6 January 2015 - god is love

Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.

God wants us to know him. He wants to communicate the deepest truth of who he is to us. He does this in many ways. One way is our subjective experience of his love for us. But a more complete revelation is in the love he gives us with which we love him and love our brothers and sisters. In our love for one another we experience the power of God's love for us. Love is the deepest truth of who God is.

Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;

Because this is so it follows that we know him most completely in love. This isn't simply feelings of love but love itself. It is necessarily a gift. It known most perfectly when it is given away. God is known most perfectly when the grace he gives us is given away.

And the gift he gives us cannot possibly be given any more completely than he does in Jesus Christ.

In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only-begotten Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.

The love with which we love our brothers and sisters and the love with which we love God has its source in this gift from the Father. Our fallen humanity puts all sorts of qualifications on whom we should love, when we should love, and how much we should love. We have difficulty dying even for just men, though perhaps for those we perceive as just we might dare to do so. But while we are yet sinners, Christ dies for us (cf. Rom. 5:7-8). There is no limit to his love.

In this is love:
not that we have loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.

And this love he shares becomes our power to love as well. Our hearts no longer see friends who deserve love and enemies who don't. They see "sheep without a shepherd" that are hungry and tired in a deserted place. They are hearts that are no longer content to let lost sheep fend for themselves. When Jesus commands us, "Give them some food yourselves" we rush to reply. It isn't because we have enough resources to solve the problem, either. We only have five loves and two fishes. But somehow the power of his love makes more of whatever we offer than we can imagine. There is not only enough, but there are even baskets left over. In this we see not our love, but his.

The mountains shall yield peace for the people,
and the hills justice.
He shall defend the afflicted among the people,
save the children of the poor.