loved less (or love too little what should be loved more).”

Examine your own life. Are the things you love in the right order? Is God your supreme love, followed by a sacrificial love for others? Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)